Google Search users will interact with a system that completes tasks on their behalf rather than one that returns a list of results. Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai made that forecast in an April 7, 2026, appearance on the Cheeky Pint podcast, hosted by Stripe co-founder John Collison and investor Elad Gil.
Pichai's Vision for an Agentic Search
Pichai said that going forward, "a lot of what are just information-seeking queries will be agentic in Search," with users "completing tasks" and running "many threads" simultaneously. He went further, describing Search's future role not as a results page but as a coordinator of parallel activity. "Search would be an agent manager in which you're doing a lot of things," he said, adding that he already uses an internal tool called Antigravity in which agents complete work concurrently, and that he can envision Search doing equivalent work.
The conversation, published on YouTube, featured Pichai discussing Google's history with artificial intelligence, the scale of the company's infrastructure commitments, and where Search is heading as agentic systems become more central to the product.
Behavioural Shift Already Visible in AI Mode
Pichai pointed to existing changes in how people use Google's AI-powered search interface as evidence that user behaviour adapts to new search paradigms. He noted that users in AI Mode already conduct deep research queries, a pattern that didn't fit traditional search definitions, and predicted that long-running tasks would follow the same trajectory.
Google's own data from the Google I/O 2025 keynote showed early AI Mode testers were asking queries two to three times the length of traditional searches and using follow-up questions to go deeper. That shift in query behaviour predates Pichai's April remarks and reflects a pattern Google has been tracking since AI Mode launched in Search Labs in March 2025.
Google announced agentic capabilities in AI Mode in November 2025, expanding its feature set to allow users to ask complex questions and follow-ups within Search, and to get help booking event tickets and beauty and wellness appointments. Google had first introduced agentic capabilities to AI Mode in August 2025, initially enabling restaurant reservation searches.
Search and Gemini as Parallel Products
Pichai addressed the question of whether Gemini's growth as a standalone AI product makes Google Search redundant. He said Google is not replacing Search with a chatbot, and that the two products "will overlap in certain ways" and "will profoundly diverge in certain ways," adding that he believes it is "good to have both and embrace it."
Pichai rejected the framing that Search is in decline, with his description of where Search is heading positioned closer to expansion than replacement.
Agentic Infrastructure Already in Development
Google's product investments support the direction Pichai described on the podcast. Google confirmed it is "bringing more agentic capabilities and personalized responses to AI Mode in Search, so Google can do more on your behalf and help you get things done," while simultaneously expanding AI Mode to more users globally. As of a January 2026 blog post, agentic capabilities in AI Mode were accessible to Google AI Ultra subscribers in the U.S. through a Labs experiment, while AI Mode itself had expanded to over 180 countries and territories in English.
On the commerce side, Google announced the Universal Commerce Protocol, a new open standard for agentic commerce, alongside a Business Agent feature that allows shoppers to chat with brands directly in Search. The Universal Commerce Protocol was co-developed with industry partners, including Shopify, Etsy, Wayfair, Target, and Walmart, and endorsed by more than 20 other companies across the ecosystem.
Implications for Search Marketers
For digital marketers, the shift Pichai described changes where and how search visibility operates. As AI Mode takes on multi-step tasks, including booking, purchasing, and research, user sessions may resolve entirely within Google's interface without a click to an external website. Google has stated that its Gemini models are making Search "more intelligent, agentic and personalized," a direction that elevates the importance of being cited or surfaced within AI-generated responses, not only of ranking in traditional results.
The Cheeky Pint episode was published on YouTube by Stripe and amplified on LinkedIn by Nick Fox, Google's SVP of Knowledge and Information.
