If you’re in the US, you might see a new shaded section at the top of your Google Search results with a summary answering your inquiry, along with links for more information. That section, generated by Google’s generative AI technology, used to appear only if you’ve opted into the Search Generative Experience(SGE) in the Search Labs platform. Now, according to Search Engine Land, Google has started adding the experience on a “subset of queries, on a small percentage of search traffic in the US.” And that is why you could be getting Google’s experimental AI-generated section even if you haven’t switched it on.
Google Search was so good when it came out. Complete polar opposite to the cluttered and bloated Yahoo Search. Haven’t really using it for years now because the search results became worse and worse, especially when that rounded edge theme came along.
It is useless in searching for new info, I mostly use it for searching for things I already know/seen, but don’t want to bother with URLs or bookmarks.
Even then, I have to scroll to the middle of the page, to get to the actual results below all the sponsored crap.
No clutter, meant faster loading time, and that was important at the time. Nowadays, you can just type the search query to the address bar, but that wasn’t available back then. Initially, you didn’t even have one of those extra toolbars with a little search box, so loading the search page was the only way. If you do like 50 searches a day, those seconds spent on waiting the page to load really begin to add up.