Google's new AI Mode is a preview of the future of search
The next phase of AI's takeover of search offers plenty of links to the web — but will anyone click? Just under a year ago, at its annual developer conference, Google signaled that a dramatic change was coming to its search results. In the near future, the company said, you would "let Google do the Googling for you": trusting the search engine to search the web on your behalf, summarizing its findings, and sparing you the need to visit many websites yourself. It was an appealing proposition to Google, which would soon begin peppering the product it calls AI overviews with advertisements; and for the search engine's users, many of whom have already begun to replace their traditional Google searches with queries in ChatGPT, Perplexity, and other AI products.
The Evolution of Google Search's AI
For the past year, we have arguably been in the first phase of Google search's AI evolution, with summaries generated by large language models sitting atop traditional search results. The question since then has been what will happen to the web once we enter the phase two — the moment that AI-generated results become the primary way that Google answers most queries, with links to the sites from which Google derived that information relegated to the sidelines. 
This week, phase two arrived — as part of an experiment available to subscribers to the company's Google One AI Premium service. On Wednesday, the company introduced "AI Mode," a preview of what Google search might come to look like over time. "This new search mode expands what AI Overviews can do with more advanced reasoning, thinking and multimodal capabilities so you can get help with even your toughest questions," said Robby Stein, vice president of product for search, in a blog post.
Features of AI Mode
Built on a customized version of the company's Gemini 2.0 model, Stein said AI Mode is well suited to answer questions that might previously have taken Google multiple searches. Unlike traditional Google search, you can ask follow-up questions of your queries; and unlike some chatbots, it's plugged into Google's search index and can offer real-time and local business information. 
In an interview, Stein told me that AI Mode queries a broader set of websites than traditional search, and searches multiple related topics simultaneously to deliver more fleshed-out responses. Google has also tried to introduce some humility into AI Mode; it will acknowledge when it is uncertain about something, Stein said, or decline to offer an AI-generated summary when it has low confidence in the answer.
User Experience with AI Mode
As presented in a demo, then, AI Mode stops short of doing all the Googling for you. The web is still there, and, in some cases, is presented quite prominently. I was glad to see it. On Thursday afternoon, I got access to AI Mode, and spent some time hitting it with queries. In many ways, Google seems to have learned the hard lessons of its past few AI launches. 
One key difference between AI Mode as demo'd and as I experienced it is that the current version has fewer links to the web than the demo one. (Stein had warned me that this is the case; more carousels of links are coming soon, he said.)
Conclusion
For my final test of AI Mode, I tried some of the queries that have become popular on Claude: treating the AI more like a smart friend or confidante, and asking it for advice. It offered solid advice, though it was less creative than Gemini and other chatbots I have tried. For the moment, AI Mode is just an experiment. But AI Overviews started as an experiment, too, and now they are default for more than 1 billion users of Google search. 
