(Credit: Google)
Google is pretty excited about using AI to enhance the search experience. Its chatbot-like AI Mode, for example, has now topped 1 billion monthly users, it announced at Google I/O this week. Digital publishers worldwide are less enthusiastic, but that does not seem to be top of mind for Google. People are “searching more than ever before,” it says, which is probably why we’re about to get even more AI in search.
That includes “information agents” that will do the searching for you. They’ll work in the background 24-7 to “find exactly what you need at exactly the right moment," by perusing blogs, news sites, social media posts, and real-time data like finance and sports results to alert you to anything new with a specific query.
If it finds anything, you’ll get “an intelligent, synthesized update” that you can act on, Google says. It uses the example of someone who’s apartment hunting. They “brain dump” all their requirements, "and your agent will continuously scan for you, notifying you when listings meet your needs,” Google says.
For now, that kind of service will cost you: It’s rolling out first this summer for Google AI Pro and Ultra subscribers.
Google Search Box 2.0
For everyone else, Google is launching what it calls “the biggest upgrade to our Search box in over 25 years" within AI Mode.
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With its new Gemini 3.5 Flash model, search will be “more intuitive than ever, dynamically expanding to give you space to describe exactly what you need,” Google says. You can drop in text, images, files, video, or Chrome tabs for “AI-powered suggestions that go beyond autocomplete."
The news prompted serious concern from websites that rely on Google traffic to survive. AI systems like Gemini are pulling the information they present to web users from these sites, and few people click through to check the original source material. That results in plummeting search traffic and revenue. If those sites go under, where will Gemini (and Claude and ChatGPT) get its information?
Google argues that this overhaul applies only to AI Mode and that the familiar "blue links" are not going away. However, most Google searches these days include AI Overviews up top, followed by the option to quiz Gemini via AI Mode, and then the traditional blue links. Data from Pew Research last summer found that few people scrolled beyond AI Overviews. Only 8% clicked on a link in the search results, versus 15% among those who did not hit an AI Overview.
Speaking of AI Mode, Google is expanding Personal Intelligence to more people in nearly 200 countries and territories across 98 languages. The feature, which rolled out in the US in March, taps Google apps like Gmail and Photos to provide tailored responses to your queries in the Gemini app, AI Mode in Search, and the Gemini side panel in Chrome.