Introduction: From Sci-Fi to Reality
In Star Trek: The Next Generation, Captain Picard commands:
PICARD: Computer, activate auto-destruct sequence! COMPUTER: Auto-destruct will engage in 30 seconds.
Back then, talking to a computer in natural language, expecting understanding and action, was pure science fiction. Computers were dumb terminals, reliant on structured input, commands, and keywords.
Today, that vision has become reality.
AI models like ChatGPT have transformed our interaction with technology from searching to conversing. This raises a fundamental question:
Will Google and Bing, built for relevance-based search, lose their significance in an AI-driven world where conversation is king?
Why relevance was their strength
Traditional search engines operate on the principle of relevance.
They index billions of pages and rank them by relevance signals. Entire industries – SEO, SEM – are built to optimise content for these signals. They believe users want the most relevant links to their queries.
AI doesn’t care about relevance – it cares about knowledge
Here lies the fundamental disruption.
AI models like ChatGPT don’t rank results; they synthesise knowledge into direct, conversational answers. They are trained on vast datasets to understand language patterns, context, and nuance rather than index links. They provide a worldview and explanation, not just search fragments.
People don’t care about relevance either – they care about answers
For years, Google and Bing operated under the assumption that users want the best link to answer their query.
But today’s reality is different.
Users want answers, clarity, and understanding. They want to ask follow-ups, probe deeper, and switch directions without retyping and losing context with new searches. They value the feeling of being heard and guided, not just directed to websites.
Why AI feels more human
AI is not just a tool. It is a companion for knowledge discovery.
People feel that having a conversation about an issue is more important than clicking through fragmented pages. AI offers synthesis and interpretation, while search engines offer links and choices.
The structural danger for Google and Bing
The threat isn’t just about AI competition – it’s about infrastructure misalignment.
Google and Bing’s entire backend is designed for link indexing and relevance-based ranking. Content creators optimise for SEO structures – headings, metadata, snippets – not coherent AI-readable knowledge chunks. Rebuilding from a relevance-based architecture to a knowledge-first AI platform requires fundamental redesign, not just upgrades.
My opinion: fading into obscurity is possible
Unless Google and Bing can:
Abandon their fragmented link delivery systems. Rebuild as knowledge-first, AI-native platforms. Rethink their monetisation away from ads tied to page views.
They risk becoming irrelevant to users who simply want to ask and understand, not search and filter.
The sci-fi reality has arrived
Science fiction imagined talking computers as companions and command executors. AI has turned that vision into reality. Search engines, built to serve keywords not conversations, risk becoming relics in a world where people expect to talk to knowledge, not search for it.
The new reality insight
“AI doesn’t care about relevance; it cares about knowledge. People don’t care about relevance either – they care about getting the answers they seek, and they feel heard when AI chats with them about it.”
Final reflection
The future isn’t about whether AI will replace search. It’s about whether search can transform from relevance to knowledge fast enough to avoid fading into digital history.
References
Google’s AI-powered search experience Microsoft’s Bing AI integration with ChatGPT
The Verge: Google’s AI search ambitions Stanford HAI: ChatGPT vs Google Search
