Google is reshaping what happens when people type into the familiar search box—moving beyond a single-line prompt and toward a tighter combination of AI summaries, richer inputs and agent-like search behavior, NPR reported in a story published May 22.
The change NPR described comes first as a user-facing redesign. Google is updating the look of the homepage search box so it can expand as queries get longer, and so people can drop in richer content types, including videos, pictures and files, as part of what Google calls “multimodal” search.
Underneath that visual shift, Google said it is making a bigger operational move by merging AI with traditional web search. Liz Reid, who oversees search at Google, described the direction as a way to combine both approaches, saying it brings “the best of web and the best of AI together.”
Google is not presenting the effort as entirely new. NPR reported that for about a year, Google has put “AI Overviews” at the top of some search results, with Reid saying users have wanted a mix rather than choosing between “just an AI or the web.” She also said she has seen more people ask longer questions in more natural language—“the question that they really have”—instead of using fragments or keywords.
Reid said the company can potentially use those longer, conversational queries to better understand when users are moving from research into buying. In turn, she said that understanding could help Google place more relevant ads, because it can infer shopping intent from the way the question is asked.
Google is also introducing agentic functionality to search, according to NPR. The company said users can ask it to do tasks over time, including searching for theater tickets at regular intervals, sending notifications when shoppers’ interests go on sale, or scanning the internet weekly for local events.
Not everyone views the direction as a gain in clarity or control. Independent technology analyst Carolina Milanesi said Google is trying to make its cash-generating search business richer and more personalized, but she warned that users may have fewer choices about what to click as AI-enabled results increasingly mediate the path to information and products.
Milanesi said the tradeoff could be reduced transparency about how specific recommendations are formed. In her view, if an AI system is effectively searching for a product—rather than returning many links for users to evaluate—people may not know which sources or stores the AI used and whether those sources were paid for, or what due diligence the system performed before selecting what it proposes.
Sarah T. Roberts, director of the Center for Critical Internet Inquiry at UCLA, said Google’s ranking and selection complexity has long been “by design, inscrutable to end users,” and that adding AI may make the system more opaque. She pointed to prior examples of bad outputs from Google’s AI, including guidance to put glue in pizza and eat rocks, saying critics’ concerns about those gaffes should not be forgotten as Google transitions.
Critics also worry that shifting users from conventional web search to AI interactions could worsen a scenario sometimes called “Google Zero.” NPR described that concern as a possible decline in web search referrals that would affect online shops, web advertisers and news organizations that rely on Google-driven traffic.
NPR reported that while the redesigned box will look the same for all Google users, there are online “tricks and tips” meant to help people disable or avoid some AI functions when using Google.
Google said it is a financial supporter of NPR.