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Google adds new features in Search as AI race intensifies
The tech giant added more GenAI features to AI Mode, and a new business calling system. The updates respond to growing rivalry in AI search from vendors like OpenAI and Perplexity.
Google further expanded its strategy for AI search by including Gemini 2.5 Pro and Deep Search in its longtime market-dominating Google Search platform. This move comes as it continues to face stiff competition from OpenAI, which on Thursday introduced a ChatGPT agent.
The tech giant on July 16 revealed that Google AI Pro and AI Ultra subscribers can now select the Gemini 2.5 Pro multimodal model from a drop-down menu in the AI Mode tab in Search. Subscribers also can now access Deep Search, Google's advanced tool for in-depth research.
Google is also bringing a new agent capability into Search: AI-powered calling to certain local businesses. Users can ask Search to call businesses to get pricing and availability. The business calling feature is now available to all Search users. An automated voice generated by the Google Duplex platform informs businesses that an AI system is calling, and users receive the information by text. Humans will intervene in the process when necessary, according to Google.
The new capabilities in AI Mode and Search are part of Google's continual refinement of its search strategy as generative AI (GenAI) pioneer OpenAI and AI search vendor Perplexity seek to disrupt the cloud provider's dominance. They also arrive in a market in which users are turning to large language models (LLMs) such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT to answer questions rather than using Google as their main tool for search.
"We're going to become increasingly comfortable with AI searching on our behalf, other than us doing the search," said Forrester Research analyst Nikhil Lai.
A day after the Google release, OpenAI launched ChatGPT agent, which enables users to ask ChatGPT to manage personal assistant-like tasks such as planning and buying ingredients for a breakfast, analyzing competitors, booking reservations or creating a slide deck. ChatGPT also has a visual browser that interacts with the web through a graphical UI and a text-based browser for simpler, reasoning-based web questions. Users can connect it to Gmail, GitHub or even direct it to log in to any website and allow it to dig deeper and more broadly.
If the OpenAI agent works as advertised, it would realize some of the potential that Apple, for example, flaunted when it introduced Apple Intelligence just over a year ago. Most of those agentic features aren’t operational yet and it’s unclear when they will be.
Trust and consistency
While ChatGPT agent represents distinct momentum for OpenAI, as the AI vendor and Perplexity continue to erode, if slowly, Google’s dominance in search. However, Google is still a primary trusted resource, and many users return to the search giant when ChatGPT or Perplexity produces a response that seems wrong or suspicious.
"Trust continues to be Google's superpower," Lai said.
Google also has a better reputation among enterprises for consistency with its Gemini GenAI products than Perplexity or OpenAI in terms of making sure its technology performs the same way all the time, regardless of cost, said Bradley Shimmin, an analyst with Futurum Group.
"They have a very generous free tier for developers to entice them to go buy into the Google Cloud platform and put their gravity into that platform going forward, and doing that while still being able to deliver high-quality consistency without a lot of latency is impressive," Shimmin said. He added that Google's ultimate goal is to inculcate users into its overall platform because that's where it makes money. Therefore, it must be consistent with AI Mode to entice enterprise business users.
"Google is anticipating a higher quality and customer engagement with AI Mode," he said. He added that users will engage more with AI Mode because of capabilities such as Deep Search, and the removal of sponsored ad content seen now at the top of traditional search in Google.
Business calling and an unfilled gap
Another capability that sets AI mode apart is the business calling function.
"The new business calling feature is accelerating the path to agentic search and is a way for Google to get users to trust Google to act on their behalf,” Lai said. He added that while business calling currently only searches prices, he anticipates it will soon be able to shop on users' behalf.
"That's really going to be the jack point for Google," Lai said, referring to an inflection point. "This is a step in that direction of mitigating counterparty risks between merchants and consumers and getting consumers comfortable with Google acting on their behalf."
While Google has the expertise and legacy in search and is continually innovating with AI Mode, it still has some gaps that put OpenAI and Perplexity slightly ahead of the search giant in some areas.
One area in which the search giant appears to lag is that it has yet to find a way to develop a shopping capability so that users can directly shop on Google, Lai said. Meanwhile, OpenAI has partnered with Shopify, which could put the GenAI vendor closer than ever to offering a shopping capability directly from ChatGPT.
OpenAI is reportedly also working on a payment checkout system within the AI chatbot.
Meanwhile, French AI startup Mistral introduced new features to its Le Chat chatbot on Thursday. The vendor introduced a deep research mode, which provides fast, structured research reports on complex topics, Mistral said. Le Chat users can also try Mistral’s new voice model, Voxtral, while editing images directly in Le Chat. Other new capabilities include multilingual reasoning and the ability to organize conversations.
Esther Shittu is an Informa TechTarget news writer and podcast host covering AI software and systems.
