Initially I thought AI would would crush google search, but starting to think the opposite. Think they have survived the transition.
After I got tired of perplexity's nonsense I realized the workspace account (which I have for custom email domain) came with fancy gemini pro chat.
Was a fucking ripoff for the domain thing...but domain plus premium chat clearly marked as "we won't train on your data"...the math starts mathing better again.
Basically people who want to search, will now not be able to, they'll be forced into a UI they might have consciously avoided, otherwise they'd be using their chatbot in the first place. Seems like a strange UX decision, rather than recommending "Hey maybe you want to try our chatbot", they just force the user into a chat straight up.
That's the whole shape of AI for consumer-facing functions like this. It's not superior to the previous experience, but huge sunk costs and a misguided belief it's the "next thing" is leading companies to try to force the issue. It's the Apple removing the headphone jack of the modern Internet. A change for the worse that we'll all have to find ways to work around.
Google famously dragged on development of Glass for more than a decade stubbornly failing to admit that nobody wants to look like a cyborg the entire time only to be swept aside by Meta when they built a device that was glasses first with some recording and interactions built in.
If their leadership has an itch they'll scratch it until it's raw.
Basically people who want to search, will now not be able to, they'll be forced into a UI they might have consciously avoided, otherwise they'd be using their chatbot in the first place. Seems like a strange UX decision, rather than recommending "Hey maybe you want to try our chatbot", they just force the user into a chat straight up.
I read some of the article and skimmed the rest, and didn't see anything about old-fashioned search no longer being an option.
Is the idea that by making the new AI chat UX the default, that's how they're forcing people into it and making them not able to search? Or is there something I'm missing?
I understand the consternation here about this change. And I've noticed recently getting frustrated because I'm looking for a search list but the UI throws me into AI mode first. But the think is I use traditional search so much less now that those annoyances are the exception. I can't say whether they are making a mistake, but they've got to have extensive data, and I'm going to bet that an overwhelming amount of people don't click through to the search results anymore for most quick queries. They probably really don't have a choice if they are going to effectively keep ChatGPT at bay. Of course, all this is terrible for the internet. That headline should have been: The Internet as you know it is over.
I think this will be one of those things that the hacker news crowd lambasts and calls a mistake but will either be neutral or seen as a positive to your average user.