It’s 5pm It’s been several years since I attended the iconic weekly search quality meeting held in the Ouagadougou conference room on Google’s Mountain View campus. That Thursday morning, about 30 engineers, product managers, and executives sat at tables or stretched out on the floor to discuss why they weren’t getting perfect results for certain search queries or categories and suggest fixes. In 2010, these meetings led to Google making 550 changes to its search algorithm, which seemed an impressive number at the time.
That memory is like tinplate. At Google’s I/O developer conference this week, keynote speaker Liz Reid, head of search, officially demoted good old search to virtual oblivion. This is a continuation of the process that started two years ago when Google introduced the “AI Overview,” which sits at the top of the search results page, literally hidden above the famous “10 blue links.” By then, those links were already degraded, with the most relevant links often buried under aggregators, spam, and Google’s own shopping results and maps. In what Reid described as the most significant change to the search box in the company’s history, users can now communicate directly with Google’s latest version of Gemini. Even the term “query” seems outdated, as human input is the conversation starter for AI to collaborate with. This process may also incorporate personal information about you known to Google, which can be large. The answer to your question could be a bespoke presentation powered by an AI agent that explores digital backroads to eradicate information. Conversion is complete. On stage, Google proclaimed, “Google Search is AI Search.”
The search box was once your portal to the web. The new “intelligent” boxes are an invitation to order Gemini-powered customized responses to user queries, and in some cases even create bespoke mini-publications on the fly, including charts, bullet points, and even animations. Google once prided itself on interpreting cryptic search terms to infer user intent. We now encourage search users to interact with Gemini with conversational prompts. To highlight this change, Google representatives at the conference wore T-shirts that read “Ask Me Anything,” reflecting the prompts provided by Gemini. As with the computerized version, asking a smiling assistant for directions didn’t allow you to click on the answer and go to a website.
Our digital lives these days are at an uncomfortable transition point. AI seems to be driving every business model, with giants like Google weaving it into every product and operation. At the same time, resistance and revulsion are growing as this powerful and frightening technology invades our lives. Notice the boos when the commencement speaker mentions AI? But as Google sees it, AI search is a corollary that even AI haters will embrace.
I was also one of those who was daunted by the introduction of AI Overview in 2024. Now I admit that the overview and the deeper “AI mode” that encourages its use are better in many ways. saturday night live You’ll find new episodes, Agent Harness instructions, and links. When I searched for WIRED articles describing the conference in Ouagadougou, the blue links were not very helpful. However, once I clearly explained what I was looking for, I found it quickly.
So it worked. Google claims that more than 1 billion people search in AI mode every month. AI mode is a separate tab on Google’s website with more peripheral links. AI mode queries are growing 2x every quarter.
