Somewhere out there, Jeeves is raising his teacup to the AI revolution. The tuxedoed internet butler of the late ’90s couldn’t really answer every question, but now? That’s the entry-level gig of generative-AI chatbots. Jeeves is smiling in retirement. Google’s starting to wonder about its job security. Over the past month, I quit Google Search. I set the search bars on my iPhone and laptop to OpenAI’s ChatGPT, and out popped clear, human-sounding answers to my questions. I’ve also tested Perplexity, Anthropic’s Claude and, yes, even Gemini—from Google, the original architect of the search hell we’ve been trapped in for years. As Google grew to capture 90% of global search, googling became an Olympic sport of dodging SEO sludge, sponsored links and clickbait. When I ask it how much the iPhone 16 Pro costs, I have to scroll past four sponsored links, a carousel with product ads showing monthly payment plans and a block of “People Also Ask” questions. With AI chatbots, it really is like having that personal search butler. ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot and Perplexity have real-time web access, generating responses with citations to external websites. Just last week, Anthropic’s Claude joined the club. And Google’s testing an AI Mode built into search.

Full opinion : Takeaways after using AI search exclusively for one month: AI search is more of a UX revamp than a replacement for Google’s blue links-based web search paradigm.