Follow up to Google Search as you know it is over [please please stop using Google – I will beg no more…] – See also Tara Calishain – “As you might imagine I’m not thrilled with Google’s decision to go full-in on AI. Even if Google’s AI consistently worked well enough to ensure minimal misinformation exposure and maxmium public safety (I do not believe it does), I would have concerns about Google’s turn. First I do not believe this change is good for publishers and I think it will impact clickthrough rates to publisher detriment. (This is already happening.) Second, I worry the change of interface and reduction of search to a chatbot will narrow searcher horizons and make it more difficult to explore and learn. The friction of searching — the going through results, the evaluating sources, the aggregation of information — that’s where the learning happens. I do not believe prechewed AI pap will either nourish your mind or assist your learning. I believe you deserve easy paths to useful information in the same way you deserve clean food and water. That’s the line at the top of this blog and I mean it. It drives me crazy the limitless number (it seems to me) of search structures and ideas that Google and other search engines seem to be ignoring in favor of pursuing an expensive (on many fronts) technology that I do not believe will ever work with a high level of consistency in its current form. There’s little amount I can do to oppose Google’s decision directly because it is a $4+ trillion dollar company and I am an autistic old woman by myself. Still, I can make alternatives. I can express my ideas in tools that I share with you. I can at least try to hold space for the idea that there are ways to perform search and create search spaces that Silicon Valley does not offer, and maybe those ways are worth your time (they’re certainly worth mine.) Here are three search tools you might want to try in place of Google’s turn to AI. They are all free and ad-free…”