Yesterday Google dropped 22 AI updates at I/O, and the very first one is the biggest change to Google Search in 25 years. I watched the breakdown twice because the scope is honestly wild. The creator behind this walkthrough went through every single update, and a few of them quietly flip how we use Google forever.
The twist? Search isn’t search anymore. The expert explains that the new Google search box behaves like ChatGPT or Gemini. You can type long prompts, upload videos, files, and images as context, pick a Gemini model, and flip on AI mode by default. Googling just became prompting.
🛠️ The mini-workflow the author walked through
- Open the new Google search box and treat it like a prompt, not a keyword field.
- Hit the plus sign to attach a video, image, or file for richer context.
- Pick your Gemini model (3.5 Flash for speed, 3.5 Pro for reasoning when it lands next month).
- Toggle AI mode to get generative visual answers, with interactive charts, widgets, and even mini apps built on the fly.
- Hand off the bigger jobs to Gemini Sparks, the personal agent running across Gmail, Docs, Calendar, and YouTube.
📦 The model drops worth knowing
- Gemini 3.5 Flash: faster, cheaper, and according to the original poster, actually beats the current 3.1 Pro. Four times faster than the previous frontier model.
- Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite: even quicker for lightweight tasks.
- Gemini 3.5 Pro: arrives next month, expected to challenge Claude and ChatGPT’s top models head-on.
- Google Omni: a multimodal model that generates video first, then lets you edit it with follow-up prompts. The mind behind it sees this as the creative centerpiece for Flow.
🤖 The agent layer is the real story
The creator highlights how Google is layering agents over everything you already do.
- Information Agents: Google Alerts rebuilt with frontier models, pinging you only when something truly matches your ask.
- Booking with Google: tell search the price, time, place, and vibe, and it surfaces direct booking links. It can even call businesses for you, think home repair quotes handled hands-free.
- Universal Cart: your shopping cart follows you across Search, YouTube, Gemini, and Gmail, tracking price drops, restocks, and compatibility.
- Gemini Sparks: a personal agent rolling out this week on the AI Ultra plan, working across the Google ecosystem.
- Daily Brief: a personalized morning digest pulled from Gmail and Calendar, suggesting what to tackle next.
🎙️ Voice creeps into Workspace
The author points out that voice is now baked into core apps. Gmail Live lets you ask your inbox questions out loud, like details about your next flight. Docs Live lets you talk out a draft while Gemini pulls in context from Drive, Gmail, and Chat (only when you grant permission). Google Keep finally gets voice notes that clean themselves up. AI Inbox in Gmail sorts what’s important, what’s time-sensitive, and what can wait, all without changing your layout.
🎨 Creative tools level up
Google Pics is the new home for image generation and editing, powered by Nano Banana. Google Flow now hosts Omni for video, Veo for cinematic shots, and Nano Banana for stills, with Flow Music adding generative audio to Android and iOS soon. Anti-Gravity 2.0 brings vibe coding back with a refreshed autonomous agent for developers.
📺 The YouTube shift to watch closely
Ask YouTube turns the search bar into a prompt box that returns direct answers with deep links to exact video moments. The original poster, who has been making how-to videos for nearly nine years, flagged this as a double-edged sword. Great for users, potentially rough for watch time on tutorial channels. Worth thinking about if you create content.
📱 Android Halo, quietly important
Android Halo is a new interface that shows what your agent is doing live. As agents handle more background work, you need a window into their actions, similar to tracking an Uber driver. This is the UX pattern other platforms will likely copy.
💡 Pro tip from the walkthrough
The contributor suggests leaving Gemini 3.5 Flash as your default model right now. It’s fast, cheap, and apparently beats the current Pro tier. Save 3.5 Pro for when it lands and you need deep reasoning. And if you build with Gemini, Flash is the sweet spot for cost and quality.
My honest reaction: the search box change is the one I keep thinking about. Twenty-five years of Googling habits, gone in one update. The agent layer is impressive, but the prompt-style search is what reshapes everyday behavior.
👉 Check out the full video for the live demos, the model comparisons, and the author’s take on which updates matter most for builders versus everyday users.