Some key observations here on search and #agenicweb:
“Because it was always happening. It was never going to not happen. Does Google owe them the traffic? I don’t know. But they did change the terms of the deal. They did weather the storm of introducing AI overviews and then AI mode…And their position is, yeah, we’ll send some traffic to you. And it’s the last step when people want to buy the shoes.
That’s the traffic you’re going to get. And you have to be happy with that. And then for us, people who use Google, the step to, oh, this is an agent.
Now, I’m not using the web. Google is going to use the web for me. And I’m going to just use this interface…
That is the next version of an interface. It’s the next version of an interactive assistant that everyone’s been talking about for years and years and Google is poised to do it. And then it’s also like, oh, but this is going to change how I get information….You aren’t doing searches any more, Google is doing searches….
Google is upending the soft economic agreements of the entire Internet by just doing stuff for people now, and finding ways to do that stuff even if there’s not some formal API to do it, right?
…All of that has just massive implications for how we use computers, how all those companies make money. I think Google, they’ve done so much fighting about search traffic and Google Zero that they’re just like, screw it, we’re doing it. This is so obviously the future.”
From The Vergecast: The post-search Google era begins, May 22, 2026