tried it out:
Search: "Hello world"
> AI Overview
> Hello! Wordle is the viral word-guessing game where you get 6 tries to uncover a mystery target word, using color-coded hints to guide your guesses.
Google changes its search box
191–200 of 961 posts
Re: Google changes its search box
#192Kind of Google to create a market opening for its competitors like this. I hope Kagi, Bing, and DuckDuckGo are taking notes.
Kagi relies on Google search.
Re: Google changes its search box
#193Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or subtly misrepresent politically inconvenient facts, or gently steer you into opinions based on a synthesis of broker data and demographic info, or quietly flag you in some database column due to exhibiting dissident-adjacent ideas or behaviors, or... Yeah, they probably aren't doing (most of) these now, but it doesn't take much mental energy to extrapolate once you factor nearly every other tech company's ethical…
Doesn’t classic search literally already do everything you fear LLM’s will?
Certainly, but with (what I consider to be) a key distinction: classic search, by definition, must serve information from many distinct sources outside the control of the search company.
A search engine could certainly tamper with which of these sources they surface/rank higher (which I suspect happening more often of late), but they're still obliged by their nature to branch out and seek information from the broader world.
LLMs, on the other hand, are self-contained opaque monoliths that can be conditioned to deceive or obfuscate with devious cleverness, and all control over their behaviors is entirely concentrated in the hands of whatever corporation trains them.
Re: Google changes its search box
#194Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can ask them to cite their sources. It's very good practice to do so, and to check those sources, because I've found that about 30-40% of the time their source doesn't support their answer at all.
If it's wrong 2 out of 5 times, why even waste your time going to it in the first place? That's a massive failure rate.
I don't find it nearly that bad. If I really need factual information, it will generally go off and read the data from primary sources anyway. So unless it's really misunderstanding context, you're getting the data from the source.
Re: Google changes its search box
#195Time to pay for Kagi everyone!
Until you realize that Kagi only works well because it uses a (paid) third-party API which behind the scenes does a classic Google search, scrapes its results in real time, throws out the ads, and then returns the cleaned-up results. If Google Search changes, then Kagi's search will be impacted directly.
This isn't entirely true, because they use more than one search index.
Re: Google changes its search box
#196Nilay Patel has been talking about "Google Zero" - the moment when Google effectively stops sending any traffic to other sites - for a few years now: https://www.theverge.com/24167865/google-zero-search-crash-h...
The web as we know it is over. Websites will die on the vine if LLMs intermediate all the content. The "website" of the future will be an API optimized for LLM crawlers, serving plain-text content that no end-user will ever view directly. The SEO game will change to LLMAO.
Here is what I think the future web may look like:
1) Sites will have mcp / APIs for LLMs. So that when I ask my AI Agent du jour. It can call any of the sites where I have subscriptions for information.
2) Sites that are passion projects will be harvested by our LLM overlords.
3) Sites that people don't type into their web browser and need ad revenue will die.
4) SEO will finally die.Re: Google changes its search box
#197I understand why they are doing this. My Google search usage is easily down 50%+. I doubt I am unique here. While there are times where I want pure search (Kagi, Old Google) I mostly use LLMs to search now and have them provide me links for source data. When I do use LLMs as a search engine I always want it integrated into my AI workflows with access to tools and scripts etc. I never want to have a conversation with…
I'm not at all in the same boat as you; I do not and likely will never primarily rely on LLMs for information. But it's fascinating to hear that even folks who do don't find this approach useful.
Search results are 80% SEO low-quality garbage nowadays. Very often, the sites even generate their content with AI. So for many use cases I stopped bothering with search and directly ask LLMs instead.
Re: Google changes its search box
#198Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Websites will die on the vine if LLMs intermediate all the content. The current zeitgeist of them will, but I think not all. My first website (GeoCities) was either before Google existed or very close to it. Connected to people via WebRings and directory listings. More recently, RSS feeds.
Yeah there will likely continue be a small underground of old-style websites I guess. But you'll have to be in the loop on how to find them, and very few people will pay to advertise on them.
> very few people will pay to advertize on them
That sounds like an unalloyed plus. The perverse incentives caused by advertising have been the biggest driver of the web's decline, IMO.
Re: Google changes its search box
#199Earlier quoted context omitted.
Which as some running a website raises a fascinating question. If Google is just going to crawl my sites and present information as an AI summary on their site, then what exactly do I gain by allowing Googlebot to crawl my sites?
Free speculation: I could see a future where Google populates a footer on results with the website logos of the sources. Presumably, the new web will require users to memorize websites/brands and go directly to those sites if they see a lot of their results are being provided by one source. Websites may go back to being simply labors of love.
>I could see a future where Google populates a footer on results with the website logos of the sources.
ChatGPT/Claude does this today. I barely click or care for the source when they already have me the info I wanted.
My speculation is all information worth anything is going to be behind some kind of wall.
Re: Google changes its search box
#200Earlier quoted context omitted.
All of Google AI Mode is sourced.
Yes, and those sources often contradict the AI summary if you follow them (or if you know anything about the topic).
A common pattern:
Type your question in Android/Chrome search bar:
"Is …?"
AI Overview on the search results page:
"No…"
Click through to the AI mode tab/"Dive deeper with AI" CTA:
"Yes…"