AI and the Transformation of Web Search (2024–2030)
Google introduced the Search Generative Experience (SGE) in 2023–2024, using the Gemini AI model to produce top-of-page AI overviews with citations. After limited trials, Google rolled out AI overviews to all U.S. users in 2024 and aims to reach over a billion people by year’s end, with ads remaining separate and publisher traffic preserved. Gemini’s multimodal abilities enable searches by image or video, including experiments where a user can upload a video clip and the AI analyzes it to troubleshoot a device. Microsoft launched Bing with a GPT-4-powered chat in early 2023, integrated via the Prometheus framework to use the