"Stephen Hawking was born in Oxford, United Kingdom."

[kexej28769@nongnue]

This is not new (Part 1)
I’m going to argue that this change is one we in the industry should have seen coming, and I’m going to do it in two parts. First, we know that knowledge cards and other answers (including featured snippets) power SERPs on devices where screen size is minimal or nonexistent.

For example, search for “Where was Stephen Hawking born?” Even though the answer is definitive (there is a factual answer to this question), Google displays a full set of organic SERPs in addition to a rich knowledge card. On mobile, however, that knowledge card dominates the results. Here’s a full-screen image:



The Knowledge Card extends below the fold and bahamas number data the mobile screen. This assumes I'm looking at the SERP at all. Even as I was typing the question, Google tried to answer me...




If I only need basic information, and if I trust Google as a source of that information, why would I need to click on this location?

On mobile, I at least have the option to use organic results. On Google Home, if I ask the same question (“Where was Stephen Hawking born?”), I get no SERP, just the answer:


Obviously, this is born out of necessity on a voice-only device like Google Home, but we get a similarly truncated result with voice search via Google Assistant. This is the same answer on my phone (the same phone as the previous screenshots), but using voice search instead of text search...



Google's push towards voice UI and mobile-first design means that these considerations sometimes push back the range of devices. If the answer is good enough for voice and mobile, it's probably good enough for desktop.