With the introduction of AI-powered search results, the human-generated web is taking a back seat, writes Casey Newton. Google plans to answer more questions directly on the search results page and, according to Newton, is abstracting the web into input for its big language models. The new concept of “let Google do the Googling for you” suggests that surfing the web is seen as a chore better handled by bots. For publishers who rely on traffic from Google, this could mean massive losses. While Google insists that AI-powered search results will increase overall usage, it remains to be seen how this development will affect the web and publishers in the long run.