I've been in marketing for the last ten years, a couple of which were spent developing content strategies to increase clients' organic visibility.
While I see the challenges this could introduce for small businesses and indie brands, as a daily user of search engines I’m intrigued by the promise of more "helpful" search results.
There’s a tendency to focus on the algorithm side of SEM. (e.g. “How can we leverage what we know about search engines to outrank our competitors?”) But it’s ultimately the users — or, more specifically, their impressions and engagement — that determine where a company falls in SERPs. So even though this will mean more work for some marketing teams, I think it’s the right move for end users… which also includes marketers.