The Evolution of Digital Search: From Blue Links to Delegated Decision-Making
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摘要
Digital search is undergoing a fundamental transformation from a human-driven process of discovery to an agent-mediated system of delegated decision-making. In an AI-native world, users articulate goals in natural language, agents interpret these intents, and outcomes are delivered as recommendations or executed decisions. This shift redefines search from a visible list of links to an embedded system component that governs information access, trust, incentives, and market structure. The paper identifies four structural shifts—ranked lists to delegated decisions, attention economy to preference economy, evaluating performance to verifying delegation, and retrospective study to prospective research design—and argues that the future of search will be determined by open, transparent, and competitive agentic systems that regulate how decisions are made and markets operate. Early experimental evidence from agent-mediated marketplaces and theoretical work suggest that small design choices in information access, option surface, and action execution have first-order effects on efficiency, competition, and welfare for both consumers and firms. The authors emphasize the need for agent-native infrastructure, auditable signals of quality, and governance mechanisms to sustain trust and competition over time [page::0]
