AI Revolution! Google Search Gets Smarter in 2025
Google Search is in the midst of an “AI journey,” as stated by Google CEO Sundar Pichai in the company earnings call on Tuesday, which began with the AI overviews: a monumental change and a controversial one in how Google augments search information for billions of its Search users.
But that was merely the beginning.
“As AI continues to expand the universe of queries that people can ask, 2025 is going to be one of the biggest years for search innovation yet,” Pichai stated in his opening remarks during the call.
During the call, Pichai pointed toward the next phase where Google is planning to deploy various AI features into Search from its research lab, DeepMind. These Search products are gradually evolving into an AI assistant that scans the internet for you, views web pages, and returns an answer.
Far from throwing ten blue links at you.
This has been the trajectory for Google for quite some time now after they were caught flat-footed with the introduction of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in 2022. The implications of this change are big for websites dependent on Google traffic and for businesses that purchase ads on Google Search.
Not everyone is happy about it, but Google is moving ahead with its plans.
When asked regarding the future of AI and Search, Pichai responded, “You can imagine the future with Project Astra,” referring to DeepMind’s multimodal AI system that accepts live video inputs from cameras and computer screens and then can answer user questions about what the AI sees in real time.
Huge ambitions for Project Astra are seen in other parts of Google’s business as well. The company hopes to power a pair of augmented reality smart glasses someday with the multimodal AI system, for which Google will build the operating system itself.
The Gemini Deep Research, an AI that takes a few minutes to generate large research reports, is, according to Pichai, a product that could potentially change the way users employ Google Search. Deep Research automates work that people traditionally did using Google Search. Whereas now, Google appears to be opting to research things for its users.
“You’re really dramatically expanding the types of use cases for which Search can work-things which don’t always get answered instantaneously but can take some time to answer,” explained Pichai. “These are all areas of exploration, and you’ll see us putting new experiences in front of users over the course of 2025.”
Additionally, Pichai noted that Google has a “clear sense” as to what Search experiences it might build around another one of its AI agents, Project Mariner. It’s one that interacts with the front end of websites on behalf of users, so there’s no need for people to actually interact with the websites.
The CEO of Google also pointed to an “opportunity” in allowing more interaction from the user side, including asking follow-up questions in Google Search. Regarding that, Pichai kept things vague, but it is clear that Google is thinking along the lines of making its Search interface more conversational, more like a chatbot.
“I think the [Search] product will evolve even further,” Pichai expounded. “As you make it more easy for people to interact and ask follow-up questions and so on, I think we have an opportunity to drive further growth.”
ChatGPT has, by now, grown into one of the most popular products in its own right, with well over several hundred million users accessing it every month. The existential threat posed by the long-term business of Google Search in front of it cannot be stated lightly. To this end, Google is not only building an competing AI chatbot with Gemini but is also embedding AI capabilities into Search itself.
Surely, this was just the extremely initial step towards AI on Search.
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