If Google Search is becoming Gemini, what’s the point of Gemini?

During the last years, Google I/O has been the scene exclusively for AI announcements, and this year was no different. This time, however, the focus was once again on Google Search, but perhaps not in the way we expected. Instead of addressing long-standing fundamental problems with Search, Google introduced many AI integrations on its marquee search engine, to such an extent that the line between Google Search and Gemini is increasingly difficult to distinguish.

While AI Overviews and AI Mode have been significant additions to Search despite their rocky start, it now appears that Google is merging two products with fundamentally different purposes. That makes one wonder: if Search can now behave like Gemini, what exactly is Gemini supposed to be?

Artificial intelligence has fundamentally changed the way we interact with search engines. Many of us have already started talking more in our consultations, writing longer questions, explaining our perspective, using natural language, and asking follow-up questions. The new unified search box, which brings together the simplicity of conventional search. and AI reasoning — further reduces friction because users no longer have to think about using the right keywords in searches.

The primary search input method has been text, but for a long time we have been able to perform reverse image searches quite successfully. The next logical step is to give it multimodal capability to help you understand and search based on different media types like video and audio, and combine them with your text input. And it’s finally getting smarter by tracking price drops and new product launches in the background and alerting you as soon as it sees something move.

These types of information brokers in Search are really useful, as long as you’re willing to deal with another onslaught of notifications from your search engine. This feature, specifically, is right on the edge that differentiates Search from Gemini.

Search is supposed to have a very specific function: search the web and display direct links that match the query. Gemini, on the other hand, also has access to the entire World Wide Web and all the information on it, but its job goes a couple steps further: understanding that information and explaining it to me in a way that I understand. AI Summaries and AI mode partially took over that work within Search, but Gemini’s separate identity was unaffected through its multimodal capabilities, built-in generative tools, and integration across Google Workspace.

Only now Google Search is inheriting quite a bit of those generative abilities. In addition to allowing you to ask follow-up questions, Search has now borrowed agent coding capabilities from Gemini, allowing you to create interactive elements from scratch to help you better understand a topic. Google didn’t stop there. It went a step further and introduced the ability to create stateful applets within Search, allowing you to create dynamic layouts, dashboards, and interactive widgets for long-term projects like home makeovers or wedding planning.

Helpful, sure, but Google Search no longer pulls information for you. Instead, it’s about building things from scratch, setting up workflows, and managing persistent projects. When I think about these capabilities, my mind gravitates toward using Gemini and not Search. If I want to explain a complex topic through tools and interactive elements, Search would honestly be the last place I would expect to search for something like this.

This haphazard implementation creates an overlap between two of Google’s most used products. It’s almost as if Google is inadvertently making Search its true AI assistant, even though Gemini exists as its own app and brand.

We understand their respective purposes: Search has always been the tool for finding new things and getting quick answers, while Gemini is more involved in things like planning, reasoning, generating, and executing. I frequently use Gemini to replace some mundane tasks in my workflow. While I understand that AI would naturally blur some boundaries, that shouldn’t change the fundamental role of each product, and currently it appears that Google is pushing both Search and Gemini in the same direction, with the same end goal.

I came away from the Google I/O presentation confused and I’m sure many users will be too. Right now, if my mind is buzzing with a question, the most I know is whether it’s intended for Search or Gemini, depending on the type of result I want. If I’m looking to buy a pair of sneakers that I saw somewhere, I would go to Search to find the brand’s website. If I wanted to understand what makes sneakers so comfortable, I would direct my question to Gemini. With the lines blurred, I spent more time wondering which tool would be best for the task at hand than interacting with it and getting my answers before continuing.

In my view, Google is blatantly ignoring a brand advantage it has. Instead of letting Search do all the generative work, why not leave those tasks to Gemini? In this way, Search does what it was created to do: discovery, while Gemini manages the planning and execution part. This middle ground does not dilute the individual identity of any of the products and also saves us from remembering dozens of tool names within Search: AI mode, AI overviews, etc.

Having covered Google for so long, I already know that it’s not going to make things that simple, at least not before I hit a roadblock. But I’ll still ask for it.

When Google has been pushing the Gemini brand for the last few years literally everywhere, while essentially turning its most popular product, Search, into Gemini, why not fully commit to that transition and call it Gemini Search? And if Search is capable of handling everything Gemini can handle (which it evidently now does), then what was the point of a separate Gemini brand in the first place?

Google Search has transformed in recent years almost as quickly as AI has, and that speed has not only magnified existing problems but also introduced new ones. Today, Google Search is plagued by SEO-optimized spam and AI-generated content that has reduced confidence in the quality of results so much that we often resort to adding “Reddit” to our queries just to get real answers from real humans.

It wasn’t long ago that AI results were severely criticized for creating a complete mess in your summaries. Some of them even endangered human lives by equating parachutes with simple backpacks. While those issues have diminished considerably, Google is now turning Search into a full-fledged, full-speed AI platform. Instead of fixing the experience of what is literally the storefront of the Internet, Google is simply overlaying it with AI, hoping you won’t notice the crumbling foundation beneath.

It’s pretty obvious that Google wants AI to be everywhere, but the real problem is that Gemini and Search now seem like two interpretations of the same central idea. And with that overlap increasing from now on, it’s getting harder and harder to understand why Google wants the two to exist separately. Google should kill one of these services or let them reach their own individual potential; I don’t see any other way out.