Google has become so integral to online navigation that its name became a verb, meaning “to find things on the Internet.” Soon, Google might just tell you what’s on the Internet instead of showing you. The company has announced an expansion of its AI search features, powered by Gemini 2.0. Everyone will soon see more AI Overviews at the top of the results page, but Google is also testing a more substantial change in the form of AI Mode. This version of Google won’t show you the 10 blue links at all—Gemini completely takes over the results in AI Mode.

This marks the debut of Gemini 2.0 in Google search. Google announced the first Gemini 2.0 models in December 2024, beginning with the streamlined Gemini 2.0 Flash. The heavier versions of Gemini 2.0 are still in testing, but Google says it has tuned AI Overviews with this model to offer help with harder questions in the areas of math, coding, and multimodal queries.

With this update, you will begin seeing AI Overviews on more results pages, and minors with Google accounts will see AI results for the first time. In fact, even logged out users will see AI Overviews soon. This is a big change, but it’s only the start of Google’s plans for AI search.

Gemini 2.0 also powers the new AI Mode for search. It’s launching as an opt-in feature via Google’s Search Labs, offering a totally new alternative to search as we know it. This custom version of the Gemini large language model (LLM) skips the standard web links that have been part of every Google search thus far.

  • oh_
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    2712 days ago

    AI is over hyped and doesn’t need to be shoved in our faces. Ugh.

    • @kautau@lemmy.world
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      1011 days ago

      It’s another tech bubble like the dot com bubble. But at this point, the AI bubble, the crypto bubble, and the capitalism bubble will all crash at the same time as the world economy falls apart and we end up in another global war. I guess the accelerationists that survive will get their wish and see what remains and if it’s the neofuedalist white supremacy utopia they dream of

  • @Rooty@lemmy.world
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    3111 days ago

    I’m decrepit enough to remember pre-Google web, with competing search engines. Bring back webrings!

  • @werefreeatlast@lemmy.world
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    112 days ago

    Microsoft doesn’t want to end up like Google. Fuck that company! One way you can tell is on outlook…which I use with a proper 10’ pole on my work computer only. Fuck no, never at home ever ever… Have you ever received an email on outlook and just saw the title or maybe you read halfway through and got interrupted?.. Where the fuck is it now? Its gone! Sure you could go email by email and try to be your own search engine. But its no use, whatever Tim was talking about with the over pressured valve at the Central boiler, blah blah you should let people know to exit the blah blah, otherwise 3rd degree bur…yeah that shit’s gone. Might as well write your own email to finish the story. See, Microsoft doesn’t want to be like Google at all. On my 14.9992G full gmail, I was always able to go find out what Amazon offer I got 8 years ago. Look 404! Yeah that’s it! 404! With Gemini spying on my every move that’s gotta stop. It’s gonna try to learn my porn habits. I’m gonna go search for all the wrong porn on purpose.

    • @null_dot@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      1511 days ago

      I was with kagi for a year.

      It was fine.

      Their CEO is an asshole though. There was that thing where he went a bit nutty over some mild criticism. I don’t remember the details.

      Anyhoo. Searx is nice for the moment.

      • @arcterus@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        311 days ago

        I feel like Kagi, after tuning, provides the best results at the moment (even including Google sometimes). You definitely need to tune it though since the default results are not that great. Agree about their CEO. TBH, at this point, I also wish they weren’t based in the US.

        It’s been a few years since I last tried Searx, but I remember the results being pretty bad. Has it gotten better?

        • @null_dot@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          111 days ago

          Searx just proxies other engines, so the results are the same as the upstream results.

          I’ve never really had a problem with results from any engine TBH.

          The main thing I’ve learned over the last few years with Searx is that some instances are terrible while others are great. Some are slow, and often get blocked and take days for the admin to get a new IP or whatever. Right now I’m using perennialte.ch and it’s been great. They also redirect results at reddit to an alternative frontend which is a nice touch.

    • @Rooty@lemmy.world
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      111 days ago

      You Kagi shills never give up, do you? Also, information wants to be free, hack the planet yadda yadda.

    • @mint_tamas@lemmy.world
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      1912 days ago

      The weirdest thing about switching to kagi was learning that the first few results have a good chance of being relevant. I got so used to scrolling down after a search. It was just weird to have the useful results on top. Similarly, learning that search syntax is actually meaningful and respected by the search engine (for the majority of cases).

