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Google Search used to feel like opening a door to the internet. There was a time when we could type something in the Search bar, hit enter and disappear down a rabbit hole of websites, forums and Reddit threads. We'd see random YouTube videos and blogs made by people who we truly wanted to know. The pure serendipity of the experience was fun and interesting. My sister actually met her husband that way. She Googled "Mr.Show" 20 years ago and stumbled upon her now husband's website about the sketch comedy show starring Bob Odenkirk and David Cross. I still love hearing them tell that story.Now, after Google’s latest AI search updates, the internet increasingly feels like something else entirely: one giant conversation happening inside a single AI response box.Google's AI-powered vision for Search
(Image credit: Google)At Google I/O 2026, Google doubled down on its AI-powered vision for Search with expanded AI Mode features, conversational follow-ups, synthesized answers and tools designed to keep users interacting with Google’s AI instead of bouncing between websites. The experience looks fairly smooth and easier to digest than the traditional wall of links.The more AI summarizes the web, the more the web itself risks losing its personality.Instead of opening 15 tabs to compare information yourself, Google increasingly does the comparison for you. Now, rather than hunting for the best answer, Google just generates one. In other words, the days of "surfing the web" are over.That's a shift I know I'm not ready for. But, I've been Googling long enough to know that Google Search has never been ideal. For years, people complained about results crowded with SEO spam, low-quality affiliate content, endless recipe backstories and websites clearly written more for algorithms than humans. And while AI search solves a lot of that, it's forced discovery and curiosity out of the picture almost entirely.A decade ago we weren’t consuming content at the rapid pace we do now, we were exploring spaces created by actual humans. Now AI increasingly compresses all of those voices into one unified response. The more AI summarizes the web, the more the web itself risks losing its personality. That’s where the “group chat” feeling starts creeping in.AI controls the conversation
