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Search engines are going through a metamorphosis. If Marc Andreessen is right, it won’t be long before the search engines as we know would give way to conversational chatbots. Sure, the AI may throw users a few blue links that they can cite if they are trying to write something, but they will be forced back to conversing with the AI.

The idea isn’t new — it has always been there, especially for Google. In 1998, when Larry Page and Sergey Brin launched Google, they had a futuristic vision to make the search engine AI-powerful. In April 2002, the search engine launched Google Answers, a service wherein Google staffers would answer questions received via email for a flat fee of $3. The service was, however, shut down within 24 hours due to unanticipated excessive demand.

In the 24-hour window, the search engine realised the potential of the service but also acknowledged the challenge — it wasn’t humanly possible to manually answer each question by the company. They needed an AI-based solution. The same year, during a question-and-answer session at Stanford University, Page said that Google would fulfil its mission only when its search engine was "AI-complete.... You guys know what that means? That's artificial intelligence”.