At Google I/O 2026, Alphabet rewrites search playbook, unveils Gemini 3.5 Flash


For many of the web age, Google’s search field has remained the identical. That period, Google introduced on Tuesday (Might 19, 2026), is over as the corporate is rolling out what it calls the largest improve to its Search interface in over two and half a long time. 

The brand new interface will get an AI-powered enter field that dynamically expands because the person varieties. The search bar, that used to autocomplete textual content, will be capable of settle for photographs, information, movies, and even open Chrome browser tabs as inputs. This new interface will start to roll out from at the moment in all nations the place Google AI Mode is at the moment out there.

The purpose has at all times been to assist individuals “ask something in your thoughts — from fast information to the deep, advanced or hyper-specific questions that may be arduous to articulate,” Elizabeth Reid, Google’s VP of Search, stated in an official weblog publish.

“AI Mode has surpassed one billion month-to-month customers, with queries greater than doubling each quarter since launch.”

Google launched AI Mode roughly a 12 months in the past and the function has already crossed a billion month-to-month lively customers, with queries greater than doubling every quarter. In the newest quarter, general Google Search queries hit an all-time excessive.

Data brokers

At this 12 months’s developer convention, the search big additionally unveiled what it calls “info brokers” — persistent, background processes that repeatedly scan the net, social media, information retailers, finance information, and real-time sources on the person’s behalf, and alerts them when one thing related surfaces. 

It is a vital departure from Search as a reactive device. As an alternative of asking a query and ready for a solution, with the brand new interface, customers will be capable of enable brokers search after which obtain synthesised updates. 

Google stated that these brokers might be first made out there to the Google AI Professional and Extremely subscribers within the coming months.

Aside from bots that may scan the net in your behalf, the corporate additionally stated its search service can now deal with the complete arc of organising a neighborhood expertise by pulling reside pricing and availability and providing direct hyperlinks to finish the reserving. For providers like residence restore, magnificence, or pet care, Google stated it can even telephone companies on customers’ behalf. These options are set to roll out broadly throughout the U.S. first.

Google’s infrastructure is on the core of this large service improve.

Token progress

Two years in the past, Google’s AI programs have been processing 9.7 trillion tokens per 30 days throughout its merchandise. By final 12 months’s I/O, that had grown to 480 trillion. Immediately, the determine stands at over 3.2 quadrillion, a sevenfold improve in a single 12 months. 

Internally, Google stated it’s processing greater than three trillion tokens per day by its developer instruments alone, and CEO Sundar Pichai, in his keynote, stated that quantity has been doubling each few weeks.

The Gemini app has additionally seen spectacular progress from roughly 400 million month-to-month lively customers, ultimately 12 months’s I/O, to over 900 million this 12 months. Greater than 8.5 million builders now construct with Google’s AI fashions month-to-month, and the Gemini API processes roughly 19 billion tokens per minute.

Gemini 3.5 Flash is now the default mannequin in AI Mode globally. Google has positioned it as working in a category of its personal for the mixture of frontier-level intelligence and output velocity as the corporate claims it produces responses 4 occasions sooner than comparable frontier fashions.

Characteristic upgrades

On YouTube, the search big is planning to roll out ‘Ask YouTube’ function that may let US-based YouTube Premium subscribers to orally question the platform for particular movies.

Google can also be including a dose of AI to its Docs app with a ‘Stay’ function.Customers can basically “mind dump” verbally into Google Docs, Gmail, or Google Preserve, and Gemini will organise and construction the content material. It’s designed for the way in which many individuals truly suppose and arrives for Google AI subscribers this summer time.

With Private Intelligence, customers can even be capable of search and draw contextual info from their Gmail and Google Photographs apps. The corporate says this function might be launched in its calendar app and that the service might be expanded globally and throughout 98 languages.

Revealed – Might 20, 2026 11:56 am IST