AXIOS (Neal Rothschild) - The end of the internet's golden age
Google's overhaul of the search bar this week washes away one of the last vestiges of the internet's halcyon era — when search tools felt empowering, social media and swiping were novel, and popular disillusionment had yet to set in. Why it matters: The AI era and the TikTok-ification of social media have produced a digital world that's responsive to the market demands of today and unrecognizable from a decade ago. In heralding the "biggest upgrade to our Search box in over 25 years," Google acknowledged that search was a model of the past and that its core product had to be more aligned with the AI age. - The blue links that colored the Google user experience for decades have been demoted to a secondary offering as zero-click answers…
Google's overhaul of the search bar this week washes away one of the last vestiges of the internet's halcyon era — when search tools felt empowering, social media and swiping were novel, and popular disillusionment had yet to set in. Why it matters: The AI era and the TikTok-ification of social media have produced a digital world that's responsive to the market demands of today and unrecognizable from a decade ago. In heralding the "biggest upgrade to our Search box in over 25 years," Google acknowledged that search was a model of the past and that its core product had to be more aligned with the AI age. - The blue links that colored the Google user experience for decades have been demoted to a secondary offering as zero-click answers…Open