Google is cramming AI into search from this week – try these 5 alternatives instead
Key Points
- Google has begun rolling out the biggest overhaul of its search box in over 25 years, replacing traditional ranked lists of links with AI-powered conversational experiences from 19 May 2026.
- The new intelligent search box accepts text, images, files, video and Chrome tabs as inputs, and is live in every country and language where Google AI Mode is available, including the UK.
- AI Overviews now reaches more than 2.5 billion monthly users and AI Mode has crossed 1 billion monthly users, according to Google, compared with 900 million weekly active users for OpenAI's ChatGPT.
- Information agents that monitor the web around the clock will launch this summer first to Google AI Pro and AI Ultra subscribers, with the AI Ultra tier priced at $100 per month.
- Working Google Search alternatives that still serve traditional ranked website links include Kagi, DuckDuckGo, Brave Search, Mojeek and Startpage.
Google is replacing its search box with an AI-powered version this week.
The new intelligent search box began rolling out on Tuesday (19 May) in every country and language where Google AI Mode is already available, including the UK.
It expands dynamically to take longer queries and accepts text, images, files, video, and open Chrome tabs as inputs. Liz Reid, Vice President and Head of Search at Google, described it as the biggest upgrade to the iconic search box since its debut over 25 years ago.
Google is also merging its AI Overviews summary feature with its conversational AI Mode into a single flow, removing the need for users to choose a search experience before typing.
AI Overviews now reaches over 2.5 billion monthly users, and AI Mode has crossed 1 billion monthly users with queries more than doubling each quarter, according to the company. For comparison, OpenAI’s ChatGPT reached 900 million weekly active users earlier this year.
From this summer, Google will introduce generative user interfaces that build custom widgets and visualisations on the fly in response to queries, and information agents that monitor the web around the clock and report back with synthesised updates. The agents will launch first to subscribers of Google AI Pro and the new AI Ultra tier, the latter priced at $100 per month.
Google also said its Personal Intelligence feature in AI Mode, which connects Gemini to a user’s Gmail, Photos and Calendar, will expand to nearly 200 countries and 98 languages without a subscription.
The shift will further squeeze publishers, who have already reported sharp declines in referral traffic since the launch of AI Overviews. Sundar Pichai, CEO at Google, said the company plans to push its frontier AI capabilities to as many people as possible at low cost.
Where to search instead
Kagi, a paid ad-free engine based in California, costs from around $5 per month and ranks results without ads or trackers, drawing on its own index plus aggregated results from Google, Brave Search, Mojeek and Yandex.
DuckDuckGo remains the most popular free privacy option, pulling from Bing alongside its own crawler and offering shortcut commands to search inside other sites directly.
Brave Search runs its own independent index and pitches itself on search sovereignty, free from Big Tech infrastructure.
Mojeek, a British-built engine, operates one of the few genuinely independent web crawlers and applies a strict anti-profiling stance, though coverage remains thinner than the larger players.
Startpage routes queries through Google but strips identifying data, giving users Google-quality results without the tracking.
The new search box is live in the UK from this week, with generative UI and information agents following over the summer.
