He’s part of the accelerationist crowd - interesting to see that his hype fuelled posts are pretty tame now.

Months ago he was blabbering on about AGI and peddling the marketing Sam et al want people to fall for.

And indeed - yes we have a new interface? So what. The search cost wasn’t that high - the cost with immense magnitude is reading, absorbing the information and then acting on it.

Also this bozo fails to realise once we are on this path, we go down the path to a hyper centralised internet with an inevitable blocking of vpns.

Much easier, not sure how this is even a question. Asking Google (if you're not just reading its own AI overview) requires reading through sources which may be better or more poorly written and more or less reliable. Those of us recreationally sitting here on a text-based platform with links to dense articles are atypical; most people don't enjoy and aren't particularly good at reading a bunch of stuff. If you ask AI you just get a clear, concrete answer.

Well it would appear a lot easier given how people are reacting right now

As the OP indicated all of this information has always been accessible if you had the energy to go hunt it down