For the final twenty years, Google has introduced folks a listing of algorithmically-selected hyperlinks from the net for any given search question. At I/O 2025, Google made clear that the idea of Search is firmly in its rearview mirror.
On Tuesday, Google CEO Sundar Pichai and his executives offered new methods to carry customers the net, this time intermediated via a collection of AI brokers.
“We couldn’t be extra enthusiastic about this chapter of Google search the place you may actually ask something […] your easiest and hardest questions, your deepest analysis, your customized purchasing wants,” stated Google’s VP of Search, Liz Reid, onstage at I/O. “We imagine AI would be the strongest engine for discovery that the net has ever seen.”
The most important announcement of I/O was that Google now presents AI mode to each Search consumer in the USA. This provides a whole bunch of hundreds of thousands of individuals a button to converse with an AI agent that can go to internet pages, summarize them any means they’d like, and even assist them store. With Venture Mariner, Google is delivering an much more hands-off AI agent to its Extremely subscribers. That agent will deal with 10 totally different duties concurrently, visiting internet pages and clicking round on these pages whereas customers are free to plug away on one thing else altogether.
Google can be making its Deep Analysis agent, which visits dozens of related web sites and generates thorough analysis experiences, extra customized and is connecting it to your Gmail and Drive. In a parallel improvement, the corporate is additional integrating Venture Astra — the corporate’s multimodal, real-time AI expertise — into Search and Gemini, giving customers extra methods to verbally communicate with an AI agent and let it see what they see.
I may go on, however you get the thought — AI brokers dominated I/O 2025.
The rise of ChatGPT has compelled an AI reckoning at Google, inflicting the corporate to rethink the way it brings customers info from the net. This reckoning actually began ultimately 12 months’s I/O, when Google launched AI overviews into Search, a launch that was overshadowed by its embarrassing hallucinations. The rollout of AI overviews made it appear as if AI was not prepared for primetime, and that Search as we all know it was right here to remain.
However at I/O 2025, Google offered a extra compelling, fleshed-out method to how AI would reshape Search, and thus, the net. The corporate’s new imaginative and prescient means that the way forward for the net, and the corporate, entails AI brokers fetching info from the net and presenting it to customers in no matter means they’d like.
The concept Google’s AI brokers may exchange Search is a compelling one, particularly as a result of Google is making an attempt to put an infrastructure for AI brokers. Google introduced on Tuesday that the SDK for Gemini fashions will now natively assist Anthropic’s MCP, an more and more common customary for connecting brokers to information sources throughout the web.
Google isn’t alone on this shift. At a unique tech convention this week, Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott laid out his personal imaginative and prescient for an “open agentic internet,” during which brokers take actions on customers’ behalf throughout the web. Scott famous {that a} key characteristic to make this attainable can be the plumbing that connects these brokers to one another and information sources — specifically, Google’s Agent2Agent protocol and Anthropic’s MCP.
Regardless of the keenness, as Ben Thompson notes in Stratechery, the agentic internet has its issues. For example, Thompson notes that if Google sends AI brokers to web sites as an alternative of individuals, that largely breaks the ad-supported mannequin of the web.
The impacts may differ throughout industries. Brokers might not be an issue for corporations that promote items or companies on the web, equivalent to DoorDash or Ticketmaster — in reality, these corporations are embracing brokers as a brand new platform to succeed in prospects. Nonetheless, the identical can’t be stated for publishers, which are actually preventing with AI brokers for eyeballs.
Throughout I/O, a Google communications chief advised me that “human consideration is the one actually finite useful resource,” and the corporate’s launch of AI brokers goals to present customers extra of their time again. Which will all pan out, however AI summaries of articles appear prone to take {dollars} away from publishers — and probably devastate the very content material creation on which these AI methods rely.
Additional, there’s a lingering drawback with AI methods round hallucinations — their tendency to make stuff up and current it as reality — which turned embarrassingly clear with Google’s launch of AI overviews. Talking onstage Tuesday, DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis even raised considerations concerning the consistency of AI fashions.
“You possibly can simply, inside a couple of minutes, discover some apparent flaws with [AI chatbots] — some highschool math factor that it doesn’t clear up, some primary recreation it may well’t play,” stated Hassabis. “It’s not very troublesome to search out these holes within the system. For me, for one thing to be referred to as AGI, it could must be far more constant throughout the board.”
The results might be far-reaching. Widespread hallucinations may lead customers to be extra distrustful of data they encounter on the net. They may additionally sow misinformation amongst customers. Both final result is just not splendid.
Google doesn’t appear to be ready for ad-supported companies or AI fashions to catch up — the corporate is pushing forward with AI brokers anyway. Google has seemingly accomplished greater than another firm to steward the net as we all know it. However in what may show a serious turning level, the corporate’s conception of the net appears to be reorienting round AI brokers.
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