Even If You Hate AI, You Will Use Google AI Search
He was 17 It’s been years since I attended the iconic weekly research quality meeting in the Ouagadougou conference room on Google’s Mountain View campus. That Thursday morning, about three dozen engineers, product managers, and executives sat at a table or sprawled on the floor to discuss why certain search queries or categories weren’t yielding a perfect result and to suggest fixes. In 2010, these meetings led Google to make 550 changes to its search algorithm, a number that seemed impressive at the time.
This memory looks like a tintype. At Google’s I/O developer conference this week, keynote speaker Liz Reid, head of search, officially relegated good old search to virtual oblivion. This is a continuation of a process that began two years ago, when Google introduced “AI Overview”, its summaries which sit at the top of its search results page and literally hide above the famous “10 blue links”. By then, these links were already degraded, so too often the most relevant ones were buried under aggregators, spam, and shopping results and Google 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 Google’s latest version of Gemini. Even the term “query” seems outdated, because human inputs are conversation starters for AI to collaborate. The process may also incorporate personal information that Google knows about you, which can be very important. The answer to a question could be a tailored presentation, perhaps enhanced by AI agents that explore digital routes to extract information. The transformation is complete. On stage, Google said it out loud: “Google search is AI search. »
The search box was once a portal to the web. The new “smart” box is an invitation to order a personalized response, powered by Gemini, to a user’s queries, sometimes even creating a bespoke mini-publication on the fly with graphics, bullet points and even animations. Google prided itself on interpreting cryptic search terms to guess user intent. Now, he encourages researchers to engage with Gemini in a conversational marathon. To highlight the change, Google representatives at the conference wore T-shirts saying “Ask me anything,” mirroring the prompt offered by Gemini. Just like with the computerized version, if you asked these smiling assistants for directions, the answer didn’t result in a click to a website.
Our digital lives today find themselves at an uncomfortable transition point. AI seems to be driving every business model, and giants like Google are integrating it into all their products and operations. At the same time, resistance and even disgust grow as this powerful and frightening technology intrudes into our lives. Just note the boos when junior speakers mention AI. But according to Google, AI search – if you still want to call it that – is an inevitability that even AI detractors will embrace.
I was among those who balked when AI Overview was introduced in 2024. Now I recognize that Overview – and the deeper “AI Mode” it encourages you to use – is simply better for many things, from finding out if Saturday evening live has a new episode, gets an explanation about an agent harness, or even finds a connection. When I searched for my WIRED article in which I described the meeting in Ouagadougou, the blue links weren’t very helpful. But when I made it clear what I was looking for, I found it immediately.
So it works. Google says that more than a billion people each month search using AI Mode, a separate tab on Google’s website where links are even more peripheral. AI mode requests double every quarter.
