When did search change our lives? It was a gradual thing, wasn’t it? The Google search engine saw the light of day in 1998. Today, we use search in one form or another, not just to surface information, but to find out where we are on a map, to do our shopping, to book our flights and hotels — in many ways, just to run our lives.
So it’s a big deal when search changes in fundamental ways. We’re already familiar with the way Google’s search engine now uses generative AI to respond to many of our search queries, causing brands and publishers to worry whether their links, pushed further down the page, will be increasingly ignored.
Many search engines have challenged Google’s dominance with no success. There are rumors now that ChatGPT is about to step into the ring with a search feature that could be Google’s strongest challenger yet. How will that affect all of us? We’ll have to wait and see.
Kim Davis
Editor at large
