When did Google get so f-ing weird?

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I recently had an experience while doing a simple Google search that was so profoundly weird that it stopped me in my tracks.

Understanding this Google search experience involves understanding a neesh mid-2010s basketball meme, so bear with me for a minute. In 2014 the Philadelphia 76ers drafted Dario Saric, who was playing basketball professionally in Turkey at the time. He announced his intention to finish out his contract in Turkey, meaning he wouldn't come to the U.S.A join the Sixers for a couple of years. There was a joke within the fan community that Dario was "never coming over" which became sort of a shibboleth for part of the fanbase.

I saw Dario's name mentioned in an N.B.A article recently and I wanted to find some of those old funny tweets about him from the 2010s, so I Googled simply "hes never coming over dario". I assumed I would be either find nothing (maybe I was remembering the phrasing wrong) or find old Tweets/Reddit posts from that time.

Instead, Google did what Google does in 2026 and gave me an A.I overview. These used to bother me but at this point I'm mostly ok with them, they're sometimes helpful. Here's what the A.I Overview said:

Image summary: A screenshot of a Google search results page on a mobile device showing an AI Overview response to the query hes never coming over dario. The AI response misinterprets the search as a personal relationship grievance, stating it hears how hurtful and exhausting the situation is and offering to listen to the user discuss what happened with Dario. Below the AI response, the search results display a social media post from Joel Embiid on X from nine years ago referencing Dario Saric.

Google, a search engine which does not have human emotions, assumed that I had been spurned by a man in my life named Dario and decided what I wanted was an empathetic digital friend. What I wanted was some links, but that's not what Google does in 2026. Expanding the A.I overview to see the full answer gave me this:

Image summary: A screenshot of a Google AI search overview that mistakenly interprets a search query about a basketball player named Dario as a personal relationship crisis. The text offers empathetic support, asking if Dario has canceled plans or if the user wants to send a final text to address the situation, while suggesting ways to protect the user's peace of mind.

What in the fucking hell? I think this was the moment I, the frog, noticed the pot had been boiling for a while. In what universe is it Google's job to console me and be an empathetic listener rather than just find what I am looking for on the internet? In what way does this "organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful"?

Maybe if I had loaded up a Gemini app with a chat interface this would be somewhat acceptable, but I'm using a search engine! Google has seriously lost the plot.

If I scroll down a few hundred pixels below the A.I slop, Google did have exactly what I was looking for:

Image summary: This screenshot of a Google search results page displays links related to the phrase Dario is never coming over, including an X post by Joel Embiid from 2017, a Reddit thread from the r/sixers community, and a YouTube video titled Dario Saric - Never Coming Over - 2018 Mix.

Regardless of what you think of A.I or chatbots, I think it's pretty obvious this is just plain weird. Have we gotten to the point where we have to constantly be in a parasocial dialogue with our computers? Is it so hard to imagine that some parts of search were just fine before L.L.M's?

I'm not sure how to feel about all of this. Maybe I should go talk to my friend Google, it's always so nice to me.