Agreed that what the product is exactly doesn't matter too much. It's kind of inevitable at this point that search is going to go in the direction of a chatbot.

Agreed that what the product is exactly doesn't matter too much. It's kind of inevitable at this point that search is going to go in the direction of a chatbot. Ask jeeves back in the day already knew that what people really want is a question answered. Google search and its competitors were a well-lived offramp on that road. Ultimately free-form interaction is just more intuitive. But with that said, I also am not so quick to call the death of SEM ads. Just because chatbots exist doesn't mean people don't want to visit other websites. Display ads will continue to be a thing. Similarly, there's no reason chatbots can't now direct you to sites or advertise products as part of their responses. Heck, this is a much more sinister form of marketing with astronomically higher click rate since a chatbot is responding authoritatively with a recommendation. Yes, google is going to have to pivot... but this is a problem they're very well suited to solving and they have a very strong incumbent advantage in the meantime.