Google

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?

Casey Newton

Mar 6, 2025 — 10 min read

AI Mode (Google)

This is a column about AI. My boyfriend works at Anthropic. See my full ethics disclosure here.

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.

To the millions of businesses that rely on Google to send them traffic, though, the bargain appeared much worse. AI overviews offered answers good enough that many users never bothered to click a link; some businesses have suffered accordingly. On Tuesday I wrote about the story of Chegg, the online education company, which has collapsed over the past two years as first ChatGPT and then Google took services the company offers students for $14.95 a month and began to offer them for free.

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 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. "You can ask anything on your mind and get a helpful AI-powered response with the ability to go further with follow-up questions and helpful web links."

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.

Happily — and to a greater extent than I had been bracing myself for — AI Mode also includes prominent links to the web. In a sample query looking to compare sleep tracking features of various smart devices, AI Mode offers a carousel of prominent links to websites with information about the subject directly beneath the first paragraph of the AI-generated answer; another column of links appears to the right of the result. Each paragraph also ends with a small link icon that directs you to the source of the information.

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. Ask AI Mode whether you should put glue on your pizza and it will tell you no. ("Glue is not meant for consumption and can be harmful if ingested.") It will also dissuade you from eating rocks. ("Rocks are not digestible by the human body.")

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.) When I used AI Mode to search for popular spring break destinations, and houseplants that improve air quality, I got that right-hand column of links — but nothing in the body of the answer.

A GIF in the announcement post shows AI Mode creating a detailed table comparing smart rings, smart watches, and tracking mats; the version I got access today only generated text.

In general, I found AI Mode much more willing to answer my queries when they involved questions about products, travel, or other things I could buy. Other times, particularly when I asked about politics, AI Mode would decline to generate a response and instead only show links to websites that might be relevant.

And so I got no AI answer to “how has the Trump administration acted to restrict free expression so far in 2025?” or "why do conservatives want to shut down DEI programs?” (In fairness to AI Mode, Google's Gemini app refuses to answer that question at all; AI Mode at least offered some websites about the subject.)

Like most AI products in 2025, it's not totally clear when you should use AI Mode over Google's many similar alternatives. When I asked it to help me come up with a menu for a party I'm planning at my house, it offered some good if basic suggestions. Given the same query, Gemini — which has a memory feature and knows I'm a tech reporter — offered similar options but decided to give everything a tech-inspired name. ("Binary Code Caprese Skewers," "Data Stream Hummus," "AI Algorithm Spiced Nuts," and so on.)

In this case I prefer the far less cringeworthy suggestions of AI Mode. But even I can no longer remember when or how Google may be personalizing answers to my queries.

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. The good news is that Google is still working to highlight real websites, even as its AI gradually obviates the need to visit them. That bad news is that just because you show someone lots of links does not mean they will click on them.

On the podcast this week: Kevin and I talk through the implications of AI mode. Then, the Times' David Yaffe-Bellany joins us to explain why the strategic crypto reserve is neither strategic nor a reserve. And finally, listeners share their experiments in vibe-coding.