Following Google's announcement that it is discontinuing the “pay per stay” model for its metasearch products, the company announced a series of enhancements to its travel services.
The most important update introduces evolutions to Google's Search Generative Experience (SGE), which allows users to use GenAI to: Create comprehensive travel itineraries and travel proposals. Currently available only to English-speaking users in the United States who participate in the Search Labs program, this feature taps a wide range of Internet sources and incorporates reviews, photos, and additional data submitted by users in destinations around the world. is.
You can see SGE in action at this link (courtesy of TechCrunch).
Currently, this service does not support direct booking of services or experiences (due to DMA, there are similar limitations found in Google's travel-related products in Europe). However, once the itinerary is finalized, the user can export these plans to her Gmail, Docs, or Maps.
Although Google has not disclosed any specific intentions to implement this feature more broadly, this development highlights Google's research efforts to deploy AI technology in a variety of areas.
This scenario is discussed extensively in my new book, We Are the Glitch (available to pre-order here), where I delve into what I call the “post-search era.”
Similar to Netflix's strategy to provide highly personalized content and presentation recommendations, today's most successful companies are those that can fine-tune their content delivery, focusing on predictive accuracy and content generation rather than volume. . The shift towards a more personalized and proactive approach to content discovery is not limited to entertainment, but is increasingly evident in e-commerce and information search platforms (including travel).
Platforms like TikTok and Reddit are already leveraging deep learning algorithms and real-time data processing to deliver highly personalized user experiences, and are able to differentiate users' preferences from traditional search engines like Google, especially among younger demographics. has led to changes in This “search cube” or perhaps “anti-search” paradigm, where results find you rather than results finding you, signals a fundamental shift in the way we think about and use web interfaces.
Hypothetically, conversational tools like ChatGPT and Claude could become the primary, or even the only, interface for web access, leading to a dynamic direction centered around AI assistants leveraging a large number of APIs. It marks a pivotal shift in the digital ecosystem. Nodes of information aggregation and distribution, especially in areas such as tourism.
This theoretical future envisions the web being transformed from a collection of individual sites and apps into a single omniscient conversational platform. In some ways, this may be what Google is trying to do with his SGE.
As we move into this generative web, powered by sophisticated LLMs and driven by new AI search paradigms, traditional reliance on standalone websites and applications may become obsolete. Instead, they interact through a single conversational platform (or a combination of them), fundamentally transforming the architecture and interfaces of the World Wide Web and aligning digital interactions more closely with human cognitive and conversational models.
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