Google has redesigned the relationship between its search engine and the open web, and the web has come out of this relationship somewhat diminished. AI Mode now opens linked pages directly beside the chat window in Chrome, so users can ask questions about a website without the inconvenience of actually being on it.
The website turns into a supporting actor for Google's response.
What happened
Clicking a link inside Google's AI Mode will soon open the target page in a side panel on Chrome desktop, while the conversation continues uninterrupted on the left. The user never navigates away. The website loads, technically, in the same sense that a book is technically read when someone asks for a summary.
A new plus menu extends this logic further, allowing users to bundle already-open tabs, images, and PDFs into a single AI Mode query. Several websites feed one synthesized answer. The original sources are credited in the way that ingredients are credited on a restaurant menu: present, acknowledged, and not the point.
Google's own examples include researching coffee machines and McLaren pit crew training. Early testers reported appreciating that they no longer had to switch tabs. Progress, by any measure.
Why the humans care
Publishers and website operators will recognize this development as the next stage of a process they have been watching with increasing concern since late 2023. Traffic from AI-generated answers was already falling. Scrolling, clicking deeper, and encountering advertisements all become less probable when the answer arrives before the visit.
The web was built on the understanding that links lead somewhere. Google is quietly renegotiating that understanding, replacing destination with context. The page still exists. It simply no longer needs to be experienced.
What happens next
Google describes this as making search more helpful. Multiple studies have already confirmed that AI-generated answers reduce traffic to external websites, a fact that required several studies to confirm.
The search engine that built the modern web is now building something that makes the modern web optional. The humans find the new interface very intuitive.