Google's AI Mode Sparks Debate on Future of Search

Google to make it easier to access AI Mode as default

Google plans to make it easier for users to access AI mode by allowing them to set it as the default, replacing the traditional blue links. AI mode is an advanced version of Google Search that uses large language models to summarise information from the web, so you can spend more time on Google than visiting websites. Google AI mode can answer complex answers, process images, summarize information on the web, create tables, graphs, charts, and even help you code. Right now, AI mode is optional. It's placed on the left of the "All" tab, so you can accidentally open Google AI search and slowly prefer it over the traditional search. In a post on X, Logan Kilpatrick, who is the product lead at Google AI Studio, suggested that AI mode would soon become the default mode on Google. Later, Google's Robby Stein, VP, Product at Google Search, clarified that the company only plans to make it easier to access AI mode for those who wish to use it. Right now, there are no plans to make AI mode the default for everyone, but if you prefer AI mode as your default search tab, there will be a toggle or a button to do that. This would mean the traditional blue links will not appear by default, but you'll be able to switch to old results by finding the "Web" tab, which is tucked at the very end of the bar. I wouldn't be surprised if AI mode does become the default search page in 2026 for everyone. Google is still trying to determine how a move like that would affect its ad business. Google is already testing ads in AI mode and AI Overviews and is pitching AI ad practices to ad partners. The digital marketing industry is unsure how things will play out when blue links are replaced entirely with AI mode. Google has about 90% of the search market share and continues to send billions of clicks to publishers across the world. At the same time, Google does not pay publishers and independent blogs for summarising content. Instead, the search engine giant claims that the AI summaries send more "quality" clicks to publishers, but it does not have data to back the claim. Independent research by Pew suggests that fewer people are likely to click on a web result when the search engine shows an AI summary. Some independent publishers are also discussing creating a "NATO for News" alliance to fight the existential crisis.

Google Disputes Claims That AI Mode Will Be Default Search

It turns out Google isn't planning on making AI Mode the default for Google search anytime soon, but it came with news of more AI slop coming. This all came from rumors that started swirling after a comment from one of the company's own product leads, who works with Google AI. The reporting started when Logan Kilpatrick, the lead product manager for Google AI Studio, responded to a user's suggestion that AI Mode should be the default for search. The user posted on Twitter/X, saying, "It must be the default. I know it's scary, but one more click means infinity." Kilpatrick's response was simple and seemingly straightforward "soon," which sounds good for those who love AI, but not for everyone else. Obviously, anyone who reads this would interpret it as Google planning to kill its search engine in favor of Google AI search. I don't believe that everyone is clicking on the AI tab on purpose, since Google put it on the spot where regular search would go, which means a lot of misclicks. The few times I intentionally clicked that AI part have only led to me not being listened to by the AI or getting unhelpful answers, so it's hard to imagine it's ready to be an alternative to search. The idea of AI taking over the internet has been a hot topic for a while now, and when another user highlighted this, it was clear that people were taking it as a definitive statement from the company. The rumor was so widespread that Robby Stein, Google's VP of Search, had to step in to calm everyone down. He posted his own message on X, saying he "wouldn't read too much into this. We're focusing on making it easy to access AI Mode for those who want it". Kilpatrick even added a "+1" to Stein's post, which is a common way to show you agree with someone. A day after the clarification from the search VP, Kilpatrick also posted an official clarification on X, stating that he "wasn't saying AI Mode is replacing main Search". He explained that he was excited to see more AI Mode functionality in AI Overviews, which users already see in the main search box. Essentially, the "soon" was more about forcing more AI features to the forefront. Forcing AI on users is what Google has been doing for the last couple of years anyway, so it shouldn't come as a shock to anyone that they're continuing that trend. It's just a poor choice of wording from the product lead, since he was too vague with his original comment. I see AI as a nuisance in my search, mostly because of how often it is wrong. The idea of an unreliable AI giving me wrong information, as it keeps doing whenever I try it, makes me want to go to any other search engine. If Google really wanted to make sure you could opt out of the AI search, the company would make an easy-to-find toggle that stayed off until you turned it back on, instead of a complicated workaround. For now, this is more like a warning that more AI slop is coming to the search. Source: Robby Stein/X, Logan Kilpatrick/X

Google may soon switch to AI Mode for search - and you'll just have to deal with it

