Google Changes Its Search Box for First Time in a Decade - r/technology

After 29 years, Google finally retired the plain search box for an AI-integrated conversational prompt — and r/technology noticed immediately. The thread pulled 64,000 upvotes, got crossposted to r/mildlyinfuriating for another 12,000, and produced a top comment ('I am not ready for this') that summed up the mood better than any analysis could. Nine thousand two hundred comments followed, most of them working through what the redesign — touching 8.5 billion daily searches — means for SEO, news publishers, and how people find anything on the web at all. It trended for 48 straight hours, an unusually long run for a product-design change.