Search + Shopping | I/O 2026 Keynote

This article provides a comprehensive review of the major updates to Search and Shopping from the Google I/O 2026 keynote, focusing on the AI Mode upgrade, the intelligent search box, information agents, agentic coding, and the UCP and AP2 protocols for agentic commerce. ## AI Mode Fully Upgraded to Gemini 3.5 People ask billions of questions every day on Search, many of which are unique. Google is committed to combining the best of search engines with artificial intelligence, starting with AI Overviews. AI Mode, introduced on stage last year, has become the most powerful AI search, integrating the most advanced Gemini models. Starting today, AI Mode is upgraded to Gemini 3.5. AI Mode now has over 1 billion monthly active users, and query volume has doubled every quarter since launch. Users are starting to ask extremely specific and detailed questions, engaging in real conversations with Search. Google Search has fully become an AI search, blending the most advanced Gemini models, the latest agentic capabilities, and the breadth of the world's information — refreshing over 1 billion facts every minute and indexing billions of new web pages daily. ## Intelligent Search Box: Biggest Upgrade in 25 Years Google introduces the new intelligent search box. Powered by AI, it expands with user curiosity, offering AI-driven suggestions to help formulate questions, going beyond autocomplete. This search box supports cross-modal queries, including text, images, files, and video, and performs search reasoning across all modalities. This is the biggest upgrade since the search box debuted over 25 years ago, rolling out starting today. ## Seamless AI Search Experience Now Live Google integrates AI Overviews and AI Mode into a seamless AI search experience, allowing users to smoothly transition from answers on the main search results page to follow-up questions in AI Mode, with context preserved throughout. As the conversation deepens, links and sources become even more relevant. This new seamless AI search experience is rolling out globally today on desktop and mobile. ## The Search Agent Era: Information Agents Working for You 24/7 Google is moving toward the era of search agents. Users can create and manage multiple AI agents for various tasks within Search. Information agents can work in the background 24/7, finding precise information at the right time and helping take action. Multiple agents can be launched simultaneously and work in coordination with Gemini Spark. ### Example Use Cases - **Financial Screening**: Users ask extremely complex questions like "Large biotech companies with a P/E ratio below 15, positive cash flow, and low debt ratio." The agent formulates a plan, assesses urgency, fetches current information, sets triggers to monitor changes, connects to real-time financial data, provides stock price updates in seconds, and delivers instant insights. When information appears, the agent sends smart, consolidated updates with links to hyper-relevant resources like crowdsourced research platforms, news sites, and social media. - **Apartment Hunting**: The agent continuously scans the entire web, including various websites, social media, and forums, filtering based on user requirements (location, natural light, move-in date, etc.). - **Sneakerheads**: The agent notifies users when their favorite athletes announce collaborations or release new shoes, monitoring everything from blogs to shopping infographics. This summer, users will be able to have information agents work for them — just ask Search to keep you updated on anything you want to know. ## Agentic Coding: Search Dynamically Builds Custom Experiences for You Google brings the agentic coding capabilities of Antigravity and Gemini 3.5 Flash directly into Search, allowing Search to construct the ideal format for a query — dynamic layouts, interactive widgets, and full experiences, all tailored on the fly. ### Interactive Visualizations for Understanding Complex Concepts Take a college student trying to understand astrophysics: they ask "How do black holes affect spacetime?" An interactive visualization appears directly in AI Overviews. When they follow up with "How do two orbiting bodies, like a binary black hole system, produce gravitational waves?", Search dynamically builds a brand new interactive visualization in real time, with adjustable parameters (orbital separation, mass ratio) to observe waveform changes. Search plans the ideal response, designs the layout, builds custom components, conducts deep research, and deploys code. The agentic coding framework reads and writes files and executes code in secure, containerized environments. Generative UI with Antigravity will roll out free for everyone this summer. ### Generative UI: Creating a Custom Planner Search can proactively help users create complete, customized stateful experience tools, trackers, and dashboards. For example, a weekend planner: user searches "Fun things to do with the family this weekend," and Search offers to build a weekend planner. Search thinks about which components to build, securely connects to Gmail, Photos, and Calendar, uses personal intelligence for personalized suggestions (driving time, weather, kids' ages, etc.). Users can customize the layout (e.g., move the map to the top), add a weekly Friday night date. The planner can be shared with family and add events to everyone's family calendar. Starting this summer, users will get Generative UI, beginning with subscribers, with customizable build experiences in the following months. ## Agentic Commerce: UCP and AP2 Protocols People shop on Google over a billion times a day. Google's shopping knowledge graph contains over 60 billion product listings and is constantly updated. Combine the shopping knowledge graph with advanced Gemini application models for a brand new shopping experience. In agentic commerce, Google focuses on three key building blocks. ### Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) UCP is to e-commerce what HTTP is to the web — a common language for agents and systems to work together. It's an open standard that makes everything from product research to checkout to logistics tracking seamless. Google developed and launched UCP with great founding partners, and recently welcomed Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, Salesforce, and Stripe to lead this direction. UCP is expanding to more verticals (like hotels, local food delivery) and more products (like YouTube), and expanding to more regions (Canada, Australia, UK). ### Agentic Payment Protocol (AP2) Users care about the security and control of agent payments. AP2 is designed so agents can make payments on behalf of users securely, but always under user control. The core is setting boundaries and ensuring accountability. Users can set strict guardrails, specifying brands, products, and payment amounts. AP2 establishes a transparent, verifiable link between the user, merchant, and all payment processors, uses privacy-preserving tech for data security, and provides a permanent digital audit trail through tamper-proof digital authorization. Google will start bringing AP2 into Google products in the coming months. From search agents to agentic coding, from generative UI to agentic commerce protocols, Google Search is becoming an AI search that can do more for you. Source: Search + Shopping | I/O 2026 Keynote (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQQbTYP7tVE)