Google on Tuesday began rolling out a new intelligent Search box and upgraded its AI Mode with Gemini 3.5 Flash, a move the company called the biggest change to Search in more than 25 years. The new box starts appearing today in every country and language where AI Mode is available, and it can expand dynamically so people can spell out exactly what they need.
The Search box also accepts text, images, files, videos or Chrome tabs as inputs, pushing Google’s core product further toward a single place where people can ask, show and upload their way into a result. At the same time, Google said the seamless jump from AI Overview into AI Mode is live today on desktop and mobile worldwide.
The timing matters because Google said AI Mode has already crossed one billion monthly users, one year after its debut. The company said usage has more than doubled every quarter since launch and hit an all-time high last quarter, a sign that the feature is moving from experiment to habit for a large part of the web-search audience.
Google framed the update as the start of the era of Search agents, beginning with what it calls information agents. Those agents, the company said, work in the background 24/7 and search across blogs, news sites, social posts and real-time information on finance, shopping and sports. In one example, Google said an apartment hunter could dump in exact requirements and be notified when listings match them.
That promise is broad, but it also shows where the friction will be. A Search box that can read more types of inputs and agents that keep working after the user leaves the page could make Search far more useful, but it also raises expectations that the answers will be complete, current and dependable enough to act on. Google is betting that the next phase of search is not just about finding information faster, but about doing the hunting continuously on the user’s behalf.
For Google, the message from Tuesday’s announcement is plain: Search is no longer just a place to type a query and get links back. The company is trying to turn it into a more conversational and more persistent assistant, with AI Mode at the center of the product and openclaw as the kind of upgrade it says will define the next 25 years.