      • @andsens@lemmy.world
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        411 days ago

        I love that the search results end. Like, “nah bruv, that’s it, and I’m not going to make shit up to get you to click ads”

    • @TheGoddessAnoia@lemmy.ca
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      211 days ago

      I’m interested, but a bit reluctant. I find DuckDuckGo quite adequate for most things, except shopping online, something that I have to rely on for certain categories of items. How is Kagi on shopping?

      • @null@slrpnk.net
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        111 days ago

        I’ve been using Kagi for a bit. If I search for things one can buy, I get results similar to Google.

        What have you found lacking in DDG for online shopping?

        • @TheGoddessAnoia@lemmy.ca
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          111 days ago

          It seems to take more keywords to home in on the kind of speciality items I look for, and does not always appear to detect connections between those keywords, for example in trying to find certain kind of veterinary support devices made to national specifications. One of the other commentors says Kagi is okay for shopping, so maybe I’ll give it a whirl because I’d love to be free of Google once and for all.

      • @arcterus@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        211 days ago

        Shopping online locally or just finding certain items? It’s not great locally because it doesn’t seem to use your location for searches (which is good IMO), but it’s usually been fine for me if I’m just looking for something I want to buy. Note that you need to tune the results for them to be good (you can adjust site rankings for yourself).

  • @ShittyBeatlesFCPres@lemmy.world
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    412 days ago

    Alphabet/Google needs to fire their CEO. He’s an obvious idiot, not good with employees, not good with investors, and not good at lobbying. That’s like 99% of a CEO’s job. Just get rid of him and Google’s stock price will probably jump 20%.

  • @GaMEChld@lemmy.world
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    911 days ago

    I mean their search results have gone to absolute shit anyway, the AI is probably better at this point.

    • @Rooty@lemmy.world
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      411 days ago

      My coworker who has an absolute hard-on for ChatGPT has tried several times in vain to get it to say the correct answer to a question I knew the answer to. LLMs are bullshit engines and toys for the malicious.

  • @Delta_V@lemmy.world
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    -912 days ago

    this sounds like what Google wanted to be since its inception: ask a question, get an answer

    somewhere along the journey, the reality of needing to make money drove the enshitification of search results: ask a question, get offers to sell you an answer

    this seems like a step in a better direction

    • Baggins [he/him]
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      1012 days ago

      Right because when I search for factual information what I really want is an LLM to tell me “sorry Dave I can’t answer that question right now.” (See: any election related information. As in it doesn’t just kick you back to the web search results it just straight up refuses to give you the answer.)

      • @Thistlewick@lemmynsfw.com
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        912 days ago

        It baffles me how wholly some people are just accepting the complete erosion of the internet. I have lecturers at university, so theoretically educated people, who tell us point blank to plug any questions we have about weekly topics into ChatGPT. The respect I have for these teachers and their content is less than zero at this point.

        • Baggins [he/him]
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          112 days ago

          Lmao I’d be going to their office hours with a list of questions just for that

        • Chris
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          12 days ago

          Then you have to check those answers, so you need to search for an authoritative source anyway… which means you need a regular search engine. At that point you may as well have used the search engine in the first place.

          If Google does this, you’ll need to find an alternative search engine to check Google against… so you may as well just switch to a different search engine in the first place.

          There are things that LLMs are good at, being a search engine isn’t one of them. Although I have asked searchy type questions and got some interesting links back which I probably wouldn’t have found on a normal web search with the terms I was using, so they can be useful as a supplementary search tool. I’d rather that than it just giving the answers, which then need to be fact checked elsewhere.

          • @uranibaba@lemmy.world
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            312 days ago

            At that point you may as well have used the search engine in the first place.

            I was going to respond to this but I think you did so yourself:

            I have asked searchy type questions and got some interesting links back which I probably wouldn’t have found on a normal web search with the terms I was using

            I think they work as supplements and not replacements. As any tool, they have their use and (for me) can enhance my searching. But I would not replace it with only LLM. (Altough I have never had any great luck with ChatGPT and links, they never work - as in ChatGPT give me an anchor element without any link. It’s better at providing me search terms and concepts to look up for what I need.)

