GOOGLE'S CORPORATE PARENT STILL PROSPERING AMID SHIFT INJECTING MORE AI TECHNOLOGY IN SEARCH

Google’s corporate parent Alphabet Inc. delivered another quarter of steady growth amid an AI-driven shift in the ubiquitous search engine that is the foundation of its internet empire.

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The second-quarter report released this week showed that Google is still reeling in advertisers on the heels of the May introduction of an artificial-intelligence feature that produces conversational responses to people’s search queries while downplaying its traditional display of related links to other websites.

Although the change sparked fear and outrage among online publishers worried their traffic will plummet, Google is still thriving and propelling Alphabet’s success.

“AI is expanding the kinds of queries we can address,” Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai assured analysts during a Tuesday conference call. He repeatedly extolled AI as a technology he expects to transform society and that has made Google a better company.