Google Changes Its Search Box for the First Time in 25 Years (nytimes.com)
- Reference: 0183290547
- News link: https://search.slashdot.org/story/26/05/19/1947215/google-changes-its-search-box-for-the-first-time-in-25-years
- Source link: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/19/business/google-seach-bar-ai-gemini.html
> The company will also offer digital assistants, known as agents, to automate searches so that someone who may be apartment hunting can be notified of a new listing without opening a real estate site like Zillow. The search features will be powered by a new artificial intelligence model, [3]Gemini 3.5 Flash . Google said the model had improved on creating software code and performing autonomous tasks, worked faster and was less expensive to run than comparable models.
>
> [...] Google is also bringing one of A.I.'s biggest breakthroughs -- software coding -- to search. When people research complex topics like astrophysics, Gemini can build interactive graphics and simulations behind the scenes to provide a deeper answer than its previous listing of websites. Google said it was introducing an alternative to the agents powered by Anthropic's Claude Code and OpenAI's Codex. Called Gemini Spark, the service is embedded in Gmail, Docs and other Google products, where it can turn meeting notes spread across emails and chats into a single document. It can also read and draft emails.
"The open web is on its way out," says Richard Kramer, a financial analyst with Arete Research. "With A.I., Google is reducing everyone to raw data providers."
[1] https://blog.google/products-and-platforms/products/search/search-io-2026/
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/19/business/google-seach-bar-ai-gemini.html
[3] https://blog.google/innovation-and-ai/models-and-research/gemini-models/gemini-3-5/
Search box is now the Slop Box (Score:5, Informative)
They keep calling it a "Search box" in the reporting. I think it is now the "Slop Box".
Re: Search box is now the Slop Box (Score:3)
slop box time to feed the pigs
I managed to disable the AI (Score:3)
by altering my search query with some options, but if this new slop requires me to use AI, I'll just not use goo anymore. I already have duck duck as my default. I found before goo was generating just flat out lies in some of the AI summaries, hence the disable. I prefer to review the raw search result and go to the source for the details.
Re: (Score:3)
I think you can bypass it by selecting the "Web" option under "More" after submitting your initial query. In any case, the more hoops they make people jump through to avoid getting gagged on their AI crap (like forcing the new "beta" graphs on Google Finance when not logged into Google or using Private browsing) the more reason to switch to something else, like DuckDuckGo or Startpage.
How to pump up your AI monies: (Score:5, Insightful)
Step 1: Add your AI to your popular search product.
Step 2: Take away the ability to search without using the AI.
Step 3: Tell all your investors "Look how much people are using our AI! They must love it!"
Re: (Score:2)
The ability to search Google without using LLM is still possible: [1]https://tenbluelinks.org/ [tenbluelinks.org]
[1] https://tenbluelinks.org/
Re: (Score:2)
Joe Sixpack isn't going to do follow instructions like that. And the Boomers will be more concerned using some site they've never heard of will cause their bank accounts to be hacked.
I think there is (was?) a switch you could add to the URL that would bypass the AI response in the results page. So you could set a Firefox Quick Search shortcut with that entered in the template URL. I set up Firefox with UBlock Origin on my mom's smartphone when she complained about all the ads. I believe she changed to using
Re: (Score:2)
I'm not Joe Sixpack, I don't care if he slops it up. The switch being added to the URL is what's in the link I provided. Did you not read it? Maybe you are Joe Sixpack.
Re: (Score:2)
> The switch being added to the URL is what's in the link I provided. Did you not read it? Maybe you are Joe Sixpack.
Ah, I was looking at the Firefox instructions.
> Firefox on Windows/MacOS
> 1. Visit TenBlueLinks.org (this page) in Firefox.
> 2. Right-click on the address bar and choose "Add Google Web".
> 3. Open the hamburger menu in the top right corner, choose "Settings -> Search".
> 4. In the "Default Search Engine" section choose "Google Web" from the drop-down menu.
> 5. Done!
> Firefox m
Income stream? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm told it real cost money to use in terms of power consumption etc which is usually restricted unless you subscribe for more tokens. So if they are going to waste resources for every search I do what's the game plan to cover the extra cost they are forcing on a routine search?
- More adverts?
- Warnings you are reaching you 80% search limits and link to pay for more searches?
- Something else I didn't want and didn't sign up for?
I see no good end game for this 'improvement'.
Re: Income stream? (Score:2)
Everything will just become a prompt to buy something from a sponsored link. "Therapist in my area" "here's your local options and have you tried 5 gum? It's the best chewing gum ever"
Re: (Score:2)
I think there is a bit more going on than that. Basically, everything in AI is an accelerated race to the bottom. DeepSeek scared a lot of people because the model's history is actually quite interesting.
