The new upgrade allows users to ask follow-up questions in search.
Google Search is getting its biggest revamp in 25 years with a Gemini 3.5 Flash integration, as AI-powered search quickly gains popularity among consumers.
The first in the Gemini 3.5 series, Flash is now the default model for the Gemini app and AI Mode in Search globally, Google said at its annual I/O conference yesterday (19 May).
Gemini 3.5 Flash outperforms Gemini 3.1 Pro on coding and agentic benchmarks, while hitting speeds four-times faster than other frontier models, the company said.
The newest in the Flash series makes significant leaps on agentic and multimodal benchmarks set by the likes of Claude Sonnet 4.6, Claude Opus 4.7 and GPT-5.5. It outperforms others in financial analysis, while reaching just under GPT-5.5’s achievements in agentic computer use.
“What used to take a developer days or an auditor weeks, 3.5 Flash can now help complete in a fraction of the time, often at less than half the cost of other frontier models,” Google said in a blog. Gemini 3.5 Pro is expected to launch next month.
Available wherever Google AI Mode is, the Flash upgrade allows users to search across modalities, using text, images, files, videos or Chrome tabs as inputs. The new upgrade also allows users to ask follow-up questions in search.
While ‘information agents’ – AI agents that operate in the background 24/7, continuously reasoning – alongside upgraded agentic booking capabilities allow users, for example, to monitor rental listings as they emerge.
Google is also expanding ‘personal intelligence’ in AI Mode to nearly 200 countries, enabling users to connect apps such as Gmail and Google Photos to give Gemini more personal context.
Meanwhile, Search is getting an integration with Google Antigravity – the company’s agentic development platform – allowing users to generate tailored outputs.
Google’s AI Mode has surpassed 1bn monthly users, with queries more than doubling every quarter since launch, the company said.
The company’s results reflect findings from an October report from consulting firm McKinsey which found that 50pc of consumers already use AI-powered search in 2025, with the figure set to rise to 75pc by 2028. BBC last year reported that large language models are fast gaining momentum in search.
Despite being one of Gemini’s biggest competitors, Google, last month, said that it would invest up to $40bn into Claude’s parent Anthropic.
As part of the deal, Anthropic has agreed to tap 3.5GW of Google’s tensor processing unit capacity from Broadcom. While the two also have a deal which will see Google Cloud providing 5GW of computing capacity to Anthropic over the next five years.
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