The internet is gradually shifting from a space for people to an infrastructure for digital agents. Media outlets are losing audiences, websites are losing their purpose, and knowledge is becoming an impersonal synthesis created by foreign algorithms. Why might "ten blue links" be the last symbol of the human web? Who benefits from the decline of search, and can the old cozy internet unexpectedly become a form of resistance? Let’s explore these questions with ForkLog.
Evolution of the Internet or User Degradation?
It's hard to ignore how rapidly the digital landscape is changing with the rise of artificial intelligence and the advent of Web 3.0. Not long ago, internet users primarily acted as authors and commentators. Now, some still linger on social media, occasionally asking, "Hello, is anyone seeing my posts? Please react if you do," or "Hey! Where did everyone go? Why is my feed filled only with bot-generated content?" The days of typing a few words into a search bar and spending hours sifting through links for something meaningful are long gone.
The new internet is killing our sense of adventure; we no longer feel like pioneers, explorers, detectives, or seekers of truth. We don’t spend hours at work sifting through and consuming gigabytes of information in hopes of stumbling upon something useful. People online are conversing with language models and receiving uniform, generic, and often poorly structured responses.
Ideologists and marketers have presented Web 3.0, metaverses, and AI as technologies that liberate humanity. Now, we find ourselves at a stage where users have already been transformed into clients. However, it seems the day is not far off when we will witness a truly post-human internet. Against this backdrop, a nostalgic question arises: could the new hero be someone who manages to build another internet—similar to what it was in the early 2000s?
It’s worth noting that this article touches on Web 3.0 and, to a lesser extent, Web3. Although these concepts represent different approaches, both aim to create a more advanced internet, offering their own solutions to the pressing issues of the modern web. Web3 focuses on returning control over data and digital identity to users through blockchain technology, while Web 3.0 aims to enhance the intelligence and efficiency of the internet by reusing and interlinking machine-readable data across the network.
R.I.P. Ten Blue Links
At the Google I/O 2026 conference, the company effectively indicated that search results will no longer simply be a catalog of links. In an official blog post, the tech giant stated that AI Mode has already become the most powerful search mode, surpassing 1 billion monthly users. Previously, Google search operated on the principle of "which pages fit the query," but now it interprets "what exactly the person wanted to know and how best to explain it."
"We are integrating advanced capabilities of our model into search through new AI features that allow users to engage agents simply by asking questions. We are also introducing a new AI-based intelligent search field, marking the most significant update in over 25 years," said Google Search Vice President Elizabeth Reid.
The global tech corporation has already made decisions for you and introduced the concept of search AI agents. The company’s release assures that "you will be able to easily create, customize, and manage multiple AI agents to tackle various tasks right within search." This sounds harmless until you realize that you might be under the control of invisible minions working on your behalf. However, the next paragraph of the release states:
"With information agents, you will always be informed about what matters most to you. Your agent will intelligently analyze everything available on the internet, including blogs, news sites, and social media posts, as well as our latest data, such as real-time information on finance, shopping, and sports, to track changes related to your specific inquiry."
This means you are already cut off from analysis. And the question arises: "Are you going to do my thinking for me?"
Now we have a "search engine with executive brains," where AI agents not only search for information but also formulate clarifying queries, gather results, rank them, and provide a ready answer or action. Users can ask questions in natural language, almost as if speaking to a person: using long phrases, context, clarifications, and follow-up questions. Unlike the previous mode of "keywords = list of links," this search attempts to maintain a dialogue, remember previous exchanges, and respond with coherent explanations rather than fragments. Yes, the machine is spoon-feeding us information.
This shift coincides with broader market dynamics: according to Ahrefs, the presence of AI Overviews is associated with a 34.5 percent drop in average CTR. Later analyses from Search Engine Land and Seer Interactive show that with AI-generated responses, organic click-through traffic can decline by tens of percent, and users are clicking less overall, even outside of these blocks.
In this context, Google’s search engine is clearly transforming from a navigational interface into a layer of interpretation and delegation. Media outlets were among the first to feel the impact of this process. Their role in interacting with platforms is changing: it’s no longer about making it into the results but becoming a source that the system uses to formulate answers. AI Mode poses significant risks for publishers, primarily the loss of traffic, brand dilution, and dependence on others’ interpretations of their content. When users receive ready-made answers within Google’s interface, they are less likely to click on original materials, meaning editorial teams lose visits, ad impressions, and the chance to retain readers on their platforms.
Now, Google fully decides which sources to show, how to summarize them, and in what format to provide answers, effectively turning media outlets into suppliers of raw material for someone else’s product. For journalism, this means a loss of control and influence.
