Today’s Big Story

The Future of Search

Experts say search as we know it ‘is officially over’

How do you search? When you need to know something … do you Google it? Ask Siri? Tap the TikTok app or look elsewhere? Your answer might have to do with your generation. Or on what device you’re using. After all, 2024 is the year that internet usage made a significant migration from desktops to mobile devices, with a third of Americans now accessing the web exclusively through smartphones.

According to Forbes, there’s a significant movement towards using social media platforms for more than just social interactions; platforms such as TikTok and Facebook Marketplace have become vital search and shopping tools. They also found that there’s been a decline of 25%, on average, in using Google for search between Generation Z and Generation X.

On The Vergecast podcast, the hosts explored how “Google is dying and Google is unstoppable … somehow, right now, it feels like both of those things are true.” That’s because 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. “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.”

CNET wonders how many of us already think of ChatGPT as a search engine—after all, you can type in queries similar to those you might put into Google or Bing. And Google does have its own AI chatbot, Gemini. The company started augmenting standard search results with what it calls ‘AI Overviews’, Gemini-powered summaries that show up above the standard set of blue links, back in May. AI Overviews returned some embarrassing results at first, but Google quickly regrouped and its search pages now regularly show AI Overviews.

But even Google’s CEO admits that search is always evolving and despite it being different today than what it was like fifteen years ago, it’s still about (and will always be about) surfacing information from the web. So maybe it’s not over, but rather just adapting to how we use the internet today.

Negotiators Meet to Revive Cease-Fire Talks

Rocket strike puts Israel and Hezbollah on brink of all-out war

Senior officials from Israel, Egypt, Qatar and the United States met in Rome on Sunday to continue negotiations over a cease-fire in Gaza. The talks came as tensions mounted in the region amid growing violence along the border between Israel and Lebanon.

U.S. officials confirmed to CBS News that they’d been in “continuous discussions” with Israel and Lebanon after Israel and the U.S. blamed Hezbollah for a rocket attack a day earlier on a Golan Heights soccer field that killed at least 12 children and teens, sparking fears of a broader conflict in the region. Hezbollah has denied responsibility, but Israel's military confirmed it had retaliated with airstrikes against Hezbollah targets “deep inside Lebanese territory.”

According to the BBC, cross-border fire between Israel and Lebanon has grown steadily since October 8, when Hezbollah fired rockets and shells at Israeli sites in solidarity with the Hamas attack on Israel a day earlier. Both groups call for the destruction of the Israeli state. The tit-for-tat strikes since October have killed more than 450 people in Lebanon–around 100 of them civilians–while Israel says 23 civilians and 17 soldiers have been killed. The skirmishes had been relatively contained, suggesting both sides were aiming to avoid a head-on confrontation … at least, for now. U.S. and Israeli officials agree that an all out war between Israel and Hezbollah would cause huge destruction on both sides and could lead to a regional war.

The Olympics Gets Underway

Highlights from the first 48 hours of competition

Did you catch the Olympic opening ceremony on Friday? Did you hear about the controversy? The unconventional river-based show certainly got people’s attention: The event drew nearly 29 million viewers in the U.S., making it the highest viewership since the 2012 Games. Or are you just interested in the sporting events? I, personally, tend to discover and embrace a new sport each Olympic cycle and it appears that Judo will be that sport for 2024. I watched Japan’s Abe Hifumi win the gold medal in the men's 66-kilogram match last night—his second after winning gold in the same event at the Tokyo Games in 2021.

Simone Biles was feeling some pain during her long-awaited return to Olympic gymnastics—but it wasn’t going to stop her. She powered through her routine to ace each apparatus and register the top all-around score of 59.566, with a row of A-list celebrities watching on. Team USA finished on top of the women’s gymnastics qualifying scores, putting them in a confident position ahead of Tuesday’s medal round.

Speaking of strong teams, LeBron James, Kevin Durant and Anthony Edwards led the “Re-Dream team” to an emphatic win over NBA MVP Nikola Jokić and Serbia. James, Durant and Jrue Holiday showed this U.S. team still runs through its veterans, but the 22-year-old Edwards made his presence known—on the court, and with sideline antics—in his Olympics debut. Oh, and if you’re wondering what’s in those little boxes being given to the medal-winners, I found the answer.

Signs of Life?

NASA’s Perseverance rover may have just found what it was looking for on Mars

NASA has used a number of eyebrow-raising words to describe their new Martian find: “fascinating” and “intriguing” and “mind-bending”. The space agency's Perseverance rover recently drilled into a Mars rock, where the six-wheeled robot had detected organic molecules (AKA the “building blocks of life” as we know it). The robot collected a sample, and inside scientists spotted a telltale composition that suggests the potential of ancient microbial life.

CNN reports that the research is still preliminary, and NASA scientists haven’t yet confirmed how the rock was created, which would require studying it on Earth. But the arrowhead-shaped specimen could help the Perseverance team unlock whether Mars was once, in fact, a planet hospitable to life.

The speckled rocks look familiar, even though they’re unlike anything found during the mission so far. “These spots are a big surprise,” David Flannery, an astrobiologist at the Queensland University of Technology and member of the Perseverance science team, said in a statement. “On Earth, these types of features in rocks are often associated with the fossilized record of microbes living in the subsurface.”

Worth a Listen

Hysterical Podcast

In the fall of 2011, a high-school girl in upstate New York started to display motor tics initially resembling Tourette’s syndrome, with facial ticks, verbal outbursts and muscle spasms. Then another girl the school began to display the same behavior. After the second, another and another. What is causing their sudden, often violent symptoms? Is there something in the water or inside the school? Or is it “all in their head?” This docuseries revisits the bizarre medical mystery more than a decade later.

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