Google's recent AI-driven innovations are transforming search into a more intelligent, proactive experience. Features like AI Overviews, which generate concise AI summaries, are now present in over half of all queries—leading to more searches overall and fueling a surge in ad impressions and clicks.
Along with Overviews, Google has expanded AI Mode, a deeper conversational interface powered by the advanced Gemini 2.5 model. This upgrade supports complex multi-step questions, detailed research, multimodal queries, and even real-time actions like scheduling calls or making purchases on your behalf—all aimed at making search a true “assistant.”
These AI enhancements helped lift Google’s search revenue by ~12% year-over-year, contributing to Alphabet’s overall Q2 growth. User interaction has also surged, with 2 billion monthly users continuously engaging with AI Overviews, and around 100 million using the richer AI Mode.
For now, the AI boost is a win for Google—lifting engagement and ad revenue. But mounting pressures—from publishers who see traffic decline, and from users wary of errors—mean Google must tread carefully. The company is betting big on AI, boosting its annual infrastructure spending dramatically to support the shift.
For your audience, this signals a major change in how information is found and presented online. The era of search-as-assistant is here—but its broader impact on the web remains uncertain.