To judge from its latest quarterly earnings, Google has shored up its defences against the first wave of disruption from generative artificial intelligence. But the real challenge has barely begun.

The search giant misfired with its first, panicked response in the wake of ChatGPT (if you never used Bard, you aren’t alone), but this year it seems to have found its feet. People seem to like having AI-generated answers spliced into their search results. According to Google, they have responded by thinking up 10 per cent more of the types of queries that produce these summaries.

Being presented with ready-made answers means they are less likely to click on links, of course — according to Pew Research in the US, about half as likely. But that hasn’t stopped solid growth in search advertising revenue.