this post was submitted on 05 Mar 2025
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You knew it was coming: Google begins testing AI-only search results | This version of Google won't show you the 10 blue links at all—Gemini completely takes over the results in AI Mode (arstechnica.com)
submitted 20 hours ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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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.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 19 hours ago (2 children)

Is DuckDuckGo still the best alternative at this point, or has Bing been toiling away in the dark to improve itself?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago)

In terms of result quality? In my opinion, based on my particular search habits:

Kagi > SearXNG > Brave > Startpage/Google > DDG/Ecosia/Bing

Everyone is going to have their own opinions on each of those companies, but from a results lens, that's what I find to be most/least effective.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

DDG uses Bing under the hood for the main results, so it doesn't really matter too much in terms of results.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago)

You can also use Ecosia, if your prefer a different shade of lipstick on your ~~pig~~ search results.