For all its driverless cars, AI chips, and fitness trackers, Search is still Google’s most important product.
That’s why it’s a big deal any time Google makes a change to its search engine — especially if it’s the biggest update in a quarter century.
The company said on Tuesday that it is giving the traditional Search box an AI-infused upgrade, as it continues to form — and respond to — changing user habits.
While it’s still very much a box, Google is adding features to its default Search that were previously confined to its “AI Mode” tool, such as having it expand with longer queries, and adding the ability to upload files, videos, images, and even Chrome tabs to ask questions about.
Google said Search will still display a list of website links and AI summaries like before. The key difference is that its AI tools are being brought even closer to Search than ever.
Since last year, Google has been gradually rolling out and improving its AI Mode, which behaves more like its chatbot, Gemini, by letting users ask follow-up questions. Rather than simply responding to a question with a list of results, AI Mode provides more detailed responses written by AI and fewer direct links to websites.
The updated Search box will also provide AI-powered suggestions as users type, which Google says are more comprehensive than auto-correct.
“This is truly the biggest upgrade to our iconic search box since its debut over 25 years ago,” Liz Reid, Google’s VP of Search, said on a briefing with reporters on Monday. She said the new Search box will go live around the world on Tuesday.
The new search box is something of a response to how people have been using its various AI offerings. Google doesn’t want people to think too hard about which search mode they’re in, said Reid, who suggested that the choice of different search modes may be turning some people away from a more AI-driven experience.
“What we saw is that some users know that they want to go to AI mode, but for most users, they don’t actually want to have to think about ‘do they want more of a traditional page or an AI-forward search experience,'” she said.
Reid said there was also some “friction” from going from AI overviews — the AI-written summaries that appear at the top of regular search results — to AI mode. Now, Google will let you ask a follow-up question from within an AI Overview — which will then transition into a conversation in AI Mode.
As Reid put it, these changes mean that users “don’t have to think about where to go.”
Agent infusion
If the thought of manually searching with AI tools is still too exhausting, Google will also let users run agents that do it on their behalf.
It’s rolling out what it’s calling “information agents” that are designed to run in the background and continually scan website, social media posts, shopping outlets, and other sources.
For example, you could create an agent to search for a specific pair of shoes in your size. You can set the parameters, and the agent will come up with a plan and a list of the tools it needs to access to do the job. It will then track those changes and send you an alert once it finds them in stock.
It’s a move that’s likely to create more uncertainty for brands and publishers, who are already grappling with how AI is changing the way they are discovered, and in some cases seeing reduced organic traffic.
However, these new agents won’t roll out until the summer, Reid said.
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