Simultaneously, a network of digital commercial agents (agentic commerce) is forming. The open Agentic Commerce Protocol already describes how they will be able to make purchases, transfer payment tokens, and act on behalf of buyers.
The issue of radically changing search goes much deeper than SEO metrics and the fact that websites become useless if they don’t appear in results. When synthesis is done by a machine, the question of whose sources it is based on shifts from the technical to the political realm, especially when the decentralization of the internet has not occurred for various reasons.
Google, Buy Me a Hat
The balance of power among web users has genuinely changed over the past 30 years. Those who primarily used the web as a super-dump of various information sources are now sidelined; their chances of finding gems among tons of hyperlinks are virtually zero. The centralized Web 2.0 not only seized your data but also became a big motherly figure that lovingly says, "Eat what you’re given!"
Content creators have cluttered the internet with their creativity, invaluable opinions, advice, and simulated communication to the point where they no longer even read their own work. LiveJournal has died—so what, Twitter (now X) will die too. Everyone is saturated with social media, regularly going on digital detoxes and rehabs, and starting to read paper books again! These are the children of that very mother Web 2.0, who feel cheated but still cling to some semblance of agency, creating channels on Telegram but unable to share anything new or interesting because it has stopped being searchable.
Don’t mistake the above for cranky old-age complaints. It’s not the users who ruined the internet; bloggers are not to blame either. The internet has simply become too vast for human navigation. A real need for a system change has emerged.
And who are we becoming, potential clients of Web 3.0? Buyers. But not in a market where you also look and sniff before making a deal. The modern internet is cultivating the ideal client in us, who, instead of searching for products and making transactions independently, sets a goal, and the AI agent takes over the search, comparison, selection, and payment.
The user gives a text or voice command, for example: "Buy the cheapest plane tickets to Rome for the weekend, hotel no more than 100 euros per night, Wi-Fi is a must." The AI agent scans marketplaces, booking sites, and aggregators on its own. It either offers a ready option for approval or immediately places the order using the user’s linked payment information.
On the selling side, robots are also working hard. What is the human doing during this time? Do they have more time to engage in art, science, and philosophy? In a utopia—yes. In reality, without the ability or need to analyze, search, verify, and check, our species will quickly lose these skills. Additionally, the explanatory interface of new search engines inevitably reflects someone’s selection logic and thus imposes a certain worldview.
If Web 1.0 provided access to information, and Web 2.0 forced everyone to produce it, then Web 3.0 will free humans from the need to interact with it at all. What will writers, journalists, editors, researchers, and readers do in a system where the very principle of search has been "broken"?
It seems we need a counter-net—a different space where sources will still be more important than synthesized answers to questions, and verification, accuracy, accessibility, and diversity of information will remain more valuable than speed. In this context, the "old web" could become not just a nostalgic indulgence for the old-timers, not a regression to the past, but a model of resistance and a new competitive environment.
Simple, Link-Based, Comprehensible
In the early web, there was more fragmentation, and the total packaging of information into one answer was absent. Yes, this was less convenient for some. But the ability to conduct research independently, see sources, navigate through them, compare versions, acquire knowledge, and create something new is what made Web 1.0 cozy and inviting.
Is this a sufficient basis to consider, both culturally and ideologically, as well as economically, the creation of an alternative "new old internet"? Absolutely. Many have not only contemplated this but have also begun taking steps toward moving away from centralization, platforms, advertising, and bots.
The more actively digital agents act on our behalf, the more valuable the web designed specifically for human attention will become. In academic, legal, scientific, and analytical circles, the demand for verifiable, independent sources will grow as mass search continues to develop in the realm of AI-generated responses. This is yet another reason to foster what we have tentatively called the counter-net. We must do this better, avoiding the romanticization of the old internet. We need to recognize that a return to Web 1.0 cannot be literal, and it is unlikely to be desirable in its entirety.
A counterculture of life outside platforms and AI search already exists. It is currently represented by several movements: IndieWeb, Small Web, Cozy Web, and lesser-known but kindred spirits. While these initiatives do not yet represent a "new internet" in an infrastructural sense, they aim to return the web to a human scale: personal domains, small websites, direct links, manual navigation, and author control over their content. The existence of such initiatives confirms the demand for alternative web models and serves as an economic argument for their creation.
At the same time, a return to Web 1.0 is unlikely to become a mass scenario. Most users will always choose convenience, speed, and delegation. AI agents do indeed save time and relieve us from routine tasks. But that’s why the human internet could become a new form of "luxury"—a space free from algorithmic noise, endless recommendations, and automated content. Not the main big internet, but something akin to a digital sanctuary.