A limited audience can already get started with the renewed Google search engine, which now answers your answers directly in the search results.

Google announced that Search for “Generative Experience”., an overhauled search engine with generative AI to better answer your questions. The main difference to the usual search engine is that the new version no longer just lists links, but answers your question directly with references to external links. This takes the form of a dialog window in which you can ask any follow-up questions, just like with Microsoft Bing.

waiting list

Following the announcement, Google is now also opening the waiting list for this new search experience. Interested parties can register via the Search Labs. To do this, you need to log into Chrome (desktop) with your Google account and open a new tab. The Labs icon will then appear in the upper right corner of the window.

Unfortunately, this kite only applies if you live in the United States. It’s still unclear when Google will bring the Search Generative Experience to our region. Google doesn’t seem too keen on quickly rolling out new features to Europeans lately. For example, Bard, ChatGPT’s challenger, is completely ignoring the European Union for now.

From question to answer

When ChatGPT launched in late 2022, it was quickly predicted that generative AI would completely change the way we search for information. The launch of Bing Chat in February reinforced this, and now that even the largest search engine is succumbing to generative AI, the prediction appears to have come true very quickly. Google is evolving from a search engine to an answering machine.

It remains to be seen what this development will mean for online content platforms in the long term. Google is an important source of traffic for countless websites. When the search engine starts to answer users’ questions themselves, the motivation to continue clicking on a link decreases.