A decade or so ago, I thought Google needed a newer mission than “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” Having never lived without the Search engine, I frankly thought the mission was solved and that Google needed a new aspirational aim.
As the years went by, I kept hearing Google refer to it as a “timeless” mission, and I don’t think I appreciated that sentiment until the end of traditional Search.
I do believe the era of 10 blue links is coming to a close. The through-line of technology is that people want more and more convenience at a faster speed. Getting an answer immediately was always going to win out. Google’s mission is timeless because of an inherent awareness of this. Before AI, that next frontier was visual search with Google Lens and allowing people to ask about the world without describing it beyond a picture.
Besides directly getting the answer, I think the under-appreciated advancement made possible by generative AI is both how and what you’re able to search. You can ask questions without filtering it for the machine. There’s no query translation — e.g., keywords or brevity — that you have to perform. It’s being able to spit out what’s in your head, including all the rambly context that is helpful for the prompt.
What you’re able to ask and get back an actual answer on is also a genuine step forward. I find that AI in Search is quite good at taking what you’re talking about, generalizing the concept, and then finding an answer that matches but is not specifically about the thing you’re asking.
Of course, there are ramifications of getting an answer immediately.
The free internet is built on advertising, and I think not having to pay for that knowledge has been a net positive for the world. (I do think it’s been taken to an extreme as this expectation of freeness has come at the expense of quite a few people thinking that nothing on the internet should be paid for.)
Getting an answer immediately without having to do anything else drastically reduces the likelihood of clicking a link. In the case of news, that is devastating for online advertising-supported media, and breaks the model that has been in place for three decades or so.
There are some queries that will still get you to click a link, but I do think that’s happening significantly less.
Of all the AI players today, I think Google has the most vested interest in maintaining online advertising. I very much want Google to take a more active role in finding a novel solution to keeping ad-supported media around in the age of chatbots.
My rediscovery of Search is all due to AI Mode, which is not even a year old. Testing started in March with a broader availability in May. Development is happening at a breakneck speed, while its reach and capabilities are expanding.
I think AI Mode is the nicest Google Search, excluding Lens and Circle to Search, has looked in some time.
At the start, I questioned the similarities between the Gemini app and AI Mode. The difference is solidifying as Gemini becomes more of a personal assistant, especially with personal context beginning to get really good.
But the fact that AI Mode can also generate “Deep Search” reports, “Create Images” with Nano Banana, and offers a conversational Search Live experience with video does blur things. The most satisfactory answer I got from Google this year was that people expect modern AI tools to have those capabilities.
I don’t disagree, but having two products that seem similar is a distinctly Google problem that isn’t the most obvious for end users. In this case, I think the responsibility will fall on Gemini to get more assistive, especially on Android, and become truly useful in your everyday life for the differences to become clear for everyone.
Once that work is done, this leaves AI Mode as the new Google Search.
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