The internet you grew up with — search, click, read, piece it together — is being quietly rewired underneath you.
Google AI Overviews, Bing Copilot, Perplexity (an "answer engine" that cites its sources) — all serve up a generated summary above the old blue links, or instead of them entirely. You ask; it answers; you may never click through at all.
That one change ripples out:
- Publishers panic about traffic — if the answer's already on the results page, who clicks the website?
- Shoppers get a comparison without opening ten tabs.
- Learners risk swallowing a one-shot answer without ever checking where it came from.
- Businesses now fight to be cited inside the AI answer — a brand-new flavour of SEO (search-engine optimisation — the art of getting found online).
Browsers are joining in too, bolting on side panels: "ask about this page," "summarise this PDF." The everyday habit is sliding from navigating the web to interrogating it.
You don't have to become a developer to be affected. You'll consume this layer and work inside it either way. Understanding how it now behaves beats pretending it's still old-fashioned Google with a fresh coat of paint.
Continue — frontier vs open.