Google changes its search box

"The accepted ideal case for Google is a highly consolidated, walled-garden internet where a small array of corporate media partners provide the trusted facts, while independent websites are forced to shift into closed, subscription-only communities...

Tech analysts and digital economists refer to this transition as the "Siloed Web." Google's ultimate goal is no longer to help users explore the open internet; it is to keep users inside Google’s AI interface by using licensed corporate data as its foundation.

By pivoting to AI Overviews and corporate licensing deals, Google is effectively dismantling its own legacy. They are turning back into the 1995 version of Yahoo—a closed ecosystem that only serves "approved" corporate data, except this time the curation is done by an AI model trained on paid datasets rather than human editors."

Even though the result is often good and combines information from multiple sources, it can also get things wrong by combining information from different eras or just plain outdated advice. AFAICT, without primary sources, the result is for entertainment purposes only.

    <form method="GET" action="/search">
      ...
      
      <center>
        Search the web using Google!
        <br>
        
        <input type="text" name="query" value="" size="40">
        <br>
        
        <select name="num">
          <option value="10" selected>10 results
          <option value="30">30 results
          <option value="100">100 results
        </select>
        <input type="submit" value="Google Search">
        <input type="submit" name="sa" value="I'm feeling lucky">
        <br>
        
        <i>Index contains ~25 million pages (soon to be much bigger)</i>
      </center>
      
      ...
    </form>

This is all new, so I may be a bit hyperbolic, but the reason OpenAI introducing ads bothers me is the implicit (or even explicit) bias that can be smuggled into a chat in ways that simply aren't possible when you're just clicking through to an external source. There are all kinds of implications to Google no longer being that source of truth, even by default. Maybe this has quietly been the case for a long time, but this feels like the final move — pushing their ad bias (i.e., whoever paid the most) into a conversational system, where dark patterns are far easier to implement and much harder to detect.

One answer to this might be domain-specific agents — narrower, accountable, ideally something you (or your community) actually run. But even then it all falls back on trust: you being a good-faith actor, and others trusting that you are one. Which is to say, we're back to the same problem, just at a smaller scale.

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.

The AI confidently told me they were right. Then I checked the sources, and found the only source that agreed with them was their own Reddit comment!!!

Google stopped being a customer-focused company after their 2nd major revision to GOffice and the PM shake-up in search from Raghavan https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-men-who-killed-google/ .

Ads have been close enough to covering costs for conventional internet search that even though I'm clearly the product and not the customer the relationship has still generally worked. If AI makes the "searching" 50 times more expensive, though, that could shift the relationship pretty badly in a direction of "if you're not paying for this you're not getting honest results". Paying may not sufficient for honesty but it may be necessary.

Honest question. But anyone who wants to answer this and who looks at Google's income/profit/revenue and is bedazzled by the size, don't forget to divide out by the number of Google's customers and ponder what that means. The per-user numbers are the much more relevant numbers and much less likely to cause Large Number Syndrome.

- People using the search console see the drop

- Product owners scratch their head

- Investors backing out because not having many visitors

- Small bloggers adding more ads because their revenue is dropping

- Sponsors backing out from their blogs because it's loosing more visitors

- Small web crumbling

- People google what is happening

- Google says 'The "small web"—independent blogs, personal forums, and niche websites—is disappearing due to corporate consolidation, aggressive AI-driven search indexing, and high maintenance costs. These factors have pushed independent creators onto walled-garden social media apps, leaving personal websites to suffer from "link rot".'

However, I specifically use Google (or DDG) when the LLMs are failing me. When I want "research something on my own" because the LLM is giving me garbage, or untrustworthy information. If Google completely replaces their search box my Google usage will go down even further.

I don't plan to use Google's LLM when Cluade is just better. Now that Google's search features are gone (or going away) I no longer have any reason to turn to them at all

Btw, Kagi has an "AI Mode" too, which can be enabled simply by ending your query with a question mark. Then, AI answers your query.

The real problem here is assuming this takes off what incentives will anyone have to provide the information to feed the beast?

You’re welcome.

But Google's description seems more minimal, like easier to get to ai mode, search box can expand intelligently based on input. Is there any clearer description of the magnitude of the change?

Is “the goal of Search” really: “to help you ask _anything_ on your mind”?

