This week, Microsoft and Google promised that web search is going to change. Yes, Microsoft did it in a louder voice while jumping up and down and saying “look at me, look at me,” but both companies now seem committed to using AI to scrape the web, distill what it finds, and generate answers to users’ questions directly — just like ChatGPT.
Microsoft calls its efforts “the new Bing” and is building related capabilities into its Edge browser. Google’s is called project Bard, and…