Google AI Mode
Ranked 3 of 5 AI search engines by recommenders
Fast, sourced answers to quick questions and hard-to-search lookups that people often prefer to regular results. Caveat: it often makes things up.
Fast, sourced answers to quick questions and hard-to-search lookups that people often prefer to regular results. Caveat: it often makes things up.
166 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 74
- criticize it
- 92
- approval share
- 45%
Recommended in 12 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 74 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 0.8 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 12 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Fast answers to quick questions
“My main reason is if I just have a quick question it seems a lot quicker than logging into ChatGPT/Claude”
Comment from 27 May 2026 in “DuckDuckGo search saw 28% more visits after Google said people love AI mode” “got a full description of the story with links to online hostings of the full text in under 1 second”
Comment from 30 Mar 2026 in “Parrots pack twice as many neurons as primate brains of the same mass” “almost absurdly fast, although the hallucination rate is somewhat proportionally higher”
Comment from 2 Sep 2026 in “Three sites made 215,128 “best software” pages for AI. Perplexity cites them” - Comment from 13 Aug 2026 in “Gemini 3.7 Flash”
Cites sources and links
“The reason i prefer it is because it is a search-driven reasoning engine and thus gives references”
Comment from 1 Jul 2026 in “Mathematics: Its Content, Methods and Meaning” “You are better off talking to Google's AI mode about that sort of thing because it runs searches.”
Comment from 8 Jan 2026 in “AI Coding Assistants Are Getting Worse” “I've found it pretty useful for research as long as I use my brain and check its citations.”
Comment from 21 Jul 2026 in “That post never existed. Stop listening to that thing” - Comment from 29 Apr 2026 in “Alphabet Announces First Quarter 2026 Results”
Saves time on research
“If Google can do that for me and summarize the main points, that's another 10 minutes of my life saved.”
Comment from 28 May 2026 in “DuckDuckGo search saw 28% more visits after Google said people love AI mode” “AI mode made Google search far more useful for me and gives me what I'm looking for 99.9% of the time.”
Comment from 30 Oct 2026 in “US tech stocks see sharp falls over AI cost fears” “their AI Mode has saved so much time in the month or two I've been using it”
Comment from 21 May 2026 in “Google Declaring War on the Web” - Comment from 13 May 2026 in “Googlebook: Designed for Gemini Intelligence – Coming Fall 2026 – Googlebook”
Good for lookups and comparisons
“Occasionally it is useful, especially when I can't think of the correct term to search for.”
Comment from 27 May 2026 in “DuckDuckGo search saw 28% more visits after Google said people love AI mode” “It has access to Google's index so it can be quite a good search engine interface”
Comment from 19 May 2026 in “Google I/O” “both Perplexity and Google AI Mode are good at quick lookup of SvelteKit idioms”
Comment from 13 Dec 2025 in “Ask HN: How can I get better at using AI for programming?” - Comment from 17 Feb 2026 in “Ask HN: Why) are you using AI to browse the web?”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Makes things up, hallucinates
“This morning AIMode fabricated for me a diverse science education publishing and research effort around using generative AI to teach rough-quantitative reasoning.”
Comment from 3 Mar 2026 in “Ars Technica Fires Reporter After AI Controversy Involving Fabricated Quotes” “their AI mode is pretty pathetic for troubleshooting something. 50% of the times the first response is riddled with inaccuracies and mistakes”
Comment from 10 Jun 2026 in “German ruling declares Google liable for false answers in AI Overviews” “it hallucinated an off-trail, alpine scrambling route that, based on my knowledge of the area, would potentially get someone killed”
Comment from 19 May 2026 in “Google I/O” - Comment from 2 Sep 2026 in “Gemini 3.8 Flash and 3.8 Flash Cyber”
- Comment from 18 Jun 2026 in “Show HN: Are You in the Weights?”
Invents articles instead of searching
“I asked it to find an article that compares a certain thing to another, which doesn't exist. So Google automatically wrote a 5 page article”
Comment from 26 Sep 2026 in “Tell HN: OpenAI $500 ProMax plan listed in API” “AI mode doesn't even search. I'll ask it to find a blog post or article that I remember reading recently.”
Comment from 4 Sep 2026 in “Google AI Mode shows same products 21.6% more expensive than traditional search” Forced on users, degrades search
“Users aren't adopting their AI at the rate shareholders expect, so they now force the adoption at the cost of search.”
