Google is turning Search into a fully AI-infused experience.
On Tuesday, the tech giant announced an AI makeover of its most popular function.
“Now, we’re entering the next chapter of Google Search, where incredible AI features aren’t just in Search; Google Search is AI Search through and through,” Elizabeth Reid, who leads Search at Google, said at the company’s annual I/O conference. “We’re entering the era of search agents now.”
Some of the most front-facing changes are hitting the Search box. Powered by the company’s latest Gemini model, the new AI-infused search box will allow users to put images, files, videos, or even Chrome tabs as input. If you still opt to search via text, the Search box will go beyond the regular auto-complete to use AI-powered suggestions for your queries.
The results page will still look relatively the same, at least if you search via text, but now, if you ask the AI Overview feature any follow-up questions, you will get redirected to AI Mode. Using Google’s Personal Intelligence feature, the new AI-embedded Search will also be able to access apps throughout Google’s portfolio, like Gmail or Google Calendar.
“This is the biggest upgrade to our iconic search box since its debut over 25 years ago, and is starting to roll out today,” Reid said.
The tech giant’s bet on agentic search also includes AI agents embedded in the Search experience, which are also debuting later this summer. That includes what Reid called information agents, which the user can assign to specific tasks like finding an apartment for rent in a specific neighborhood and under a certain budget or keeping an eye on stock prices. The agents will work on the tasks “24/7 in the background,” Reid said, and send you updates when an apartment that fits your needs hits the market, or there is a notable move in a stock you kept your eye on.
Alongside the information agents, Google also announced that users can now build “mini apps” to accomplish specific tasks. For example, if you’re trying to lose weight, you can ask Search to build a fitness tracker. It will create a custom dashboard that you can come back to again whenever you need to ask a related question. The custom “mini app” functions will be available in the coming months, Google said, first being released to Google AI Pro and Ultra subscribers in the U.S.
The changes are a long time coming. Google first infused AI into its search function with AI Overviews back in May 2024. Then, a year later at the 2025 I/O conference, the tech giant unveiled AI Mode. Since then, Reid says AI mode has surpassed more than 1 billion monthly users, with AI mode queries “more than doubling every quarter since launch.”
Generative AI was also expected to come for the throne of general search engines at one point. So much so that, last year, Google was awarded a win in an antitrust trial, despite the Judge previously declaring that the tech giant’s search business was a monopoly. In the ruling, the court decided that although chatbots are not yet close to replacing search engines, that is where the industry was expected to evolve.
The rise of generative and agentic AI has already significantly disrupted the internet. Experts widely claim that search engine optimization is now pretty much dead, as users lazily rely on AI summaries to find information, despite persistent hallucinations. Meanwhile, the new features in Search are bound to increase the share of online traffic that’s run by bots. Artificial intelligence’s online dominance has, in turn, jeopardized the business models of many companies and organizations that rely on clicks to stay afloat.
Since its founding, Google Search has become the primary digital front door of the internet for users around the world. Now, with the latest AI revamp, Google is changing the locks.
