Good morning. Google is turning its searches into half-baked AI summaries—more on that below, along with Ukraine’s missing citizens and swimmer Summer McIntosh’s path to Paris. But first:
 
 
 

 
 
JOSH EDELSON/The Globe and Mail
 
 
 
 

During closing arguments earlier this month at the landmark monopoly trial U.S. v Google, the search behemoth had a simple explanation for how it got so behemoth-y. It certainly wasn’t the $20 billion spent annually to keep Google the default search engine on every cell phone and computer you’ve ever encountered. Instead, the company sniffed, it commands 90 percent of the search-engine market because it’s so darn good.
 

And look: there’s a reason no one suggests you Altavista or Bing something. When Google launched in 1998, it had the immediate advantage of elegant design (those 10 blue links per page) and actual usefulness (an algorithm that ranked results based on how many other sites linked to them). It worked so well for so long that Google’s mission — nothing less than to “organize the world’s information” — sounded eminently reasonable. But lately, if you’ve gone looking for a recipe or a lawn mower or a mid-range hotel in Manhattan, you might have found yourself thinking that something has changed.
 
 

It can be tricky to find any sort of consensus on the internet, but many, many, many, many, many people agree: Google is not what it used to be. In order to locate a halfway decent result, you first have to scroll past a whackload of paid ads, sponsored results, tangentially related affiliate links and outright spam. Even the academics have started piling on. In one recent study, German researchers, seeking to answer the question “Is Google getting worse?,” agreed that “a torrent of low-quality content, especially for product search, keeps drowning any kind of useful information in search results.”
 

Some users — the younger ones — have abandoned Google in favour of TikTok. Other users — the tech-savvier ones — are shelling out to support ad-free alternatives. Of course, you don’t need to sweat the occasional quitter when 2 billion people use your product. But at its annual conference on Tuesday, the company rolled out a feature that seems to (at least tacitly) acknowledge that search is taking more and more work. So here’s its new proposition: let Google do the googling for you.
 
 

As of this week, when U.S. users search “how do you clean a fabric sofa,” they’ll be greeted with a chunk of AI-generated text right under the search bar, providing tips for spot cleaning with baking soda or picking the right vacuum hose. Want the best yoga studios within a walkable distance offering a good introductory discount? Or a three-day, veggie-forward meal plan that’ll reheat well in a microwave? Google’s new “AI Overviews” can whip up those answers for you — and by the end of the year, more than 1 billion of us around the world will have access to it. (This is, not for nothing, pretty scary for the people and publishers who still depend on search traffic; a Washington Post headline advised they “brace for carnage.”)
 

In the 13 years since Apple unveiled Siri on the iPhone 5, AI assistants have shifted from primarily saying things to us to increasingly doing stuff for us. Maybe it was inevitable that Google would want to take over googling, as well. But it’s too soon to know whether this technology will usher in another search revolution, especially since generative AI still has a tendency to flat-out make up facts. That’s annoying when it lies about a 20-percent-off hatha class; it’s downright dangerous when it suggests poisonous mushrooms are totally fine to eat. And that might make doing our own search legwork worth it for a while longer.
 

 
 
 
 
 
Olga Ivashchenko
 

The families of missing Ukrainians fight for any news of where their loved ones went. Read more here.
 

 
 
 
 

At home: After years of negotiations, Loblaw has signed a grocery code of conduct. (This will not make your butter cheaper.)
 

Abroad: When it comes to international opinion, Israel’s military campaign against Gaza has squandered nearly all of the goodwill the country had after the Oct. 7 attacks, Mark McKinnon writes.
 

On the page: A long New Yorker article raises serious questions about the guilt of a British nurse convicted of killing seven babies. Readers in the UK aren’t allowed to see it.
 

In the pool: Bolstered by a new and improved breastroke, Summer McIntosh smashes her own record in the 400-metre individual medley en route to the Paris Olympics.
 

 

Thanks for reading. You can reach me at morningupdate@globeandmail.com, and I’ll be back in your inbox tomorrow.