If “reimagined Search” is “designed to anticipate your intent”,

Would it correctly infer my intent to not utilize an agentic approach? Is there an “off switch”?

As for “Search agents”

“operating in the background 24/7”,

What is the carbon footprint of that? How do I turn it off? How do I ask it to stop phoning home my every keystroke?

These questions are asked partly rhetorically because it’s likely I don’t need a team of “24/7 Search agents” to help me guess the answers…

Historically, I scoffed when someone said “here’s the difference between a google search and asking ChatGPT”, or when people said that ChatGPT would “kill search”, but Google sure seems to be in a hurry to burry the original feature all by themselves.

How does adsense work when there are no search results?

SEO now: let’s try to be crawled by google so that AI can paraphrase us

Works where archive.ph is blocked

Text-only

   view-source:https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/19/business/google-seach-bar-ai-gemini.html
   Save as 1.htm

   egrep -o "(\"text\":\"[^\"]+)|(\"textAlign\":\"LEFT\")|(\"url\":\"[^\"]+)|(\"__typename\":\"TextInline\")" 1.htm \
   |sed '/\"url\":\"/{s/??.*//;s/$/\">/;s/.\{7\}/<a href=\"/;};
         /\"__typename\":\"TextInline\"/{s/\"$/<\/a>/;s/.\{24\}//;};
         s/\"textAlign\":\"LEFT\"/<p>/g;/\"text\":\"/s/.\{8\}//' \
   |sed '1s/^/<meta charset=utf-8><meta name=viewport content=width=device-width>/' > 2.htm
   rm 1.htm
   firefox ./2.htm

   ct.captcha-delivery.com
   geo.captcha-delivery.com
   www.nytimes.com
   g1.nyt.com 

I believe I speak for everyone working on alternative search engines when I offer a heartfelt thank you to Google for their untiring effort to derail their search product.

(For example, a random Redditor once said something, and the AI repeats it confidently and authoritatively, as if it is universal truth widely accepted by experts and applicable to the query.)

It's no wonder LLMs are the new search, the user experience is much better and you get an answer that is "good enough".

Now any website that doesn't feel hostile requires you to download an app, log in with an account, or sign up for a subscription. Much like how streaming has had repercussions on traditional cable, AI will have repercussions on how we traditionally expect the web to function.

We've taken the open internet for granted.

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.

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.

have i been A/B tested into something, or has this been live for months? this doens't seem new.

It doesn't seem to be secure. If every google link is one step away from a prompt injection and leaking all your data, then they are worse then npm.

I wonder how many days it takes until they roll it back or put that stuff behind some extra clicks.

I caught myself yesterday starting to ask Claude in my ide what ship did grace and Rocky take back to Rocky's homeworld.

I fondly remember the good old times when the goal was to help you find stuff…

US: The goal has always been about MONEY

I prefer the Claw like I prefer Linux and FOSS in general.

Since day one Googs’ vision was to make the Star Trek computer. They’re really there now. But I don’t like their how. This computer serves them, not me. My mind-bicycle must serve me, my thoughts are my own. I hope my resistance is not futile.

Nearly all other search engines give better results with less annoying ads at the top. First thing I do when installing a new browser is switch the default search engine to duckduckgo. Duckduckgo's results are less good than google used to be, bu way better than google currently is.

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.

https://medium.com/luminasticity/artificial-stupidity-and-th...

>And I think we can throw out all the complaints of the past few years about how Google quality is lowering and it is hard to find anything on the site anymore, for those were the salad years.

>At least back in the day when sites copied answers from Stackoverflow or Lyrics from RapGenius and put them in their own site with scammy pitches to pay for the content you were going to get the correct answer in the end, but now you need a factology degree to figure out if something is bullshit or not.

No, it was to search. Search within resources that are external to Google. Like index in library.

(stating the obvious). Starting article like this - that is with attempt to rewrite history - is very sad.

In the past, I excited. It was the first to sign up for all kinds of betas.

I don't know what triggered the my reasoning, but now whenever I see these upcoming announcements I don't think about how it's gonna be better, but how it is objectively gonna be worse. How much harder is it going to be for me to compare things.

How much more do I now need to go and explain people that the output is merely a mathematical average of what's out there, and if it's out there on the internet doesn't make it correct.

No. The goal of search is to find websites that match the text of the search term you put in. When they started to think they were "answering questions" is when google search started to become useless.

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.

It looks like the new experience works backwards - it's more or less a Gemini prompt that they then stuff a "search experience" into.

Obviously the search feed and ads are so integral to Google's business model that they probably can't confidently just step away from it.

https://www.techradar.com/computing/search-engines/ask-jeeve... / https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ask.com

Ask Jeeves was dissolved 15 days ago

If Google no longer sends users to websites for free on organics, the world will have to figure out some mechanism whereby Google pays site owners for putting the information on the web in the first place. Where will that money come from?

If it's ads, the AI experience is a “lies engine” where advertisers get to pick which lies the AI tells. Not sure what kinds of people would show up for that experience. Probably the same kind who watch home shopping TV. I would venture to guess that there will be a ceiling in the advertising value of that property. Or the AI interacts with people in good faith. But then, if I'm an advertiser, how do I get my lies into the world? “We will tell your lie, only if it's a truth” doesn't work because, as an advertiser, I understand that the truth about me already gets spoken, and I don't need to pay a dime for that.

You can run an argument that people can tell ads from organics on the current SERP, and you can calibrate how much of each there should be. But you can't really “calibrate” the amount and level of the lying in the AI to where it's just enough so that people will show up, but not so much that there's no value for advertisers. You can't have little boxes either, where the AI is like “having told you the truth, I want you to also pay attention to this lie that someone paid me to tell you: …”

Is Google really saying: “Hey, we're the lion's share of the advertising market right now. But, because we kind of like these newfangled AI things, we're going to just vacate that spot to whoever. Instead, we will turn ourselves into a pre-product-market-fit company. Maybe at some point over the next 10 years, we're going to be able to tell you how we might actually monetize ourselves. Stay toooooned.”

The reason why AI is a better experience than the web right now, is because we have pre-enshittification AI and post-enshittification web. What will the whole thing look like, after enshittification is through with AI?

Kagi search results are very mediocre. Comparable to what DDG, Startpage and others provide for free. Even though their search results are quite unimpressive the subscription is quite expensive and comes with extra fluff like AI tools that needlessly inflate the price. Kagi sends a small part of their profits to russia by paying for yandex index. They provide support via Discord thus it's safe to say that they endorse Discord even after recent controversies.

You're IT people, right? Take matters into your own hands and self host a SearXNG instance. Share it with family and friends to make yourself and everyone else harder to track and profile. Mooch off Google's infrastructure and don't give them anything in return. Fuck them.

Edit: Seconds after submitting already downvoted without any reply. Tell me Kagi is not running bots on HN.

I wonder how many of them would switch to a paid model that offered pre-ai-era google search?

On a more serious note, the on demand UI chrome could actually be cool UX, curious to try that out.

I see no change to look and feel so far, has this rolled out to anyone yet?

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/07/technology/google-ai-over...

...a high search volume tells me that maybe users aren't able to find what they're actually looking for, thereby needing more searches.

   Robots will do your chores so you can focus on your work

   Robots will take your work so you can focus on your chores

"The goal of Search has always been simple: to help you ask anything on your mind — from quick facts to the deep, complex or hyper-specific questions that can be hard to articulate."

Really? My aim has always been to find a place off google that has the information that I'm looking for.

If the purpose of google search is no longer aligned with what I want from the product... then maybe that tells me all I need to know.

If you want a search engine... it sounds like that's not what Google is any more.

I wonder if they will stop using pagerank completely? Has pagerank already transcended the software plane?

the degoogling process will be a long haul but im determined to do it.

The first red flag for me. The +/- of this type of feature are well worth exploring.

Time to switch to old style search engines which still return the 10 blue links, with an AI option.

Gmail search doesn’t work well either. It simply doesn’t find things. Almost as if they have stopped indexing and repurposed resources towards LLMs.

And whatever there is left to index and search has been completely overrun with slop.

Search is over. Internet as we knew it is over. Something new has emerged in its place, and we are still calling the new thing the old thing.

Searching for some keywords, returned only 2 or 3 websites, the rest were just ads, AI summaries, related busineses and whatnot, after 4-5 searches I gave up.

I then asked ChatGPT: "what's that software name that does X", and it gave me a list, and that software was the first one.

NO - thanks!

