Google's new AI Search does not just answer questions. It keeps working after you close the tab.
At its I/O 2026 keynote on 19 May, the company unveiled what it calls the biggest Search redesign in more than 25 years. AI Mode now uses the new Gemini 3.5 Flash model as its default, globally. The redesigned "intelligent search box" handles longer, conversational queries. More importantly, a feature called information agents can run in the background, watching topics for you and pinging your phone when something matters.
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What Google actually announced
Information agents are the next evolution of Google Alerts, the 2003 notification service most Malaysians have either forgotten about or never bothered with. You open AI Mode, type a prompt like "Keep me updated on KLIA flight delays for the next 48 hours," and the agent runs continuously. It synthesises news, ticket sites, and weather pages, then sends a push when something changes. According to TechCrunch's coverage, the agents arrive this summer for Google AI Pro and Ultra subscribers in the United States first, with additional markets following.
The bigger structural change sits at the model layer. Gemini 3.5 Flash is rolling out across Search, the Gemini app, Android Studio, AI Studio, and Google's enterprise products. Ars Technica reports the model produces nearly 300 tokens per second while matching benchmark scores of last-generation Pro models running at a quarter of that speed. API pricing has dropped to USD1.50 per million input tokens and USD9 per million output tokens, down from USD2 and USD12 on the 3.1 Pro tier. Google's own estimate is that the heaviest AI users could save USD1 billion a year by switching.
Google also introduced Gemini Spark, a 24/7 cloud agent that spans your Drive, Gmail, and Calendar footprint. Spark is rolling out to trusted testers and Google AI Ultra subscribers starting next week.
What it means for Malaysian users
The change ordinary users will notice first is in search itself. The intelligent search box accepts longer, more nuanced questions instead of the keyword stubs we have all been trained to type. Something like "best halal restaurants in PJ open after 10pm with parking" should now return a synthesised answer rather than ten blue links and an AI Overview box. If you already pay for Google AI Pro or Ultra, expect Spark to land in your Gemini app shortly. It can watch incoming emails, roll them into a daily digest, and surface action items from meetings.
For Malaysian developers and businesses, the price drop is the real news. A model that runs agentic workflows at USD9 per million output tokens, with frontier-level coding performance, changes the unit economics of any local AI product. Penang or KL startups building support bots, document workflows, or vertical agents have just been handed a roughly 25% cost reduction without losing capability. That is the kind of arithmetic that makes home-grown agentic products commercially viable rather than venture-funded science projects.
For Malaysian SEOs and publishers, this is less comfortable. AI Mode synthesises answers from multiple sources, which means even fewer click-throughs than traditional AI Overviews. The publishers who survive will be those whose content is quotable, distinctive, and worth citing in an AI-rendered summary.
Wider context
Google's pivot mirrors moves by OpenAI (ChatGPT with memory and connectors), Anthropic (Claude with Drive and Gmail integration), and Microsoft (Copilot inside Office). The agentic shift is industry-wide. What Google still owns that the others do not is the default search box used by the dominant share of Malaysian internet users.
Whether you build, write, or just type into the Google bar every morning, the search experience you got used to is being quietly retired. Worth paying attention to how it changes.
Body image courtesy of freestocks on Unsplash.