How voice search may threaten Google's advertising business VentureBeat Bots

When the world shifted from desktop to smartphones, one thing didn't change: the existence of a screen on both devices. The screen shrank, but it remained the medium through which we interact with computers. For Google, that meant its core online advertising business -- visible search ads on a webpage -- remained intact and lucrative. Today, Google may be at the beginning of a new shift -- one toward artificially intelligent virtual assistants, in which we use our voice to interact with technology instead of our eyes. The problem with voice assistants is they don't have a screen on which to display ads.