ChatGPT is not the same as Google, at least not when used well. The biggest difference that most people miss when getting started is that, unlike traditional search, AI prompts are a conversation. You can follow up, improve, and refine the results that you receive. That has made Google very nervous, at least until recently.

We’ve all been increasingly shifting searches to AI services, but according to Google’s latest announcement, they’re bringing the full scope of AI search functionality to the Google search page.

It’s called AI Mode, and of course it’s powered by Gemini. To me, the greatest impact of this announcement is not about the Big Tech battle, but the way that the vast majority of internet users who are not yet comfortable with AI will be thrust into this new way of searching.

As of right now, we are still in the “early adopter” days of AI. It’s like when online music made the leap from Napster to streaming. You could find some music in multiple places, but you still needed to be a bit of a nerd to fully adopt it. Then along came Apple Music and Spotify, and a few short years later just about everyone had made the leap from CDs to streaming services.

I predict that a year from now we will wonder how anyone ever navigated the internet by entering simple search phrases, and choosing between a wall of 10 blue links.