Earlier this week, Google rolled out a completely new Search experience, foregrounding AI summaries and kicking the traditional “10 blue links” far down the page. But the sheer scale of Google Search means there are plenty of edge cases the company never seems to have considered — like what happens when you type the word “disregard”.
The New Search
The May redesign puts an AI-generated answer at the top of the page for most queries. For common questions, that is a reasonable trade: you get a direct answer, and the links follow below. But the design is only as good as the AI layer that generates the summary — and the generation is not always up to the job.
The Broken Query
Searching the word disregard returns a huge block of empty space where an answer should be. The Merriam-Webster link is still there, but you have to scroll past the dead zone to find it. For most users, that one AI reply is the only thing they see — and it serves no conceivable value to someone searching the definition of a word. It is simply a broken tool.
Bing Beats Google
- The empty-result bug drew criticism on X and Instagram
- A comparison test showed Bing returning useful results for the same query
- The TechCrunch author, a professional journalist for nearly 15 years, noted he could not recall a single prior time a Bing search result outshone the Google equivalent
What This Means
The ‘disregard’ case is a small reminder that moving AI to the front of a search engine at global scale trades one set of problems for another. Google’s redesign solved the old search UI — and introduced new failure modes that a single edge-case word can still expose.