The Google era is officially over

Google is dying. Google is unstoppable. Somehow, right now, it feels like both of those things are true. For the first time in more than a decade, there appear to be products that might actually threaten Google Search as the centerpiece of the web — including OpenAI’s new SearchGPT. And yet Google Search continues to dominate the market and make truly unfathomable amounts of money.

On this episode of The Vergecast, we discuss the launch of SearchGPT, Google’s latest earnings, and the increasingly brazen ways AI companies are scraping the web for their own purposes. Who will win the future of search is anyone’s guess, but one thing’s for sure: the way the web used to work doesn’t work anymore. We need new rules, new norms, and new ideas about how the internet ought to be.

After that, we talk through yet another big week of gadget news, including the revelation that Amazon’s Alexa project is a money pit of epic proportions. We also talk about our reviews of the Samsung Galaxy Ring and Z Fold 6 and the Asus ROG Ally X.

Finally, in the lightning round, we talk about Apple Maps on the web, the NBA on Prime Video, and the increasing lengths to which you have to go to stream in 4K. The future is ads, apparently — and slightly blurry ones at that.

If you want to know more about everything we discuss in this episode, here are some links to get you started, beginning with the future of search:

And on the gadgets and reviews of the week:

And in the lightning round: