Google went ahead and ruined its search function a few years ago, so what’s another boneheaded decision or two, right? The search giant has begun testing a new AI Mode for its Search product, something it reckons users have been asking for.
Really, Google?
Specifically, the company said, “we’ve heard from power users that they want AI responses for even more of their searches.” To meet that need, it has launched a new Labs experiment that “expands what AI Overviews can do with more advanced reasoning, thinking and multimodal capabilities.”
The idea is to let users ask more complicated questions, potentially saving time by getting Gemini 2.0 to understand concepts and context in one go. It’ll work a bit like any generative AI prompt, meaning it’ll answer what you ask it. Like any generative AI prompt, if you ask the question in a less-than-specific manner, your results may vary.
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Ancillary searches and linked concepts will be presented — something Google already tries to do with its ‘regular’ searches but these are made using AI and are therefore better… somehow. The in-testing feature performs “multiple related searches concurrently across subtopics and multiple data sources and then brings those results together to provide an easy-to-understand response.”
Or Google could, you know, roll back the clock on Search about ten years when a single query was enough to give you relevant results you were actually after instead of throwing up two pages of irrelevant sales pitches and feigned ignorance so you’ll keep banging your head against the broken search engine in hopes of finding the info you know is out there. Does that sound bitter? It should.
