AI Mode Is Now Replacing Google Search: More AI Crap to Deal With
Google Search is going to be even more annoying for the end user as it gets more AI crap, and AI Mode will take over your entire Google Search soon. This means no direct website links will be shown once you click on the AI Overview button. This will take you directly to the AI Mode.
Today’s Google announcement is a massive overhaul to the Search experience, fundamentally changing how we interact with the web. The headline? Gemini 3 is now the default engine powering AI Overviews globally, and the barrier between a static search result and a dynamic conversation has been dissolved.
For decades, search engines were built on a transactional model: you input a query, the engine gives you a list of links, and you leave. This was simple until AI carp came and took over your simplicity.
Google says we aren’t just looking for the weather or sports scores anymore; we are looking for advice, complex planning, and deep-dive research. NO, not really.
According to Google’s latest update, the vision is to make exploring information “effortless.”
“People come to Search for an incredibly wide range of questions… for complex questions or tasks where you need to explore a topic deeply, you should be able to seamlessly tap into a powerful conversational AI experience.” – Robby Stein VP of Product, Google Search
The problem is we are blindly trusting AI. What we have known since the advent of AI is that it loves to hallucinate and make stuff up all the time.
The End of the Open Web? Google’s “AI Mode” Update is a Publisher’s Nightmare
For publishers, if you rely on Google Search for traffic, revenue, or simply to get your content seen, today’s announcement should send a chill down your spine. Google unveiled what they call a “seamless new Search experience” powered by Gemini 3.
They call it “effortless.” I call it the most aggressive move yet to cannibalize the open web and destroy the digital media ecosystem.
Google is no longer hiding its intentions. With this update, they are fundamentally altering the deal between the search engine and the content creator. The era of the “ten blue links” isn’t just fading; with this update, Google is actively burying it behind a wall of AI-generated synthesis that is designed to ensure users never leave Google’s ecosystem.
The “AI Mode” Trap: How It Works
Google’s VP of Product, Robby Stein, describes the update as a way to “seamlessly tap into a powerful conversational AI experience.” Let’s translate that into reality for users.
Previously, AI Overviews (AIO) pushed organic results down. Now, the new interface actively removes them.
Here is the alarming user flow introduced today:
- The Hook: A user sees an AI Overview powered by the new, more capable Gemini 3.
- The Trap: If the user clicks “Show more” within the overview, they are literally taken out of Search. The traditional organic results—the links to your websites—disappear. You cannot scroll past the AIO to find the source.
- The Lock-In: If the user types a query into the “Ask anything” field or clicks a follow-up question, they are transported directly into AI Mode.
This is not a search engine anymore. It is a retention engine. By moving users from the results page (SERP) into a conversational interface, Google effectively severs the lifeline of traffic to the outside web.
Google is proudly touting that Gemini 3 is now the default model for these overviews globally. While tech enthusiasts might cheer for “frontier AI capabilities,” users should see this for what it is: a more efficient scraping engine.
Gemini 3 is designed to answer “complex questions” and allow users to “explore a topic deeply” without ever clicking a link. The better the AI gets at summarizing your hard work, the less reason a user has to visit your site.
This isn’t about helpfulness; it’s about theft-based plagiarism. The model trains on the content created by journalists, bloggers, and researchers, synthesizes it, and presents it as its own answer. It is a disinformation-riddled, zero-click machine that extracts value from the web while providing nothing in return.
AI Hallucinates
The integration of Gemini 3 as the default model globally introduces a massive risk of AI hallucination.
- Confident Lies: Generative AI is notorious for stating falsehoods with absolute confidence. By prioritizing these AI summaries over sourced articles, Google is elevating “truthiness” over truth.
- The Disinformation Feedback Loop: When Gemini 3 hallucinates facts—inventing quotes, dates, or events—it presents this disinformation directly to the user as the final answer. The user has no easy way to verify this because the actual sources are buried or removed from the view.
- Brand Damage: Worse yet, these hallucinations are often loosely attributed to real publishers. Your brand could be cited as the source for a claim that Google’s AI invented out of thin air.
Conclusion
We need to stop pretending this is just another algorithm update. Google is pivoting from being a signpost that points users to destinations to being the destination itself.
By automating the extraction of knowledge and hiding the sources behind “Show more” buttons and “AI Mode” transitions, Google is dismantling the incentive structure of the web. It is bad news for sites that enjoy traffic, and it is catastrophic news for the future of independent media.
