Google Search is about to change fundamentally, for better or for worse. To align with Alphabet-owned Google’s big AI vision and spurred by competition from AI startups like ChatGPT, the company’s core product is being retooled, made more personalized and it is summed up much more by the AI.
At Google’s annual I/O Developer Conference in Mountain View, Calif., today, Liz Reid showed off those changes, marking the start of her tenure as the new head of all things Google Search . (Reid has only been at Google for 20 years, where he’s worked on a variety of search products.) His AI-infused demo was part of a larger theme throughout Google’s keynote, which was led primarily by CEO Sundar Pichai: Artificial intelligence now underpins nearly every Google product, and the company only plans to accelerate that shift.
“In the age of Gemini, we think we can make a lot of improvements to search,” Reid told WIRED in an interview ahead of the event, referring to the flagship generative AI model released at the end of the last year. “People’s time is valuable, right? They face difficult things. If you have an opportunity with technology to help people get answers to their questions, to get more work out of it, why wouldn’t we want to go after that?”
Google’s new search features let you use video and voice to make complex queries.
Courtesy of Google
It’s as if Google took the chips from the script it’s been writing for the past twenty-five years and tossed them up in the air to see where the chips might land. Also: The script was written by AI.
These changes to Google Search have been a long time coming. Last year, the company created a section of its search labs, which allows users to test new experimental features, for something called Search Generative Experience. The big question since then has been if, or when, these features would become a permanent part of Google Search. The answer is, well, now.
The overhaul of Google search comes at a time when critics are increasingly vocal about what some see as a degraded search experience and, for the first time in a long time, the company is feeling the heat of the competition, of the massive mix between Microsoft and OpenAI. Smaller startups like Perplexity, You.com, and Brave have also been riding the generative AI wave and garnering attention, if not significant minds, for the way they’ve reshaped the entire concept of search.
Automatic responses
Google says it has made a customized version of its Gemini AI model for these new search features, though it declined to share information about the size of that model, its speeds or the rails it has put in place in the around technology.
This search-specific spin on Gemini will drive at least a few different elements of the new Google Search. The general descriptions of AI, which Google has already been experimenting with in its labs, is probably the most significant. AI-generated summaries will now appear at the top of search results.
An example from WIRED’s tests: In response to the question “Where is the best place to see the Northern Lights?” Google, instead of listing web pages, will tell you in authoritative text that the best places to see the northern lights, also known as the aurora borealis, are in the Arctic Circle in places with minimal light pollution. It will also provide a link to NordicVisitor.com, but then the AI continues to scroll below, saying, “Other places to see the Northern Lights include the Northwest Territories of Russia and Canada.”
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