The Decline of Search? Why Google is no Longer the Starting Point of the Internet

For decades, Google's search engine was the starting point for billions of daily online journeys, from banal questions to medical research. But those times are over: Google searches have been declining for over a year, while new AI-based search systems like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Perplexity AI are rapidly gaining importance. Google itself is fueling this trend by placing so-called "AI Overviews" at the top of its search results. These are compact, AI-generated summaries that prevent users from clicking on traditional links. As a result, traffic...