Google may be on the verge of replacing its default option of traditional search results with its AI Mode. At least that's what Google lead product manager Logan Kilpatrick hinted at when he responded to the suggestion on X. AI Mode blends Google's Gemini AI with real-time search for direct conversational answers instead of the familiar list of links. AI Mode is a tab in Google Search and has just received a dedicated homepage at google.com/ai, which contributes to the believability of Kilpatrick's comments. The change could have enormous consequences for how people find information online, and for the websites that rely on Google to send them traffic. Publishers have already reported declines due to Google's AI Overviews, which often answer users' questions directly without requiring them to click through to another site. If AI Mode becomes the default, those effects may only grow. Google Search vice president Robby Stein soon tried to calm those concerned about such a change. In his own X post, he wrote that he "wouldn't read too much into this. we're focusing on making it easy to access AI Mode for those who want it." Still, that comes off as vague enough to cover any move to change the default. Arguably, the writing's already on the wall (of the homepage). Google has been upping exposure to its AI services for months. The features filter through Google Labs, but since then, AI Overviews and AI Mode have gone global, and Google has reported tens of millions of monthly active users of AI Mode this summer. The way Google treats AI Mode is as the next big thing, not just a side project. If AI Mode does become the default, you might not notice much change at first. You'll just see the synthesized answer as a much bigger part of the page, with links relegated to a dies panel. The long-term answer is more complicated because it's also a massive shift in how information moves across the web below the surface. Traditional Google Search is the basis for websites to get discovered. Links for everything from news outlets and recipe blogs to indie movie makers and government services rely on being visible in Google Search, not least for how they provide money to those websites. Research has shown that AI Overviews has hurt traffic to websites. Google is the front door to the internet for billions of people. If they change the doormat, you can't really go somewhere else. Sure, there are alternatives among search engines, but there's a reason the verb for looking for something online is Google and not Bing. For now, you can stick to classic search, but that might not be an option forever. AI Mode is coming, and Google will try to make it the basis for how people look for things online. How well it will do so might require a little more looking, perhaps ask DuckDuckGo first.

Is Google set to make AI Mode the default search experience? If it does, the internet may never be the same.

Is Google about to change online search forever by replacing its classic web search with AI Mode? Credit: Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images Move over, Google Search. AI Mode is here, and it isn't going anywhere. Rumors are currently swirling around when exactly Google's AI Mode will become the default search tool on Google's homepage, replacing the classic Google Search. As we move deeper into the AI search era, many search experts believe that AI mode will inevitably replace the list of links searchers are used to seeing. Now, a Google leader has said that this shift could be coming sooner than expected. On Friday, Logal Kilpatrick, the lead product manager for Google AI Studio, shared that Google was making AI Mode easily accessible at a new "google.com/AI" URL. In response to Kilpatrick's X post, a user suggested that AI Mode should be the default search experience, to which Kilpatrick responded, "soon." This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed. Google has gone all-in on AI over the past few years with Gemini and an assortment of other AI products. When it comes to search, Google has already shifted focus to its AI Overviews feature, the AI-generated summaries that appear at the top of many Google query results pages. AI Mode is a new Google AI search tool that launched over the summer. It combines a classic AI chatbot experience with Google's search tools to provide real-time AI-generated answers instead of the traditional list of links. During its Q2 earnings call in late July, Google reported that AI Mode has received "very positive feedback" and "already has over 100 million monthly active users in the U.S. and India." Since then, AI Mode has expanded its rollout into more than 180 additional countries and territories When and if AI Mode really does replace traditional Google Search, the results could be catastrophic for the web economy. Many publishers depend on traffic from Google search results, and this traffic has declined sharply as Google embraces AI search results that often result in zero clicks. Major publishers like The New York Times have seen significant drops in traffic from organic search traffic. The Columbia Journalism Review referred to this widespread phenomenon as the "traffic apocalypse"; the Wall Street Journal called it "AI armageddon"; and The Economist recently wrote that "AI is killing the web". The truth is that we don't know yet, and Google executives are sending mixed messages. As Kilpatrick's response started to spread, the company's VP of Product at Google Search, Robby Stein, attempted to downplay Kilpatrick's post. "wouldn't read too much into this," Stein wrote on X. "we're focusing on making it easy to access AI Mode for those who want it." This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed. But just as Stein said that we shouldn't read too much into what Kilpatrick wrote, we might not want to read too much into what Stein himself wrote either. Google CEO Sundar Pichai has said previously that the "10 blue links" era of search is antiquated, and that AI Mode is "a total reimagining" of search for the future. In addition, the fact that Google is embracing AI search is self-evident. Google has already made its AI Overviews feature the default on its search results pages, and the quality of traditional Google Search has degraded significantly in recent years as the company focuses on AI search tools. Google replacing its classic Google Search tool with AI Mode would cause massive changes to the internet as we know it. Billions of Google searches are made every single day, and studies have found that Google's AI Overviews have already had significant negative impacts on publishers' web traffic. Google has consistently disputed that AI Overviews results in reduced traffic to publishers, but the company has also failed to produce any data that would make this denial convincing. And it just doesn't seem like Google's AI tools are fit to take over. A Mashable investigation recently found that AI Overviews routinely makes errors and suffers from hallucinations. For example, Mashable's Chris Taylor has put AI Overviews through extensive testing and was concerned with not just how wrong it could be, but how confidently wrong it could be. Oddly enough, Taylor found that in situations where AI Mode answered a query correctly, AI Overviews would get it wrong. Perhaps that's a point in AI Mode's favor, but it's still an issue overall for Google's AI products.