At the annual I/O conference, Google announced it would overhaul search as we know it.

Our current experience will be ultimately replaced with an intelligent, dynamically expanding search box, 24/7 AI-powered information agents, and interactive "Generative UI" that builds mini-apps and custom widgets directly on your results page.

Now, we're all left to wonder...

If AI agents become the primary interface to knowledge, what happens to the humans and businesses that knowledge originally came from? What does it mean for the internet to quietly transition from an open ecosystem of destinations into a closed ecosystem of gate-kept answers?

Are we speeding toward a future where people stop visiting the web directly? If that behavior ends, we ever be able to rebuild it?