For over two decades, “Google it” has been the default way to find answers online. Now that dominance is being tested by a new wave of AI tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and upstarts such as Perplexity, which deliver conversational answers instead of a list of links. These disruptors are being cast as a mortal threat to Google Search, long the undisputed king of the internet.
But on Wednesday, Google CEO Sundar Pichai delivered a powerful counter-narrative, armed with staggering new data that suggests the AI “threat” is actually making its core product stronger than ever. The story Google is telling is not one of defense, but of offense. Far from cannibalizing its search business, AI is encouraging people to search more, ask new kinds of questions, and engage more deeply with the platform.
“We see AI powering an expansion in how people are searching for and accessing information, unlocking completely new kinds of questions you can ask Google,” Pichai said in remarks for the company’s Q2 earnings call. “Overall queries and commercial queries on Search continued to grow year over year. And our new AI experiences significantly contributed to this increase in usage.”
Pichai revealed that the company’s new AI features are now driving “over 10% more queries globally” for the types of searches that show them, a clear sign that AI is expanding the pie, not just slicing it differently.
A Two-Pronged Attack
At the heart of Google’s strategy is a two-pronged approach designed to serve both casual users and power users simultaneously.
The first approach is AI Overviews, the AI-generated summaries that now appear at the top of many search results. This feature has been rolled out at a massive scale, now serving, Pichai claims, over 2 billion monthly users across more than 200 countries and territories. It’s the mainstream integration designed to make everyday search faster and more efficient for the masses.
The second axis is AI Mode, an end-to-end conversational search experience for more complex and nuanced questions. While still rolling out, this power-user tool has already attracted, the CEO says, over 100 million monthly active users in the U.S. and India. This is Google’s direct answer to the advanced capabilities of its new competitors—ChatGPT and Perplexity— offering a space for deeper exploration within Google ecosystem.
Winning the Next Generation
According to Google, this evolution of search is resonating most strongly with the users who will define the next decade of the internet: young people. Pichai emphasized that the growth in new search behaviors, particularly multimodal search—using tools like Google Lens or Circle to Search to ask questions with images—was “most pronounced among younger users.” By integrating AI in a way that feels intuitive and powerful to a generation that has grown up with visual communication, Google wants to make sure it stays relevant.
... continue reading