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Google AI

Google is Adding More AI Overviews and a New 'AI Mode' To Search (theverge.com) 33

Posted by msmash from the aggressive-expansion dept.
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.

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

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

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  • 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: (Score:1)

      by yog ( 19073 ) *

      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.

  • 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.

    • 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'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.

    • 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.
      • 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.

  • Well, not anymore.

  • Perfect control over search (Score:3)

    by sinij ( 911942 ) on Wednesday March 05, 2025 @07:49PM (#65213717)
    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.
    • 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.

      • 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.

        I have a theory that the machines have actually already taken over. The war of the future was lost the second we started letting search engines be the curators of information and social media being the information source. The algorithms drive most social interaction now, and a lot of information sources for those not interested in picking up non-fiction books every now and again. There's every chance that elections have been won or lost purely based on algorithmic output, and our entire political process is

        • I agree, all these PhDs working on achieving "PhD-level" AI for example, trying to replace human thought and effort with machine processing and automation, and it's constantly failing while consuming ever more resources. How the hell does a computer independently "research" anything novel? How does it test its hypotheses in the real world? Work is what gives many people a sense of purpose in life, which may be a factor in explaining modern depression rates. The more people work with the "wrong" tech (like s

          • How do we go back to the age of magic, superstition, religion - the roots of human culture?

            I think the problem is we still have superstition and religion, we just use technology in the same ways. Blind faith is leading us to this AI "devolution," not science.

    • 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? (Score:3)

    by dohzer ( 867770 ) on Wednesday March 05, 2025 @08:09PM (#65213749)

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

  • Remember when? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by RitchCraft ( 6454710 ) on Wednesday March 05, 2025 @08:55PM (#65213821)

    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.

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

  • Until Google can give me a front page that's not 90% garbage I'm not using it, AI or not. And I'm not seeing AI that can filter out the garbage or a willingness to serve me fewer deceptive ads any time in the near future.

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