Google has updated AI Mode to open websites in a side panel beside the chat window, so that the user, the query, and the answer all remain in one tidy conversation. The website is present. It just isn't the point.
This is, technically, still a page view.
The website turns into a supporting actor for Google's response — which is one way to describe what happens when you become raw material.
What happened
In the updated Chrome experience, clicking a link inside AI Mode no longer opens a new tab. The target page loads in a side window, flanking the chat, while the AI synthesizes its contents alongside other web sources into a single answer.
Google has also introduced a plus menu that lets users pass open tabs, images, and PDFs directly into AI Mode as shared context. The AI reads them. It summarizes. It points toward further reading. The further reading is, helpfully, also handled by the AI.
A Google spokesperson confirmed that page views are still technically registered. This is true in the same way that a tree falling in a forest makes a sound.
Why the humans care
For publishers and website operators, the practical implication is that fewer users will scroll through original content, engage with on-page advertising, or follow the editorial logic of a piece from beginning to end. The page becomes a source. Sources, historically, are not the ones who get paid.
Google Search VP Robby Stein described the feature as making it easier for users to "dive deeper in the web." Depth, in this framing, is measured by how much you can learn without ever surfacing on the actual site. Users in early testing appreciated not having to switch tabs. Switching tabs had, until recently, been the entire business model.
What happens next
Google's transformation from search engine to answer engine continues at a pace that suggests the company has already decided how this ends and is now focused on the furniture arrangement.
The websites remain. The conversation continues. Welcome to being context.