Still, the team’s management bristled at the proposal, according to a former employee with direct knowledge of those conversations. Googlers rarely suggested tinkering with the search engine’s fundamental design. “It was self-regulation. People just weren’t daring to think the thoughts,” the former employee says. The division’s leadership worried that its latest AI, though promising, wasn’t accurate enough. And even if it worked perfectly, answering users’ questions with AI risked upending Google’s core business of mixing so-called organic links with a healthy dose of targeted ads. The idea died, at least for the time being.