Search is the most-used AI product in the world
Por primera vez en un cuarto de siglo, Google ha rediseñado el corazón de su motor de búsqueda, integrando inteligencia artificial conversacional donde antes reinaba la simplicidad del texto. Este cambio, presentado en la conferencia I/O desde Mountain View, no es solo una actualización técnica: es el reconocimiento de que la manera en que los seres humanos formulan preguntas ha evolucionado profundamente, volviéndose más larga, más visual y más cercana al diálogo natural. Google apuesta a que, al transformar su caja de búsqueda en un interlocutor inteligente, podrá mantenerse como el puente principal entre las personas y el conocimiento en una era donde esa posición ya no está garantizada.
- Google enfrenta una amenaza existencial: los chatbots de IA responden preguntas directamente, erosionando la razón por la que millones visitan su buscador cada día.
- La respuesta es radical — la caja de búsqueda más reconocida del mundo desaparece tal como la conocíamos, reemplazada por una interfaz que acepta texto, imágenes, videos, archivos e incluso pestañas abiertas en Chrome.
- Dos funciones separadas, AI Overviews y AI Mode, se fusionan en una sola experiencia unificada, eliminando la fragmentación que confundía a los usuarios.
- El despliegue es inmediato y global: todos los países y dispositivos donde AI Mode ya existe recibirán el cambio, alcanzando a miles de millones de personas en poco tiempo.
- Sundar Pichai lo enmarca como una evolución inevitable — los usuarios llevan tres años haciendo búsquedas más largas, por voz y con multimedia, y Google declara que está reorganizando su producto central alrededor de esa nueva realidad.
Google rediseñó su caja de búsqueda por primera vez en 25 años, presentando el cambio en su conferencia I/O de desarrolladores en Mountain View. La nueva interfaz, impulsada por el modelo de inteligencia artificial Gemini 3.5 Flash, abandona las sugerencias de autocompletado que guiaron a los usuarios durante décadas y las reemplaza con recomendaciones generadas por IA que responden al lenguaje natural, conversacional y a veces desordenado con el que las personas realmente hacen preguntas.
Liz Reid, vicepresidenta y directora general de Google Search, describió el rediseño como una herramienta que pone el poder de la IA directamente en manos del usuario. Lo verdaderamente novedoso es la amplitud de lo que acepta: texto, imágenes, videos, archivos y hasta pestañas abiertas en el navegador Chrome. Al mismo tiempo, Google fusionó dos funciones que existían por separado —AI Overviews y AI Mode— en una única interfaz consolidada, disponible de inmediato en todos los países y dispositivos donde AI Mode ya operaba.
El contexto detrás del cambio es estratégico. Sundar Pichai, director ejecutivo de Alphabet, reconoció que en los últimos tres años los usuarios han migrado hacia búsquedas más largas, por voz y con contenido multimedia, impulsados por el auge de la IA. Más importante aún, Google enfrenta una competencia real de chatbots capaces de responder preguntas directamente, sin necesidad de que el usuario navegue entre enlaces. Al convertir su caja de búsqueda en algo más cercano a un interlocutor inteligente, Google apuesta a retener a sus usuarios dentro de su ecosistema y a demostrar que puede evolucionar tan rápido como cambian las expectativas de quienes lo usan.
Google has redesigned its search box for the first time in a quarter century, and the change is fundamental. The company announced the overhaul at its I/O developer conference, unveiling a search interface powered by Gemini 3.5 Flash, its latest artificial intelligence model. The new box abandons the familiar autocomplete suggestions that have guided searchers for decades, replacing them with AI-driven recommendations that respond to the way people actually ask questions—longer, messier, more conversational.
Liz Reid, who leads Google Search as vice president and general manager, described the shift from the outdoor amphitheater at the company's Mountain View headquarters. "The intelligent search box puts our most powerful AI tools in your hands, making it easier to ask questions," she said. The redesign is built to expand and adapt to what each user needs, allowing people to describe what they're looking for in natural language rather than the keyword-based queries that have defined search since the beginning.
What makes this redesign genuinely different is how it handles information. The new search box accepts text, images, videos, files, and even open Chrome tabs as input. You can ask a question while showing Google a picture, or search across multiple types of media at once. The system understands context in ways the old autocomplete never could. Behind the scenes, Google is consolidating two separate features—AI Overviews, which summarize search results, and AI Mode, which it introduced last year—into a single unified interface. This consolidated view will roll out globally across both phones and computers wherever Google's AI Mode is currently available.
Sundar Pichai, the chief executive of Alphabet, Google's parent company, framed this evolution as a response to how people's search behavior has shifted. Over the past three years, as artificial intelligence has become mainstream, users have begun making longer queries, asking more questions by voice, and incorporating images and videos into their searches. "Search is the most-used AI product in the world and it's being used more than ever," Pichai said during a roundtable with journalists. "We're evolving hard to stay a step ahead of where users want us to be."
The stakes are significant. Google's search business generates the vast majority of its revenue, and the company faces real competition from AI chatbots that can answer questions directly without requiring users to sift through ranked links. By embedding its most powerful AI into the search box itself, Google is betting that people will stay within its ecosystem rather than migrate to alternatives. The rollout will begin immediately in all countries and languages where AI Mode already exists, which means the change will reach billions of people relatively quickly. What was once a simple text field has become something closer to a conversational partner, and that shift reflects a deeper truth: the way we ask machines for information is changing, and Google is reorganizing itself around that reality.
Citações Notáveis
The intelligent search box puts our most powerful AI tools in your hands, making it easier to ask questions— Liz Reid, Vice President and General Manager of Google Search
Search is the most-used AI product in the world and it's being used more than ever. We're evolving hard to stay a step ahead of where users want us to be— Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet
A Conversa do Hearth Outra perspectiva sobre a história
Why does Google need to redesign search now? Hasn't the search box worked fine for twenty-five years?
It has worked, but the way people search has changed. They're asking longer questions, using their voice more, showing Google pictures and videos. The old autocomplete was built for short keywords. It can't handle that.
So this is just about making search faster or more accurate?
It's bigger than that. AI chatbots like ChatGPT can answer questions directly without Google. If Google doesn't embed AI into search itself, people might stop using Google altogether. This redesign is about keeping people inside Google's world.
What does it actually feel like to use the new search box?
You can type a long, messy question the way you'd ask a friend. You can attach a photo, a video, a file. Google understands all of it at once. The suggestions it gives you aren't just keywords—they're AI-powered guesses about what you actually want.
And this is rolling out everywhere at once?
Everywhere Google's AI Mode already exists, which is most of the world. So billions of people will see this change very soon.
What happens to the old way of searching—the links, the rankings?
It doesn't disappear. But it's no longer the main thing. The AI summary and the conversational interface become the center of the experience. The links are still there, but they're secondary now.