Some unofficial tidbits about Google (and sometimes Bing) and its search engine gathered here and there over the past few days, including this week a few answers to these questions: Will Google Gemini soon host ads like ChatGPT? What does the presence of LLMs.txt files on some Google sites mean?
Google Gemini will remain ad-free
Demis Hassabis, CEO of Google DeepMind, confirmed at the World Economic Forum in Davos that Google has "no plans" to integrate advertising into Gemini. This statement came just after OpenAI's announcement about the upcoming arrival of ads in ChatGPT.
Asked about OpenAI's decision, the DeepMind leader was slightly critical: " "It's interesting that they chose that so early. Maybe they feel the need to generate more revenue ". This remark suggests that Google, unlike its competitor, does not feel the same financial pressure to directly monetize its conversational AI assistant.
Source : Search Engine Roundtable
Reliability rating: 
Agreed!
Keep in mind that Google is far more financially robust than OpenAI, and that Mountain View already uses Gemini to power Google Search, AI Overviews and AI Mode, which do contain advertisements.
Goossip #2
The presence of LLMs.txt files on some Google sites is not an endorsement
John Mueller, from Google, clarified that the presence of LLMs.txt files on certain Google sites in no way represents a recommendation or endorsement from the company. This clarification followed a question posted on Bluesky by Esben Rasmussen, who had spotted an LLMs.txt file on ai.google.dev.
When asked directly about this issue, Mueller responded categorically on Bluesky: " I'm tempted to say something sarcastic since it comes up so often, but to be direct, no ». This wording reveals a certain weariness with the recurrence of this question within the SEO community.
The context is important: a few weeks ago, the CMS used by Google began automatically supporting LLMs.txt files, which added them to many Google documentation sites. While Google's Search team quickly removed them from its own developer docs, other teams did not remove them, either through oversight or indifference. John Mueller also specified that these files had been added "for other reasons" than those one might imagine.
Source: Search Engine Roundtable
Reliability rating: Agreed!
Even though John Mueller's position has the merit of being clear, one can indeed question the presence of such a file on Google sites, even though Google has already declared it useless.
The article "Goossips SEO: Gemini & LLMs.txt" was published on the site Abondance.
