AI chatbots(or equivalent AI answering machines) vs Search Engines
Search has 2 kinds of users.
1 trawls through multiple pages of results to find what they are looking for. This is you and me but we are in minority.
2 clicks on the first link(or sometimes 2nd) and that's the end of that particular search. The majority.
2nd will decide the winners
Academics, being the 1st kind are the reasons for arguments like those in the article. They are not wrong but to the majority, it won't matter.
And I am willing to guess the Code Red at Google is about the 2nd type of users. They are the bread and butter.
For most of the world, not using add blockers, those first and second (and third??) links are ads, so those users are not just providing the majority of clicks, they're providing virtually all of the clicks that make money.
I was thinking the same thing earlier today! It seems to be becoming a cliche.
Ironically, Wigner's article which kicked the trope off was also unreasonably well-received, considering that its subject (mathematics in the natural sciences) is effective for good reasons -- there is nothing "unreasonable" about it.
