Comment by frmersdog
19 hours ago
AI is not and cannot be search. Search is dead and has been for a few years now. Search has seemingly been subsumed into the LLM monster, considering how "fuzzy" queries have become (probably because they're not hitting the search algorithm without being massaged by "something else"). Significant portions of the web have been purged from Google's index, which means that neither Gemini nor Search can present those pages to users.
It's over. Sorry.
When people say "search is dead", I feel like you and I live on different planets.
If I have an idea of what I want, Google search works great. On the rare occasion I don't know the specific thing I'm looking for, Gemini points the way.
It had never ever been easier for me to find what I'm looking for on the internet, since 1993-1994.
I do wonder how much browser, location, and language plays into this.
I believed these sorts of statements a few years ago, but not anymore. Results were hit-and-miss enough to give the benefit-of-the-doubt. They're now so bad that I assume bad faith, either on the part of the speaker or Google.
Search -> click on website -> read website to find the information you wanted; is dead/dying.
I agree that paradigm is over and using Google search feels antiquated. It’s not a good outcome for website owners, but I want info retrieval.