Google Bets on AI to Drive Search and Ads
Google says AI is driving growth across Search, YouTube and advertising as Gemini adoption continues to accelerate.
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AI is changing how people search, consume content and interact with advertising, and Google is positioning AI as a growth engine rather than a disruption to its core business.
In Alphabet’s Q2 2026 earnings, Chief Executive Officer Sundar Pichai said AI is opening up opportunities across Search, YouTube, Cloud and advertising, as the company reported 24% year-on-year revenue growth. Search & Other revenue was up 17% and YouTube advertising revenue was up 13%, reflecting strong advertiser demand.
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Search becomes AI-first:
Google has merged the AI Overviews and AI Mode into one Search experience, bringing together conversational AI and traditional web search, Pichai said.
AI Mode is now used by over one billion monthly active users, the company states, and AI-powered Search still drives billions of clicks to websites every week. Google says AI helps users stay more engaged by prompting more questions and making Search more natural.
The company is also bringing AI agents, personalised intelligence, and notebook-like capabilities directly to Search.
YouTube expands AI features:
Google is also pushing AI deeper into YouTube. He added that FIFA World Cup content on the platform reached over 1.7 billion unique viewers, underscoring the importance of YouTube in major global events.
The company is rolling out Ask YouTube, a Gemini-powered feature that allows users to ask questions about videos, get summaries, and navigate to relevant moments. Google says more than 140 million users engaged with the feature in June.
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Gemini gains momentum:
Google’s AI assistant Gemini is still seeing rapid adoption, with the app now hitting 950 million monthly active users. Google has added personalised assistants, multimodal capabilities and AI-powered content creation tools to Gemini and the number of daily active users has tripled in the past year.
The company also revealed new models of Gemini Flash, and said it was working on Gemini 4, which Pichai said was Google’s most ambitious AI training effort to date.