DeepSeek was original an algo for a hedge fund, but the guy says he got a bit altruistic about it. However, when R1 hit it kind of shocked people because it used reinforced learning so well at such a reduced cost to train because you don't need these stupidly large datasets. They went on to do something eve
I'm kind of okay with it and use AI mode a lot (Score:4, Interesting)
Google search has been really poor for quite some time. Between SEO rubbish and just the general lack of context in conventional searches, at least half the time search fails to give me relevant results. Also conventional search lacks the ability to fine tune the search with added context. AI Mode may not succeed the first time, but I can add context to my search query, and steer the AI towards the relevant content (including telling it that it hallucinated). It works for me better than the old search. It's not perfect and can fall down spectacularly. For example you asked AI about configuring something specific on your WiFi router of a particular make and model, it assumes that any and all WiFi router information applies when it clearly does not.
TLDR: conventional search is dead and has been for a long time. AI search actually does work, at least for me.
Re: (Score:2)
Google killed its own search to promote its AI "search".
Re: (Score:2)
It's not "AI search", it'd be useful if it was. One genuinely legitimate use of LLMs would be to filter search results so that when, for example, I search for something like "Linux DAAP client" it doesn't give me a list of DAAP servers and pages on how to set up DAAP servers and so on because webpages that talk about setting up servers inevitably include the word "client" in them for obvious reasons.
What Google have been doing instead is more LLMsplaining. You ask it for help finding something and instead o
Re: I'm kind of okay with it and use AI mode a lot (Score:1)
I weep for you. You've got a hard, misinformed life ahead of you.
Re: I'm kind of okay with it and use AI mode a lo (Score:3)
That's my main concern. Especially when searching things so often you're looking for information you don't know about, to learn. It used to be the first link was all people read and more often than not it would be correct through people citing it on other websites. google ad revenue and SEO killed that and people (mostly) started to become more mistrusting and check out more than one link. Now we have pushed the links away and marketed an all knowing god at the top. This all knowing god uses the SEO spam to
The Open Web Will Never Be Out (Score:2)
There is still such a massive movement against AI, that there is no shred of hope for AI to take over the web; they don't even serve the same function. This is like suggesting that televising sporting events will kill venue ticket sales.
Hadn't noticed (Score:2)
I've been using startpage.com for so long now that Google changes go completely unnoticed.
A deeper answer (Score:2)
That's sometimes wrong but presented just as confidently as right. Don't worry though it'll tell you how smart and insightful you are for calling out its mistake that it totally should have caught.
How about PRECISE searches? (Score:2)
Advertslop is a severe problem.
No company lasts forever. (Score:4, Interesting)
Is this the beginning of the end of Google's dominance in online search?
All the big tech companies... (Score:3)
Google, Amazon, and Microsoft seem to be hell-bent on destroying their businesses, and AI is only a symptom. Ten years from now is going to look very different.
Re:All the big tech companies... (Score:5, Insightful)
> Are you a rsilvergun sock puppet or something? If you don't want AI search, just don't click on it.
It's getting damn near impossible to "just don't click on" AI; it's being stuck everywhere, whether we want it ot not. When I do a search, I want the search results, not a goddamn AI telling me what to think.
(Google searches keep getting worse. Now, likely as not, I get sites that don't contain your search term. Yes, even when I put the important terms in quotation marks.)
Re: (Score:1)
Are you a Google sock puppet or something? If someone doesn't want AI search, this article makes it clear they're going to have to use someone other than Google. And as the other search engines slavishly duplicate Google, that won't last long either.
Also Ol Olsoc, we know it's you. Please fuck off with the rsilvergun BS, it's pathetic. Deranged indeed. Your obsession with him makes me feel you need to go see a psychiatrist, and that's me being honest, not mean.
Re: (Score:2)
Their search engine has been steadily decreasing in usefulness ever since Google+, but for some reason their competitors just keep copying them.
I've been wondering for a while (and not come up with any solutions) if we could at least create a practical "self hosted" (quotes because obvs it'll be impractical to do that literally) search engine technology so we can start getting Google et al out of the equation if we don't want it, even if everyone else just slavishly uses the big corps systems. It doesn't ha
Re: (Score:1)
It's called a web crawler. Has AI really made us so dumb that we don't remember web crawlers anymore?
Re: No company lasts forever. (Score:2)
The stock market doesn't think so. Goog is up 128% YoY.