Beyond Blue Links: Google’s “AI Mode” Sets the Stage for a Radically New Search Experience
Twelve months ago Google peppered its I/O keynote with disconnected AI demos that hinted at a brave new world yet felt oddly unfinished. This year the fog has lifted: AI Mode, a conversational search tab based on Gemini 2.5, is now live for every user in the United States. What started in Search Labs as an opt-in experiment has become a core interface element, sitting alongside familiar filters such as Images and News.
How AI Mode works
Instead of funnelling a single query through one giant model, AI Mode “fans out” a bundle of micro-queries. Gemini then stitches the answers together, presenting a cited, chat-style response that invites follow-up questions. The result feels more like an expert assistant than a results page: ask for the best running shoes for flat arches, and AI Mode offers a synopsis, price comparisons, recent reviews and deep-link buttons—no juggling ten open tabs. Google argues that the approach encourages discovery by surfacing a broader mix of sources than standard AI Overviews, which merely summarise the top search hits.
The next wave of search tricks
Many of the juiciest capabilities remain in Labs, but the roadmap is clear:
| In Labs now | What it does |
|---|---|
| Deep Search | Accepts extremely long, multi-part questions and returns a fully cited research report. |
| Real-time Insights | Generates live charts (e.g., match-by-match batting averages) without visiting a stats site. |
| App-aware Answers | With permission, AI Mode can tap Gmail, Drive or Maps history to personalise replies. |
Liz Reid, Google’s head of Search, says the best performing elements of AI Mode will “flow back” into classic results and AI Overviews, so the traditional page should evolve in parallel rather than ossify.
Protecting a trillion-dollar engine
Underneath the shiny demos lies a strategic tightrope. Paid search still finances Alphabet’s empire, and anything that short-circuits clicks could threaten that revenue. Google’s compromise is two-fold:
-
Separate tab – AI Mode is prominent yet optional, giving advertisers time to adapt.
-
Sponsored modules – Early mock-ups show shopping cards and travel widgets embedded within conversations.
Whether this preserves the click-based economy or merely delays upheaval is the multibillion-dollar question.
From search box to “everything assistant”
Google’s ambition stretches well beyond keyboards. Project Astra, now powered by the same Gemini 2.5 Pro model, lets your phone—or a future pair of smart glasses—identify real-world objects, reason about them and act. Point the camera at a cluttered bike chain and Astra describes the components, fetches a repair video and orders the missing link, all in conversational English. Demis Hassabis of DeepMind calls this the “world model” phase: an agentic AI that sees, plans and executes.
The company already counts more than 400 million monthly users of its standalone Gemini app. Rivals such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Meta’s LLaMA-powered tools still command mind-share, but Google’s installed-base advantage—Android, Docs, Gmail, Maps—gives its assistant a home-field edge.
Risks and ripple effects
| Stakeholder | Potential upside | Potential downside |
|---|---|---|
| Consumers | Faster, deeper answers; fewer spammy sites. | Reduced exposure to independent voices; factual hallucinations. |
| Publishers & SEOs | New traffic if cited; richer visibility modules. | Traffic cannibalisation; opaque ranking criteria. |
| Advertisers | Context-aware ad placements; conversational commerce. | Higher creative costs; measurement complexity. |
Critics argue that an answer-centric web could drain smaller publishers of revenue, depriving Google itself of fresh content in the long run. Regulators on both sides of the Atlantic are already watching for anticompetitive impacts.
A default future?
Google insists it will monitor how many people click the AI Mode tab before making any default changes, but the momentum appears one-way. As Liz Reid put it during I/O: the end-game is a search experience so effortless that “you barely notice the box”. For users, that could translate to fewer blue links and more direct knowledge. For the wider internet ecosystem, it marks the beginning of a high-stakes redesign whose consequences will echo far beyond Mountain View.
Photo Credit: DepositPhotos.com