Comment from 27 May 2026 in “DuckDuckGo search saw 28% more visits after Google said people love AI mode” “everyone who uses Google the search engine is forced to use Google AI, we can't get meaningful statistics for those”
Comment from 26 Aug 2026 in “How much of HN is AI?” “the ai overviews and ai mode are why I stopped using google, they have always been very bad i.m.e.”
Comment from 9 Jul 2026 in “Ask HN: Is Google NERFing AI Mode?”
Other AI search engines people recommend
The four most recommended other AI search engines, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Perplexity | 121 | 102 | 54% | 12 | 1 yr7 owners | — |
| Kagi Assistant | 79 | 20 | 80% | 12 | — | Approved |
| Google AI ModeThis page | 74 | 92 | 45% | 12 | — | — |
| Phind | 36 | 18 | 67% | 3 | 1 yr3 owners | — |
| Google AI summaries | 13 | 37 | 26% | 7 | — | — |
What people said
40 of the 194 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“AI mode made Google search far more useful for me and gives me what I'm looking for 99.9% of the time.”
“it's nice to have that initial search result context to follow up on with more questions”
“The thing they're doing correctly right now imho, is that AI mode is mostly toggled for things that passes a quick questions filter”
“I asked it to find an article that compares a certain thing to another, which doesn't exist. So Google automatically wrote a 5 page article”
“the default writing style of 'Google AI mode' is less tiresome than that of Claude or ChatGPT”
“AI mode doesn't even search. I'll ask it to find a blog post or article that I remember reading recently.”
“It definitely makes things up all the time, but it gets it right surprisingly often. I really like it.”
“almost absurdly fast, although the hallucination rate is somewhat proportionally higher”
“everyone who uses Google the search engine is forced to use Google AI, we can't get meaningful statistics for those”
“Google AI Mode consistently gets me consistently good results and good speeds.”
“AI mode actually improved things somewhat compared to how things were just prior to it existing”
“I've found it pretty useful for research as long as I use my brain and check its citations.”
“Helped me figure out what a bunch of stuff I was seeing out the window was while traveling.”
“I thought the first was a direct hit, the second is a little different but "sick" in a good way”
“the ai overviews and ai mode are why I stopped using google, they have always been very bad i.m.e.”
“The reason i prefer it is because it is a search-driven reasoning engine and thus gives references”
“the information it spits out is all mixed up with information on another person who has my same name”
“their AI mode is pretty pathetic for troubleshooting something. 50% of the times the first response is riddled with inaccuracies and mistakes”
“If Google can do that for me and summarize the main points, that's another 10 minutes of my life saved.”
“I like the AI mode, but only because Google intentionally destroyed their search engine.”
“Occasionally it is useful, especially when I can't think of the correct term to search for.”
“if they're letting me using AI for free without logging in and I just need a dumb AI slop answer, then I'm more than happy to burn their tokens”
“Users aren't adopting their AI at the rate shareholders expect, so they now force the adoption at the cost of search.”
“There have been a few times where I found Google's AI mode useful. But most of the time I just want regular search results.”
“My main reason is if I just have a quick question it seems a lot quicker than logging into ChatGPT/Claude”
“They don't necessarily think AI overviews is a bad thing (I think it is suboptimal) or AI mode is horrible.”
“I already do use google search's AI Mode (probably a 300B model) for many quick questions.”
“I suggest you try their service (for free) before you start criticizing their pricing.”
“their AI Mode has saved so much time in the month or two I've been using it”
“it hallucinated an off-trail, alpine scrambling route that, based on my knowledge of the area, would potentially get someone killed”
“It has access to Google's index so it can be quite a good search engine interface”
“Thanks to AI I did not have to parse through a lot of different vendors”
“AI mode gave more convenient responses, with direct links and browser integration”
“got a full description of the story with links to online hostings of the full text in under 1 second”
“This morning AIMode fabricated for me a diverse science education publishing and research effort around using generative AI to teach rough-quantitative reasoning.”
“AI mode works on many queries that would never have worked with the old Google”
“Google AI mode (that's https://www.google.com/ai - which is NOT the same as regular Google's "AI overviews" which are still mostly trash) are both excellent.”
“You are better off talking to Google's AI mode about that sort of thing because it runs searches.”
“both Perplexity and Google AI Mode are good at quick lookup of SvelteKit idioms”
“Google made the top-right block smaller and relying on the scrolling so this embarrassing effect might be less pronounced.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.