Google has announced a huge change to its Search function, which might mean the death of countless websites — including the Doctor Who Companion. And yes, that’s why this is being featured on a site about Doctor Who: without your support, a great deal of the independent internet will fall.
At a conference on Tuesday 19th May 2026, Google unveiled its AI-powered “intelligent search box”, which will change how users who frequent Google will interact with websites — namely, it appears, that they largely won’t.
Instead of giving you a list of links, Google Search will begin to show users “AI-powered interactive experiences”, including “‘information agents’ to gather information on a user’s behalf, along with tools that let users build personalized mini apps tailored to their needs” (via TechCrunch).
This effectively moves the online experience to be largely interacting with an AI summary of information, cultivated from many established sites, instead of with humans and writers themselves.
So you won’t click on links; what you want to know will be presented to you in a query box. These AI summations will be the result of information real humans will have written, either now or in the past, but you won’t have to visit websites themselves.
Frankly, it stinks. And it’s happening fast: it’ll be in place from early next week.
Why is it so bad? Putting aside a general disgust at using artificial intelligence, it will likely result in readerships plummeting. That results in people not getting employed. That results in a more limited range of opinion and information available online.
It goes to show what happens when one company dominates the market, with such a monopoly on web traffic. “Combined, these changes will likely further decimate Google referrals to publishers, which have already been suffering from declining referrals due to AI Overviews,” TechCrunch says. “This has put some ad-dependent media operations out of business, and now things will likely get worse.” The domino effect here is huge.
What can you do? How can you help support the DWC?
Firstly, we’re not getting rid of anyone here at the DWC. We don’t run at a profit anyway; we keep the website going because of you — because of all the fans reading this. Thank you for visiting. Nonetheless, there’s little point in continuing if we get 14 readers. At the end of the day, writers want their work to be read!
But you can help. You can keep visiting us and other website you love, bypassing Google.
And, of course, you can bypass Google itself! Use another search engine! DuckDuckGo, for instance, is Chrome-based, so will look similar, but gives you the option to turn off AI and further respects your privacy. There are loads of browsers and most have their own search engines.
Use whatever you like — just please don’t stop exploring the internet safely.
Aside from trying to save the DWC and other websites, it’s worth remembering what the internet was supposed to be for: freedom of information; this huge database of knowledge. We’ve risked losing that for years now.
The thing is, as much as I hate it, AI is being used. TechCrunch reports that AI Overviews are now used by more than 2.5 billion monthly users. That’s a crazy amount of folk. It also means we’re battling against the odds here. But it’s a battle worth fighting. At least, we think so. We hope you do too.
