If you’re in the US, you might see a new shaded section at the top of your Google Search results with a summary answering your inquiry, along with links for more information. That section, generated by Google’s generative AI technology, used to appear only if you’ve opted into the Search Generative Experience(SGE) in the Search Labs platform. Now, according to Search Engine Land, Google has started adding the experience on a “subset of queries, on a small percentage of search traffic in the US.” And that is why you could be getting Google’s experimental AI-generated section even if you haven’t switched it on.
No clutter, meant faster loading time, and that was important at the time. Nowadays, you can just type the search query to the address bar, but that wasn’t available back then. Initially, you didn’t even have one of those extra toolbars with a little search box, so loading the search page was the only way. If you do like 50 searches a day, those seconds spent on waiting the page to load really begin to add up.