How AI-generated responses threaten the fundamentals of the Web.
The Future of Web Searching: Are Search Engines Becoming Obsolete?
“You’re still using Google?” Suddenly, you’re relegated to the status of a cyber-boomer. Your mistake: not using ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, or another conversational agent for your online searches. The slightly condescending remark reveals a trend – more likely a revolution – with dizzying consequences for the future of the Web. Consider Perplexity’s arguments: this American AI search engine touts its ability to offer “comprehensive answers that synthesize information from multiple sources,” “eliminating the need to navigate numerous web pages to find what you’re looking for.” But if internet users no longer see the point in browsing the Web… what will become of it?
Invented by Tim Berners-Lee in 1989, the World Wide Web consists of linking documents together on the Internet, using hyperlinks. In a few years, it has become an immense web of millions of pages connected to each other, and has made the Internet a tool for the general public. Jean-François Groff was part of the team that laid the first stones of the Web alongside Tim Berners-Lee. “I remember the wonder I felt in 1995 at the arrival of AltaVista, one of the first search engines. I had the same reaction when Google arrived four years later, because it was much better. Today, the same thing is happening with AI-assisted search.”
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