Google AI Search replaces traditional web results as over 1 billion users embrace AI Mode

Even If You Hate AI, You Will Use Google AI Search

It's been 17 years since I sat in on the iconic weekly search quality meeting in the Ouagadougou conference room at Google's Mountain View campus. That Thursday morning, around three dozen engineers, product managers, and executives sat at a table or sprawled on the floor to discuss why certain search queries or categories didn't yield a perfect result and to suggest fixes. In 2010 those meetings led Google to make 550 changes to its search algorithm, a number that seemed impressive at the time. That memory seems like a tintype. At Google's I/O developer conference this week, a keynote speaker -- head of search Liz Reid -- officially down-ranked good old-fashioned search to virtual oblivion. This was a continuation of a process that began two years ago, when Google introduced "AI Overview," its summaries that sit at the top of its search results page and literally lurk over the famous "10 blue links." By then those links had already been degraded, so that all too often the most relevant ones were buried beneath aggregators, spam, and Google's own shopping results and maps. Now, in what Reid described as the most significant change to the search box in the company's history, users are in direct communication with the latest version of Google's Gemini. Even the term "query" seems outdated, as human inputs are conversation starters for the AI to collaborate. The process can also incorporate personal information Google knows about you, which can be a lot. The answer to a query could be a bespoke presentation, maybe bolstered by AI agents that forage digital backroads to root out information. The transformation is complete. Onstage, Google said it out loud: "Google Search is AI Search." The search box used to be a portal to the web. The new "intelligent" box is an invitation to order up a Gemini-powered, customized response to a user's queries, sometimes even creating on the fly a bespoke mini-publication with charts, bullet points, and even animations. Google used to pride itself on interpreting cryptic search terms to divine user intent. Now it encourages searchers to engage with Gemini in a conversational prompt-a-thon. To emphasize the change, Google representatives at the conference wore T-shirts saying "Ask Me Anything," reflecting the prompt that Gemini offers. Just as with the computerized version, if you asked for directions from these smiling aides, the answer did not result in a click to a website. Our digital life these days is perched at an uncomfortable transition point. AI seems to be driving every business model, and giants like Google are weaving AI into all their products and operations. At the same time, there's rising resistance and even disgust as this powerful and scary technology worms its way into our lives. Just note the boos when commencement speakers mention AI. But as Google sees it, AI search -- if you still want to call it that -- is an inevitability that even AI haters will embrace. I was among those who recoiled at the introduction of AI Overview in 2024. Now I acknowledge that Overview -- and the deeper "AI Mode" that it encourages you to use -- is simply better for many things, whether finding out if Saturday Night Live has a new episode, getting an explanation of an agentic harness, or even finding a link. When I searched for my WIRED article where I described the meeting in the Ouagadougou, the blue links were less than useful. But when I explained in plain language what I was looking for, I found it immediately. So it's working. Google claims that more than a billion people a month are searching with AI Mode, a separate tab on Google's website where links are even more peripheral. AI Mode queries are doubling every quarter.

Ask AI or just Google it? Google makes a big change to a little search box

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. - Google is changing what it means to Google. The company this week announced significant changes to its search box -- that austere, single-line input field on its homepage that has been the world's most popular entry point into the web for around two-and-a-half decades. The new version looks similar to the old one-line text box, but it's dynamic, expanding with longer queries. Users can also drop videos, pictures and files into it for what Google calls "multimodal" search. Behind the scenes, a bigger shift is under way. Google is merging artificial intelligence and traditional web search in a move that Liz Reid, who oversees search at Google, said brings "the best of web and the best of AI together." Critics say folding AI deeper into search risks further muddying the waters around the provenance of information gleaned from the web, and could take agency away from users. A chatbot is likely to return a summary with only a few links to further information, unlike a web search that returns many pages of links. But the shift is, in some ways, not surprising, given Silicon Valley's hard pivot toward AI, with Google and others investing billions in the technology and refocusing corporate strategies around it. For about a year, Google has put "AI Overviews" -- short summaries -- at the top of some search results. "What we've seen with AI Overviews is that people don't want either just an AI or the web. They want a mix of both," said Reid. She said she's noticed that users have started to ask longer questions, with more natural language, rather than fragments or key words. "They're asking the question that they really have," Reid said. For Google, that potentially unlocks new understandings of user intentions. "If you start using more natural language, if you're having a conversation, when you've shifted from researching into buying, you've sort of indicated that. And so we can put better ads because we understand what that is," Reid said. Google is also introducing agentic functionality to search, so that users can ask it to do tasks over time -- like search for theater tickets at regular intervals, or send shoppers a notification when something goes on sale, or conduct a weekly scan of the internet for local events. Carolina Milanesi, an independent technology analyst, said Google is trying to make its cash cow business -- search -- richer and more personalized, and it will make shopping easier. But there is a risk that users may have fewer choices about what to click. "Right now it's: I ask a question, I get a bunch of answers and I feel that I'm in control as to which answer I take, or if I'm looking for something, which product I'm going to end up buying. That is going to be less so going forward," she said. Milanesi envisions AI-enabled search and agents proposing products to consumers -- perhaps even those they have requested -- but with less clarity or choice around where it's coming from. "If you're going to say: 'I want a pair of Jordans, go find them,' you're not necessarily sure what steps have been taken and whether the AI has used a source or a store that was paid for and therefore came up in the search results," she said, "or if AI actually went and did their due diligence and picked the best for me as a customer." Sarah T. Roberts, director of the Center for Critical Internet Inquiry at UCLA, said the algorithmic underpinnings of Google's web search results have long been "by design, inscrutable to end users" and there's more to it than simply the best of the web floating to the top of any given search. Adding AI will only make the system more opaque, she said. "What's happening now with AI is that that complexity that already existed will be further obfuscated and even more difficult to unpack," she said. She noted episodes where Google's AI has provided bad results, including advising putting glue in pizza and eating rocks. "Those gaffes shouldn't be forgotten as Google makes this transition," she said. And critics say that driving more Google users from web searches to interacting with AI will exacerbate the risks of the so-called "Google Zero" scenario, where the growth of AI queries kills off web search and suffocates the internet click economy as we know it. That includes online shops, web advertisers and news organizations that all depend on referred traffic from Google. While the redesigned box will be the same for all Google users, there are various tricks and tips online for people who want to disable or avoid some AI functions when using Google.