Correct, the click through from AI Overview is better than nothing, but it's not typically (anywhere near as) high as it would have been if the website was shown in the results without AI Overview at all.
Furthermore, opting out of AI Overview means that _other_ websites will be used for its grounding. Those competing websites will be cited and receive some citation traffic instead. So there's really very little incentive to opt-out for most websites.
The argument of technical impossibility seems implausible, although it would no-doubt be difficult. Whether there can be enough engineering will mustered within the company to separate out the AdTech stack from the rest of Google's services is another question.
In terms of how the AdTech stack could look afterwards, here is a paper (I authored) advocating for the introduction of an interop layer such that users could choose which advertising network to use with Google's products and services: https://doi.org/10.36633/ulr.1113
I think the competition/antitrust law community is beginning to develop some effective antibodies against some of these. Bork's ideas are pretty well and truly debunked these days, and issues with regulatory capture, lobbying etc. are getting lots of attention (e.g. see this excellent paper: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4979205).
Absolutely not! But I've never been a materialistic person and lived below my means while I worked in tech, so my quality of life didn't really drop. Although academia isn't anywhere near as lucrative as tech was, I find my work really quite fulfilling now, which counts for a lot. I have no regrets!
For posterity, if you're reading this and are interested, feel free to drop me an email if you have questions.
I guess it depends on your circumstances. In Europe, for instance, the cost of a degree is sometimes quite low. My gateway from tech to law was a part-time masters degree in political science, and which cost around 200 euros a semester (in Germany). That degree gave me enough experience to then apply for a PhD in law.
Which brings me to the next point. Doing a law degree and passing the bar is perhaps the obvious path to doing policy things. It’s basically the only way that you can end up actively participating in courts, for example. But there are many other options! For myself, the plan is to stay in academia and not take any bar courses (then again, who knows what will happen!). Academics have lots of potential to shift policy, especially as neutral agents who aren’t paid by either side of particular debates. Our papers are read by policymakers and judges, who often don’t have the time or resources to think deeply about particularly gnarly topics. But there are lots of other options which could also work, and I guess finding a "niche" would depend on your specific circumstances, connections and skillset.
If you’re looking to spend more time thinking about policy issues, I’d start by simply sleuthing online. Bruce Schneier, for example, regularly writes excellent pieces at the intersection of technology and policy, which are very well hyperlinked to other high quality stuff. These kinds of blogs are a great way to get into the space, as well as to learn about opportunities which are coming up. Reading journal articles that sound interesting is a good option too (and US law journal articles are often quite accessible). There are also spaces offline, such as conferences which encourage both law and tech people (there’s one happening in Brussels soon [1]), or even institutions set up specifically to operate in this space and which have in-person events (Newspeak House comes to mind [2]).
Many of us in the antitrust/competition law community are trying. One issue, specific to digital markets, is that the field has very few people who are both legally and technically literate. If you're a technical person looking for a career shift, moving into legal policy/academia has the potential to be quite high impact for that reason.
Perhaps allowing Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram to merge was efficient after all - now that they have synchronized outages, people finally have a chance to get on with their lives, free of clickbait news and misinformation.
Furthermore, opting out of AI Overview means that _other_ websites will be used for its grounding. Those competing websites will be cited and receive some citation traffic instead. So there's really very little incentive to opt-out for most websites.
Disclosure, I recently wrote a detailed write-up of these issues here: https://academic.oup.com/jeclap/advance-article/doi/10.1093/...