Google announced its biggest changes to the search bar in years at Google I/O 2026 on Tuesday, with the refreshed search engine running on the new Gemini 3.5 Flash model and accommodating longer conversational queries, with users now able to create “agents” that track or research topics over time (such as monitoring announcements from favorite athletes for sneaker collab drops) and generate custom visuals and mini apps in response to certain requests. The company also introduced Spark, a new mode within Gemini that can work autonomously on long-running tasks like monitoring credit card statements and email inboxes, with the agent staying active even when laptops are closed or phones are locked through a new feature called Android Halo. The updates come as Google's share of paid AI business subscriptions in the U.S. sits at just 4.5% (versus Anthropic at 34.4% and OpenAI at 32.3%, per Ramp data from April), with Google planning to spend $180B-$190B this year on AI infrastructure and chips and Gemini now reaching over 900M active users.
