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‘I miss old Google’: readers tell us how they search the internet in the age of AI

TL;DR

A feature called AI Overviews has been a profound change, and the browsing habits of billions of people are shifting Google has put artificial intelligence at the front and center of its search bar. The most-visited site on the internet still shows the same list of links to users, but they have to scroll past a summarized response from an AI chatbot, a feature Google calls AI Overviews.

Nauti's Take

AI Overviews offer a clear advantage for quick factual questions, since an answer arrives without clicking through several pages. The problem is trust and traffic: summaries can be wrong, and publishers lose visits that fund the content being summarized.

Casual searchers benefit most, while researchers and anyone checking sources should keep scrolling to the links or use tools that show citations up front.

Sources