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Legend2440today at 5:38 PM6 repliesview on HN

According to Google, users are adopting it. They say AI mode is the most popular feature they've ever introduced, and is driving an increase in total search queries.

>Just one year after its debut, AI Mode has surpassed one billion monthly users, with queries more than doubling every quarter since launch. As people have realized just how much more Search can do for them, they’re searching more than ever before — so much so that last quarter, we saw queries reach an all-time high.

>Another place where we’ve been rapidly innovating is in the Gemini app. Last year at I/O, the Gemini app had 400 million monthly active users. Today, we’ve surpassed 900 million, more than doubling in a year. In that same time, daily requests have grown over seven times.


Replies

Sleakertoday at 7:02 PM

Isnt this essentially just slight of hand? Google basically defaults to AI search now doesn't it? So of course it will be 'fastest adopted' it's what is shoved in peoples faces.

If the results are garbage, or people have difficulty with it... Of course number of searches goes up. That doesn't mean the product is better or its not resulting in brand damage.

dpkirchnertoday at 6:25 PM

These are the same folks that removed the very useful Google cache feature because people weren't using it any more. What they forgot to say is they hid the feature beforehand.

Of course they have more AI queries every day. They have full control over what goes to LLMs and what doesn't.

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mrweaseltoday at 6:01 PM

While I'm not opposed to the idea that Google AI mode is so good that people use it more, I also feel like the average person only have so many queries per day. Google statement would indicate that people had a number of queries that they just opted to ignore, because find the answers was to cumbersome.

I'm not entirely sure I'm buying that, unless users keep prompting the AI to reduce the amount of reading they need to do. Sort of interrogating the AI, rather than reading a Wikipedia page.

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gazebo2today at 5:50 PM

I mean, "AI Mode" is the default result when you Google something, so of course they're seeing high usage. Driving an increase in total queries is probably because instead of just Googling something and getting the right results like it was 10~ years ago, now you have to interrogate a chatbot or try multiple queries. I would think higher total queries is more an indicator that your search function isn't effective.

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rolphtoday at 7:22 PM

how many of those queries contain keyword groups such as "how do i get rid of the AI search?"

autoexectoday at 5:58 PM

> They say AI mode is the most popular feature they've ever introduced, and is driving an increase in total search queries.

Technically, all the people who google "how do I disable this shitty AI mode in google" would count as "driving an increase in total search queries."

An easy way to make a feature popular is to force it on everyone. Then you can pat yourself on the back when 100% of your users are using it!

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