Honestly, no reason why we will have the same search experience as we do today in 5 years.

I expect search engines to be more like an AI assistant.

I don’t think Google can pull that off. Not because they don’t have the expertise for it (they do) but because their organisation is built around monetizing ads and an AI assistant might not work with it.

The past 5 years Google went downhill. If they lose the ability to search, users and ad revenue follow.

> I expect search engines to be more like an AI assistant.

> I don’t think Google can pull that off.

Does Google Assistant not count? Searching for things with the assistant is certainly one of its main features.

I'm thinking more like some of the demos I've seen of Adept AI, where you type in (or speak) a complex command and it does the job for you. Like telling the assistant to "find flights to New York between 15th and 18th December that are under $250".

Regardless, if the future of search is less a list of pages and more a set of focused, customized results, I can't see how Google will work in that context. Google, so far, has shown zero ability to monetize anything that can't be papered over with ads.

I think it will go the opposite way. Spend some time physically inside your local library.

All the search results are from experts, and have been proofread and stuff. None are ad-supported, and very few are paid-placement.

> I'm terrified at the thought of all this hollow, low-on-details content that's about to hit the internet.

Honestly it feels like "hollow, low-on-details content" hit the internet at least 5 years ago. Developments in indexing and searching have incentivized writing of low-quality content that makes it to the top of results, and here we are

What will it search for?

Already buulding one. Assuming content like this will be ad-supported (what is the other way to monetize it? nobody would pay to read it) Kagi is already successful at downranking sites with a lot of ads.