>If I'm using a search engine, I want to search the web. Yes these engines are increasingly providing answers rather than just search results, but that's a UI/product feature rather than an API one.
This is a great point, lets hold onto that.
>If I'm using an LLM, it is for parsing large amounts of input data, image recognition, complex analysis, deep thinking/reasoning, coding.
Strongly disagree. Sometimes when googling its not clear what links if any will have the information you are looking for. And of course, you dont know if this will be the case before searching.
First, you can just use an LLM to cut out a lot of the fat in search results. It gives you a direct answer and even a link.
But let's assume they couldnt source their claims. Even still, sometimes its quicker to search a positive "fact" instead of a open-ended question/topic.
In this case if you want a direct source showing something you can query an LLM, get the confidently-maybe-correct response, then search that "fact" in Google to validate.
I understand the idea that "if im googleing I want the index" but there is a reason google is increasingly burying their search results. People increasingly do _not_ want the index because it's increasingly not helpful. Ultimately it is there to surface information you are looking for.