We already did this experiment in the 90s, it sucked. The only reason the outcome would be different this time is because there's no viable Google competitor that can swoop in and rescue users from this garbage.
I don't see it as a law of nature that "Google" has to have a plain search field forever. The world around it changes.
Back in the 90s Google proved you could make "all" available better via search than the Yahoo catalog a d thus became the landing page.
Nowadays the pure search bar is integrated into the browsers addressbar and Google as starting page has been replaced with Twitter/X, Reddit, news sites, .. and Google has to find something to become the start page again.