    • AbsentBird
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      110 days ago

      I don’t get what they gain out of this, doesn’t it remove the sponsored results? Or will people pay to nudge AI weights to recommend their products?

      • @werefreeatlast@lemmy.world
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        410 days ago

        Example:

        How do you make the best cookies diy?

        …the new Nabisco Cookies can be crushed to a fine powder mixed…

        What are other non-nabisco cookies I can cook?

        …Nestle chocolate chip cookies of course!

    • StarDreamer
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      1510 days ago

      Nope. Plenty of people want this.

      In the last few years I’ve seen plenty of cases where CS undergrad students get stumped if ChatGPT is unable to debug/explain a question to them. I’ve literally heard “idk because ChatGPT can’t explain this lisp code” as an excuse during office hours.

      Before LLMs, there were also a significant amount of people who used GitHub issues/discord to ask simple application usage questions instead of Googling. There seems to be a significant decrease of people’s willingness to search for an answer regardless of AI tools existing.

      I wonder if it has to do with weaker reading comprehension skills?

      • @4Robato@lemmy.world
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        10 days ago

        I think it’s simply that getting a direct answer is easier than reading different forums with different views and come up with your idea. That doesn’t mean people want google search to stop searching. We have gemini, if I want to use gemini I can go to gemini. I don’t get why everything has to be AI. We can have multiple tools, not everything out there is a nail.

        • StarDreamer
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          10 days ago

          Somehow I disagree with both the premise and the conclusion here.

          I dislike a direct answer to things as it discourages understanding. What is the default memory allocation mechanism in glibc malloc? I could get the answer sbrk() and mmap() and call it a day, but I find understanding when it uses mmap instead of sbrk (since sbrk isn’t numa aware but mmap is) way more useful for future questions.

          Meanwhile, Google adding a tab for AI search is helpful for people who want to use just AI search. It doesn’t take much away from people doing traditional web searches. Why be mad about this instead of the other true questionable decisions Google is doing?

          • @4Robato@lemmy.world
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            10 days ago

            First of all, as long as it doesn’t replace search I’m fine with more options, I don’t like when a company forces me stuff, that’s it. I just think this is pointing to a future where search disappears and I don’t quite like that.

            You might dislike a direct answer but young people don’t. The design of the applications can encourage certain types of behaviors, can spread misinformation and promote racism as we have seen in many social media now.

            Things like Instagram and TikTok stress me out by the speed they show content and I could conclude no one will use those but then you see the new generations and how they even listen to music there, just the chorus of a song and go to the next one. This way of consuming information is being promoted by how the apps are designed; it is no coincidence that depression is increasing among young people.

            You can say that in principle people can use more responsibly this types of social media, but that’s not the reality when we have algorithms trying to maximize the time we spend on the phone. Also, how do you know that companies don’t add biases to LLMs? Turns out Gorg (the LLM on twitter) they have added to the prompt to not criticize Elon or Trump. That’s the current problems of LLMs is that we don’t have context and even if there is context, if you have to put effort into it people won’t do it. This happens to scientific articles where people never check the sources, imagine with other stuff…

            I honestly like LLMs and I think they are fascinating and very useful in a lot of situations! And efforts like Perplexity gives me a bit more faith than google just throwing an LLM that suggests to eat rocks. And while you might see that eating rocks shouldn’t be done, there’s this bias that can be build behind any LLM that affects in a way that will be hard to avoid or notice. Same way current algorithms affects us more than we think they do and polarizes opinions.

            I mean will see where this goes, I just want companies to take the matter seriously.

  • @peregrin5@lemm.ee
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    512 days ago

    I noticed Edge would only show me corporate/authority friendly results recently as well oddly cutting down the number of results I see to a very unnaturally short amount of results.

    Deleting it and moving to DuckDuckGo which while the corporate friendly things were still at the top, it at least showed me some opposition results.

    • @RvTV95XBeo@sh.itjust.works
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      212 days ago

      Guessing Edge by default sent you to Bing, no surprise the DDG results look similar, given that they use Bing under he hood. They shuffle rankings slightly, but it’s the same index.

  • Computerchairgeneral
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    1412 days ago

    Thanks Google, I hate it. At least the udm=14 trick and website still works, at least until google decides to stop supporting that feature. Definitely going to be using that more and more if this becomes the default google experience.