What is search, anyway? At Google I/O this week, the company made that question even harder to answer, as Search absorbed more of its Gemini AI capabilities and moved further beyond the familiar list of blue links. For decades, users directed Google or Bing to fetch a list of pages where they could find the answers they sought. Now, "search" engines are acting more like butlers, anticipating what users want before they want it, based on accumulated personal data.
It is not too much of a stretch to anticipate that "search" and "AI" are blurring and probably will simply merge at some point. As announced at I/O, Google Search is soaking up even more of Google's AI capabilities, with an expanded search box plus personal agents, while Gemini itself is taking on more tasks such as delivering a daily brief — functions that would normally be associated with a personal aide or attaché.
Today, what might have been called "notifications" in past eras are now the domain of agents. Google wants you to ask them to keep their eyes open for, well, the sky's the limit — low plane fares, news about Taylor Swift, updates from your apartment complex, and so on. Two key additions to Google's pantheon of products are search agents and a "personal" agent called Spark.
The Rise of Agents Continues
Spark is Google's new "24/7, personal agent" that works on your behalf. Currently, it is somewhat basic: you can have it set recurring tasks or triggers, or teach it skills like checking your inbox for updates from the school your kids attend. Over time, however, Google has a roadmap of features planned for Spark, just like any of its other properties.
Of more immediate use is what Google calls a "daily brief." If that sounds familiar, it might: Microsoft built a daily summary of upcoming events as part of Windows 10's Cortana and later tried to move this feature into the mobile Outlook app after Cortana was phased out. Google's version aims to go further. According to Josh Woodward, vice president of Google Labs and the Gemini app, "Daily Brief actively organizes and prioritizes based on your specific goals, even suggesting immediate next steps." Not surprisingly, it benefits from connections to Gmail, your calendar, and other connected Google apps. It also requires a subscription, though it is available to the AI Plus tier as well as the more premium Pro and Ultra subscription models.
Search and Gemini: A Collision Course?
AI Mode, Google's controversial revamp of its search function, is another key development. Like virtually everything else in Google's ecosystem, Google Search now includes "personal intelligence," mining your life for additional context. Google says that AI Mode, which grudgingly links back to the original source of its knowledge, has landed one billion users.
The search box is being expanded, literally, at least on mobile implementations. This allows for longer, more involved queries where you can see the entirety of the prompt and add files. The upshot is that Google wants you to input something like "the best laptop like the one that my cousin Mike had last summer at the house in Maine, but under $1,500," with inputs from text, images, video, and even Chrome tabs. Google Search is encouraging you to have conversations with its search engine rather than one-off queries.
At this point, the line between a 'search' and a 'prompt' blurs further, especially when Search and AI Mode allow follow-up conversations. AI Mode is live today in regions where it is already implemented. The impact of AI Mode on traditional web publishers is not positive, but the agentic search capabilities offer new possibilities.
The industry has already developed numerous ways to facilitate ongoing searches. Steam and Amazon offer the choice to "wishlist" a particular item, tracking its pricing and notifying you when it's on sale. Microsoft still implements "Collections" of stored tabs for researching and storing ongoing projects. Like Google, Microsoft is pushing users to adopt Copilot to replace manual tab storage with AI summaries.
Agentic search used to be called "notifications," where you could tell Google to monitor a topic and it would track it for you. Now Google Search is adding "search agents," which will essentially monitor an existing question and provide answers. According to Liz Reid, head of search at Google, "With information agents, you can stay updated on whatever matters most to you. Your agent will intelligently look across everything on the web, including blogs, news sites, social posts, and the freshest data, such as real-time information on finance, shopping, and sports, to monitor for changes related to your specific question."
Beginning this summer, you will also be able to allow Google to reserve restaurants and other venues — and even pay. The latter is a capability where AI has previously feared to tread, but Google is setting out to make it happen. Additionally, Google is using its own version of Claude Code, called Antigravity, to build small "apps" right within search itself. These are not full-fledged applications but rather small visual explanations of how tasks can be completed or how concepts play out in the real world, such as a black hole's effect on time and space or how a Roman aqueduct may have been constructed.
Agentic search could be used to answer questions like "who is the current leader in the California governor's race polling?" or "how much money has OpenAI raised in 2026?" Like it or not, Google remains one of the architects of the modern search experience. Anecdotally, Google still holds 90 percent of the world's search traffic, according to StatCounter. However, the definition of "search" is shifting as more people simply "search" via ChatGPT or Claude. Ongoing agent-based searches and conversational follow-ups will keep users within Google's fold, where its management is desperate that they remain.
The evolution of search into an AI assistant marks a significant shift in how people interact with information. The traditional list of blue links is giving way to conversational interfaces and proactive agents that anticipate needs. Google's strategy appears to be creating a walled garden where users never have to leave the ecosystem for search, booking, payments, or daily planning. This transformation raises questions about privacy, data usage, and the future of web traffic, but it also promises unprecedented convenience for those willing to embrace it.
Source: PCWorld News