When did Google get so weird?

In 2014, the Philadelphia 76ers drafted Dario Saric, who was playing professionally in Turkey. Fans joked that Dario Saric would never come to the USA to join the Sixers, creating a shibboleth among the fanbase. Recently, while searching for old jokes about Dario Saric, the writer typed "hes never coming over dario" into Google.

Instead of finding old tweets or Reddit posts, Google provided an AI overview. The AI, seemingly empathetic, assumed the writer was spurned by a man named Dario and offered to be a digital friend. The writer found this strange, questioning Google's role as a search engine and not a consolation provider. While acknowledging that AI chatbots might be acceptable in different interfaces like Gemini, the writer is shocked that this behavior has become the norm for search engines.