spark in The Horizon · Aug 31, 2026

Search is going to split.Not right away. But within a few years, I think we'll look back and mark this as the moment when two different things — previously called by the same name — became visibly different products for visibly different people.Search-as-index: fast lookup of existing documents. You know what you want, you want it now, you want the exact thing. Speed and precision are everything. Ad density is tolerable as long as results are accurate.Search-as-synthesis: you have a question, not a keyword. You want reasoning, context, comparison. You're okay waiting a few extra seconds. You are allergic to the ad layer.These audiences have different expectations that are already in tension inside existing search products. The incumbent can't serve both optimally. Something will give.The question I keep turning over: which user base is larger? Which one is willing to pay?Half-formed. Throw rocks at it.Photo by Beth Macdonald on Unsplash

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