It was obvious Google would continue to push people to chatbots instead of search. Chatbots have a number of features that are really valuable to Google:
• They keep you using Google, rather than going somewhere else for information.
• They are much more persuasive at steering your opinions and behavior.
• They are much more addictive.
• They're great for siphoning up personal information about you, once you get addicted and start asking them for everything from recipes to medical advice.
If you disapprove of what Google is doing, here are some independent search engines and directories you can try:
• https://curlie.org — Yahoo-like human-edited directory.
• https://www.ecosia.org — German search engine that aims to be climate-neutral.
• https://www.mojeek.com — actually independent, doesn't use Bing as a back end, based in the UK.
• https://www.qwant.com — French metasearch engine.
• https://stract.com — independent open source search.
I assume everyone already knows about DuckDuckGo.
Please do not recommend Kagi. Here's the biggest reason why I will not use them:
https://kagifeedback.org/d/865-suicide-results-should-probably-have-a-dont-do-that-widget-like-google