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.

when i planted seeds,

when are they expected to germinate

when do i need to water

when will I get to harvest

Watering would be based on weather conditions

Did i misunderstand the concept?

Remind me what Google is again. Haven't used them for years...

We'll see if it works. I use chatgpt for complex queries, and for throaway ones I use just don't log in to it.

I wouldn't use google for the same queries, since I normally use google to find specific things, not for a chatbot.

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.

The ai generated summaries are slow, often miss the point of question and seem to be focused on user engagement, not in giving set of infos to sort out myself.

So there are two different types of queries, and when I want llm's answer, I ask chatgpt directly.

https://kagi.com

Q: What is the best summoner 0 button build for d4 s13 necro

A: Something went wrong and an AI response wasn't generated.

Amazing product. Really frontier search experience. Thanks Google!

Advertising on the media site (assuming digital media, no physical media) is going to disappear because people probably won't be clicking through to read the source material that the Google AI answer relied on. No traffic, no advertisers, no money to produce the original journalism. That's going to impact the Google results eventually as these media outlets shut down to be replaced with...AI slop, maybe?

Is the subscriber model the answer? It could work for a niche subject or a single journalist with a following, and it wouldn't be sucked into Google results, either, if it was effectively gated/paywalled.

For me AI is a technology not a product but there is nothing else anymore

I also don't remember ever seeing anything being force-fed as much as LLMs, why?

You know what I really miss? Being able to type a literal string in quotes and get pages that had that actual string on them. That's what I really miss.

"Did you mean?" + excluded word was a pretty clear indication they stopped caring to provide any meaningful search whatsoever.

What we need now is back to the roots - just a simple grep for the internet augmented by pagerank and eventually some sort of ai and harness to sort the rubish out. The AI companies have the data and the harnesses.

Google killed themselves when they made sure you can't search direct quotes or outside of your region. If I am going to sort trough vague crap - it is better AI to do it. And AI doesn't look at ads.

There is real opening for a company that just crawls and gives access to other companies to build on top of the collected stuff.

But they do AI chat already anyway so, maybe it's fine

Privacy first, opt-in AI, total control over site blocking, zero ads.

You're the customer, not the product.

Now it can't find anything interesting. As a search is basically useless and it's more like Home pages used to be (that you would very much build yourself in a html editor and place your most often visited sites).

This means that, in a couple years, we might see a competitor that offers you quick, almost instant web search, with a minimal UI, possibly an algorithm that somehow surfaces the most relevant results based on how all websites point to each other naturally (like, a site that is referred to by 20 others should be above one with zero references).

I look forward to it!

I think we can concede the WWW vision of distributed libertarian publishing has been dead for a long time. LLMs were just the final straw.

We ended up concentrating syndication on a few media companies like Google, Social Media companies.

Look at the profit margins of advertising companies vs producers and you’ll get an idea as to why.

Web 2.0 was Yahoo Pipes, public APIs, IFTTT, etc. while this new "Web 3.0" acknowledges that those capabilities would rather be gatekept behind AI instead of entirely removed.

At the very least we do get some of that functionality back without resorting to scraping anymore and it's now accessible to the layperson. I would think this would nudge the layperson to demand more and inevitably want the actual data without the training wheels or sandboxes. Is that not a "good" thing?

Is the pushback against this out of genuine concern or just ideological?

Now they are a money printing corporate. I am sure there are still people there doing new and exciting things, but the Grey Suits have taken the reigns

They could have used AI to make that awesome simple sparse home page better. Fought off the SEO optimiser that made search so dire in the recent past

But no. They are doubling down on bling and crap. SEO is good for business.

"Do the right thing". Not even close

Makes me so sad.

F Google!

i played the video, didnt understand anything and got dizzy. then i tried to scroll but the browser tab froze? wow

... and an opportunity to try freeing yourself from Google influence more generally, by finding alternatives to their other services, like email, maps etc.

good luck getting visits to your site unless you're paying for AI placement

But at least I've experienced the golden age. I feel bad for all the kids who will never know what once was.

I’m so fucking tired. I don’t want it. I didn’t want it. I didn’t need it. And now here we are, once again, shoving it fast and hard in my face.

Thanks, Google.

Id you'd like to try it for free for a couple of days, reach out with your randomly-assigned account number and we'll top it up for you.

[1]: https://uruky.com