> but the hack they pulled in order to make it appear that way isn't delivering value, and looks bad

What hack did they pull? It just seems like too small a model to be able answer any non trivial question. Google must be shitting themselves about chatgpt replacing search. They've released such a shoddy product as AI Overviews, it's so often wrong and people are taking what it says as if it's as reliable as their search snippets, which it definitely isn't.

I’ve personally read many people say that AI is worthless when their only exposure to it is through Google search. Just spitballing here, but it almost seems like a deliberate way to buy themselves some more time before needing to transition business models.