Google Search Is Becoming Something Fundamentally Different. Here's What That Looks Like
Google is transforming its Search product to integrate advanced AI capabilities, moving away from the traditional blue-link model. At the I/O 2026 conference, the company announced significant updates, including the introduction of Gemini 3.5 Flash and a new intelligent search box. These changes aim to create a more conversational and interactive search experience for users.
- ▪Google is shifting its Search product towards a conversational AI model.
- ▪The new intelligent search box allows for longer queries and supports uploads like photos and PDFs.
- ▪Gemini 3.5 Flash will enhance the quality of answers provided by Search.
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Record
| Original publisher | CNET |
| Canonical URL | https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/google-search-is-becoming-something-fundamentally-different-heres-what-that-looks-like/ |
| Publication time | Sun, 24 May 2026 12:01:03 +0000 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-05-24T12:32:32.531Z |
| Last seen | 2026-05-24T12:32:32.531Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | 7xGoaCrLBT43 |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
Rights status (four layers)
WeSearch handling by dimension
| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
Google Search doesn't look like Google Search anymore, and at I/O 2026, the company leaned into that fully. The annual developer conference held this week in Mountain View, California, served as the most explicit statement yet of where Google is taking its flagship product: away from the blue-link model it perfected over 25 years and toward something closer to a conversational AI agent. The announcements ranged from Gemini 3.5 Flash becoming the new default engine behind AI Mode globally to a complete reimagining of the search box itself, described by Google as the biggest upgrade to that interface in over two decades.Until now, AI has shown up in Google Search in the form of its so-called AI Overviews and in a separate AI Mode that feels more like talking to the Gemini chatbot.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at CNET.
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