Your parenthetical really describes my experience with AI searches. 5+ years ago I could find most things within one or two quick searches, now it takes so many that of course I'm going to reach for AI because that's the only way to get back to my baseline efficiency.
For those who grew up in a time and place where you were able to wander without supervision, how far away were your friends? Follow up, how much traveling did you do on your own?
For me growing up in 2000's suburbia, the closest kids around my age that I knew of were about one mile and major road crossing away, but to get to a friend it could be a lot more. I think kids out in a group doesn't feel like a safety concern to most people even now, but if they have to travel 5+ miles solo just to meet up with one other person, that's where the issue might lie.
Learned that App Store does this too during a recent MFA rollout.
What really surprised me was that when instructed to install Google Authenticator, a significant portion of people (I'd estimate close to 50%) would search the exact name and then proceed to reach to install the sponsored top result with a completely different name until I stopped them.
Swype is absolutely fantastic when it works right. I also agree that it would greatly benefit from having a better algorithm behind it.
Given how accurate search suggestion algorithms are becoming, I find it surprising that keyboard suggestions are as bad as they are. If swype could have the same predictive abilities as search engines it would be a major boost in speed and comfort.
I didn't read the comments after trying it out yesterday so I was surprised by the change, but it definitely feels better to keep going.