Google, which is known worldwide as a leader of search engines, is also known notoriously for killing its products.
Farewell, Forever Scroll
As a matter of fact, there is a de facto standalone website dedicated to tracking every product and service killed by the tech giant.
The latest feature in the list of discontinued is the continuous scroll in search results, just two years after it was introduced. As per the report, it has been announced that infinite scrolling shall soon be stopped from the Search results when it comes to mobile as well as desktop platforms.
It was firstly in the 2021 that Google introduced continuous search results on mobile in 2021 and it made its way to the desktop platform a year later.
As per a Search Engine Land report, the Mountain View-based tech giant is rolling back the feature and will prioritise a search-by-page-number format instead.
As per a Google Spokesperson, the feature shall be discontinued for the desktop platforms have already started, while it will be rolled back on mobile devices “in the coming months”.
Instead of continuous search, the desktop users will reportedly now see page numbers followed by a Next option below the Goooooooooogle logo.
When it comes to mobiles, a More results option is speculated to be introduced that will load the next search results page. As per the report, users would need to turn to the next page after every 10 search results or so.
So why did Google decide to remove this feature?
As per the giant, the same has been done in the light of revelation that fetching search results automatically didn’t result in higher satisfaction with the search engine.
The company added that “This change is to allow the search company to serve the search results faster on more searches, instead of automatically loading results that users haven’t explicitly requested”.
Google’s AI Search Feature Stumbles with False Information
Google is also making headlines, not more right reasons though. The company introduced several artificial intelligence (AI) features on its platform, promising quicker and better search results.
All was good until, one of highlighted features, known as AI Overviews started giving out false and somewhat bizarre information, out of which, some were based on dubious search results.
While Google claimed that AI Overviews only displayed information “backed up by top web results”, the search tool’s error was attributed to it facing troubles while filtering out satirical and nonsensical content. The feature has since been scaled down by a large extent, and a report suggests it is showing up for just 15 percent of search queries.
