Google is Adding More AI Overviews and a New 'AI Mode' To Search

Google announced Wednesday it is expanding its AI Overviews to more query types and users worldwide, including those not logged into Google accounts, while introducing a new "AI Mode" chatbot feature. AI Mode, which resembles competitors like Perplexity or ChatGPT Search, will initially be limited to Google One AI Premium subscribers who enable it through the Labs section of Search.

The feature delivers AI-generated answers with supporting links interspersed throughout, powered by Google's search index. "What we're finding from people who are using AI Overviews is that they're really bringing different kinds of questions to Google," said Robby Stein, VP of product on the Search team. "They're more complex questions, that may have been a little bit harder before." Google is also upgrading AI Overviews with its Gemini 2.0 model, which Stein says will improve responses for math, coding and reasoning-based queries.

I had to 'gpt' what the heck was 'google' ..

[jkechel]

for me google usage dropped to almost zero since gpt-3, but no special ai preferred neither, just trying the new AIs as they are coming out without really caring about the company ..

Re:

[yog]

I use Grok and openai both. I've almost completely stopped using duckduckgo (switched away from google years ago except when duck fails me). AI is a slightly different experience but really saves a lot of time by distilling many information sources into a nice concise bullet list and summary.

Re:

[jkechel]

Are you ESL?

no, english is more like my 3rd or 4th language, depending on how you wanna count

Re:

[ihavesaxwithcollies]

ta' QaQqangmo' Hoch

Happy Kagi user

[abulafia]

About as good as Google was 15 years ago, far more customizable, no surveillance, and the LLM crap is segregated off.

The first thing I noticed is not having to wade through endless product pages for queries that were obviously not about buying crap, but it is well worth it several times over for me.

Re:

[arglebargle_xiv]

For me I'm glad I'm using Startpage. Google forcing you to enable JS just for search to work was the trigger in that case, but this is just one more of many reasons to avoid Google.

brave is better

[BothPartiesAreEvil]

brave's search engine is top notch and their AI summarizations are by far the best out there. its got a chat bot called leo and other functions in their browser, i've only played with them a little. their browser is great tho, i love it. its a chromium based browser so all ur stuff transfers over.

Re: brave is better

[commodore73]

Do you build the browser from source that you review, or how do you know that you can trust it? I'm only partially joking. I've switched to librewolf as my primary. Pros and cons, like losing auth cookies when you close the browser. I haven't experimented much or checked settings.

The world needs to start paying for open source, IMHO. It's worth more than closed source anyway, by a long shot.

Re:

[Rockoon]

We don't. We partition untrustworthiness.

The problem with paying for open source is who will get the money. The authors arent always the maintainers and so forth, and what you wanted to pay for is probably the continuing maintenance, but by what metric will you measure its quality? My guess is a continued trust in the maintainer. Its all good until it isn't.

The truth is out there.

[devslash0]

Well, not anymore.

Re:

[GrumpySteen]

The truthiness [wikipedia.org] is all that's left out there now.

Perfect control over search

[sinij]

Google discovered that they can't go all out suppressing search results - information still get distributed but at a slower rate, BUT if they get people switching to AI, then they will have ability to perfectly curate the information flow.

Don't use it, don't trust it or we will end up in cyberpunk dystopia.

Re: Perfect control over search

[commodore73]

We passed dystopia some time ago, and have reached myopia, where the only thing those in power even try to focus on is money, which is mostly just numbers on computers. Strange days indeed.

Re:

[Cyberpunk Reality]

"will"

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[Rockoon]

Google isnt the only folk with AI offerings.

Getting people to switch to AI is only beneficial for Google if Google can secure a long term top spot on AI "as a service". I think the jury is still out on if AI can survive "as a service" at all.

Qu?

[dohzer]

All I need is a search engine that completely removes Quora pages from its output.

Remember when?

[RitchCraft]

Do you remember when the Internet was awesome and full of wonder? All of us that ran local BBS systems saw our online users drop practically overnight. All you got were busy signals when you tried to call your friends and family. They were all online ... "you got mail!" The Internet was going to make the world a better place. Now here we are, 30 years later, and the Internet sucks to high hell. It needs a reset. Wipe the whole fucking thing out and start over.

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[ihavesaxwithcollies]

My number one rule in life, people ruin everything. It just takes time.

Stopped using google search back in '17

[RightwingNutjob]

when they made a spectacle out of firing one of their guys for saying shit he didn't quite say.