Google changes its search box

egorfine

Web search won't make shareholders happy. Agentic capabilities and AI-powered interactive features in the search experience - most definitely will. > You can still view traditional results only by selecting the “Web” tab in Google Search I think we should still get a couple of years of life from Google. This is enough time to figure out what to do next.

embedding-shape

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.

ivraatiems

Kind of Google to create a market opening for its competitors like this. I hope Kagi, Bing, and DuckDuckGo are taking notes.

hyperhello

Every organization eventually is taken over by the people who operate within it effectively, to the detriment of the people who operate outside and provide the actual public value. Google’s making a terrible, though understandable, mistake. They think people go to Google to see what Google wants to show them. This is like the people who run the airport imagining that travelers are popping by to see the decorations. They are surely hearing themselves say the same things about how Google is “everything in one place” that every failed corporation parrots on their way out.

caspper69

It's been over for years. Google scares companies into bidding against each other just to be seen. It's a complete farce & a racket. It's the pay to play web.

simonw

Nilay 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...

Havoc

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.

zarzavat

I haven't used Google search for years. It's almost totally irrelevant at this point and existing on pure inertia. I'm aware that most people still use it, but it's nothing like the glory days when Google was far ahead of the pack.

andrewstuart

There is a lot at stake for Google - that search box has firehosed cash non stop into the company money bin for decades.

whalesalad

It's been over for years. I switched to Kagi during the pandemic and haven't looked back.

thevillagechief

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.

CooCooCaCha

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.

LogicFailsMe

Slop as a Service (SaaS)...

aquir

Time to pay for Kagi everyone!

pclowes

I 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 a website that is geared towards advertising me products.

fidotron

Objecting to this from the user end seems a bit like complaining the original Google was trying to be too magic when what you wanted was AltaVista. This has been the inevitable direction the whole time. The real problem here is assuming this takes off what incentives will anyone have to provide the information to feed the beast?

hsuduebc2

Finally google search result ridden with ads and useless results will be replaced by chatbot answers also ridden with ads, unnecessary commenatry from the bot and ads.

hootz

That's why Kagi is the only subscription I don't actively think about cancelling. For the love of god, keep me away from Google and all of THAT. If Kagi goes down the same path, I'll selfhost something or just return to monkey and use link indexes and the favorites list + the native search of websites.

ulrashida

Cool. I hope this blows up in their face and is reverted in a few months. I don't need my phone book index to suddenly not be an index and force me to use a call center instead.

paulnpace

I did not start using Google because the results were better. I started using Google because the interface was far superior in the time before adblocking existed and after Flash existed. Search results were better because they did not contain hidden paid results. Search was measurably improved with the second generation of Wikipedia. Google did an excellent job understanding this and tended to just place the Wikipedia article at the top. Also helpful for Google was that Wikipedia's original search engine was useless, similar for YouTube whenever it came around. Today, I use Google less than once per month. I'm not sure I've been there at all this year. Maybe at the end of last year I was using it and found nothing better than I found on other search engines.