Google Search is turning into an AI assistant—and it doesn’t want you to leave

By the way, what is research? At Google I/O this week, Google made that question even harder to answer as search absorbed more of Gemini’s AI capabilities and moved beyond the familiar list of blue links.

For decades, we asked Google or Bing to provide us with a list of pages where we could find the answers we were looking for. Now “search” engines act more like butlers, anticipating what we want before we want it, based on what they know about us.

It’s not a stretch to predict that “research” and “AI” will become confused and will probably just merge at some point. As announced at I/O, the Google Search tool absorbs even more of Google’s AI capabilities, with an expanded search field and personal agents, while Gemini itself takes on more tasks, such as delivering a daily briefing, that I would normally associate with a personal assistant or attaché.

Today, what we might once have called “notifications” are now the domain of agents. Google wants you to ask them to keep their eyes open, well, anything is possible: low plane fares, Taylor Swift news, updates from your apartment complex, etc. And there are two key elements that Google is adding to its pantheon of products: search agents, and more specifically a “personal” agent called Spark.

It’s difficult to separate one from the other, just like it’s difficult to distinguish Gemini in Google’s Workspace apps from the Gemini app itself. They just mix together.

The rise of agents continues

My colleague Ben Patterson will tell you more about the ins and outs of Spark, but this is the short version: it’s Google’s new “24/7 personal agent” that works on your behalf. Right now, it’s apparently somewhat basic, where you can ask it to set recurring tasks or triggers, or teach it skills like checking your inbox for updates from the school your kids attend. Over time, however, Google has planned a feature roadmap for Spark, as with all of its other properties.

What Google calls a “daily briefing” is more useful, I think. If this sounds familiar, it might be: Microsoft integrated a daily summary of your upcoming events as part of Windows 10’s Cortana and, once Cortana was heading to the graveyard, tried to move this feature into the Outlook mobile app. I can’t say which one would have come out on top, but I applaud the effort.

“This goes way beyond a simple summary,” according to a blog post by Josh Woodward, vice president of Google Labs and the Gemini app. “Daily Brief actively organizes and prioritizes based on your specific goals, even suggesting immediate next steps. »

Of course, it is unclear whether the daily briefing will prove effective. Unsurprisingly, it benefits from connections to Gmail, your calendar and other connected Google apps. It also requires a subscription, although it’s available for the AI ​​Plus tier as well as the more rarefied Pro and Ultra subscription models.

Research, Gemini: Are they on a collision course?

As you can imagine, I’m less fond of AI Mode, the controversial overhaul of Google’s search function. Like virtually everything else in Google’s ecosystem, Google Search includes “personal intelligence,” which explores your life for additional context. Google now claims that AI Mode, which reluctantly returns to the original source of its knowledge, has attracted a billion users.

Google is literally expanding the search scope, at least on its mobile implementations. This will allow longer, more complex queries where you can see the entire prompt, add files, etc. The bottom line is that Google doesn’t want you to search for the “best laptop”; he’d rather you type in something like “best laptop like the one my cousin Mike had last summer at Maine’s house, but under $1,500,” with everything from text, images, videos, and even Chrome tabs as potential entries.

At this point, the line between a “search” and a “prompt” blurs even further, especially when search and AI mode allow for follow-up conversations. AI mode, heavy on “AI”. The new implementation is live today, where AI mode is already implemented.

I can see the impact of AI mode on our business, and it’s not good. But I can’t be that disappointed with Google’s agent search capabilities.

Generally speaking, the industry has come up with many ways to facilitate ongoing research. Steam and Amazon give you the choice to “want” a particular item, track its price, and notify you when it’s on sale. Until now, Microsoft still implements “Collections” of stored tabs, in which you can find and store a current project, such as summer vacation. (Like Google, Microsoft is pushing you to adopt Copilot to take over manual tab storage and replace it with AI summarization.)

Agent search used to be called “notifications,” where you could ask Google to monitor a topic and it would track it for you. Now Google Search is adding “search agents,” which will essentially monitor an existing question and provide answers.

“With Information Agents, you can stay informed about everything that matters most to you,” according to a blog post by Liz Reid, head of search at Google. “Your agent will intelligently examine everything on the web, including blogs, news sites, social media posts, and the latest data, such as real-time financial, shopping, and sports news, to monitor changes related to your specific question. »

Starting this summer, you’ll also be able to allow Google to reserve restaurants and other places, and even pay. The latter is a capability that AI is afraid to exploit, but Google is working to make it a reality.

Google also essentially uses its own version of Claude Code, called Antigravity, to create small “apps” directly within the search itself. Google doesn’t really create an app that will let you do anything. Instead, it uses antigravity to create small visual explanations of how a specific task might be accomplished or how a concept actually plays out in the real world, like the effect of a black hole on time and space or how a Roman aqueduct might have been built.

I don’t have a vacation planned in the near future, but I could definitely imagine agent research being used to answer questions like “who is the current leader in the California gubernatorial poll?” » or “How much money has OpenAI raised in 2026?”

Like it or not, Google is one of the architects of the modern search experience and how we search for and acquire information. Anecdotally, Google still accounts for 90% of global search traffic, according to StatCounter. The problem, of course, is how the problem is defined: how many people are simply “searching” via ChatGPT or Claude? Continuous agent-based searches and conversational follow-ups will keep users in the Google fold, where its management desperately wants them to stay.