Google, Microsoft Expand AI-Driven Search Capabilities

• 03/17/25

The realms of search and AI are becoming increasingly intertwined, with AI models being used more and more for search — sometimes specifically — and with traditional search constructs being augmented by AI both on the internet and in enterprise systems. For example, Microsoft has used its partnership with OpenAI to leverage advanced AI in coding, search and just about everywhere else, while Google has been just as adamant in defending its search hegemony with advanced AI.

Recent announcements from both companies highlight a slough of AI capabilities for their search tools.

Google AI Overviews and AI Mode

Google last week announced it was "Expanding AI Overviews and Introducing AI Mode."

AI Overviews are a major generative AI-driven enhancement to Google Search, providing AI-generated summaries at the top of search results. AI Mode, meanwhile, is a new experimental feature in Google Search that provides an all-AI experience, replacing traditional web results with AI-generated responses. It builds upon AI Overviews (formerly known as the Search Generative Experience, or SGE) and represents Google's push toward a more conversational and AI-driven search interface.

These features were framed in the context of Google's Gemini 2.0 update.

"As we've rolled out AI Overviews, we've heard from power users that they want AI responses for even more of their searches," Google said. "So today, we're introducing an early experiment in Labs: AI Mode. This new Search mode expands what AI Overviews can do with more advanced reasoning, thinking and multimodal capabilities so you can get help with even your toughest questions. You can ask anything on your mind and get a helpful AI-powered response with the ability to go further with follow-up questions and helpful web links."

In summary, key highlights of the last week's announcement include:

• Enhanced AI Overviews: Google is broadening the scope of AI-generated summaries, known as AI Overviews, to address more complex queries. By integrating the advanced Gemini 2.0 AI model, these overviews now offer improved reasoning and multimodal capabilities, enabling users to receive detailed responses to intricate questions.
• Introduction of AI Mode: This new experimental feature provides users with an AI-centric search experience. When activated, AI Mode delivers comprehensive, conversational responses powered by Gemini 2.0, allowing for deeper exploration of topics and more interactive engagements.
• Gradual Rollout: AI Mode is initially available to subscribers of Google One AI Premium in the U.S., with plans for broader accessibility based on user feedback and ongoing testing.

"The new AI Mode experiment in Search uses advanced reasoning, thinking and multimodal capabilities from Gemini 2.0 to help with even your toughest questions," Google continued. "You can ask whatever's on your mind and get an AI-powered response with the ability to explore further with follow-up questions and helpful web links. AI Mode does the heavy lifting for you, intelligently organizing information and gives you easy-to-digest breakdowns."

Microsoft Moves

Of course, Microsoft has been making AI search moves of its own, often focusing on developer tooling for AI-assisted search constructs or AI search within existing software. For example, it has been providing a steady stream of updates to its Azure AI Search initiative, formerly called Azure Cognitive Search. Microsoft characterizes Azure AI Search as the recommended retrieval system for building RAG-based applications on Azure, with native LLM integrations between Azure OpenAI Service and Azure Machine Learning, an integration mechanism for non-native models and processes, and multiple strategies for relevance tuning.

Recent updates range from new functionality to store customer-managed keys for extra encryption of sensitive content, to an AI application template for building a RAG solution using Azure AI Search and Python.

Application scenarios listed by Microsoft for Azure AI Search include:

• Use it for traditional full text search and next-generation vector similarity search. Back your generative AI apps with information retrieval that leverages the strengths of both keyword and similarity search. Use both modalities to retrieve the most relevant results.
• Consolidate heterogeneous content into a user-defined and populated search index composed of vectors and text. You maintain ownership and control over what's searchable.
• Integrate data chunking and vectorization for generative AI and RAG apps.
• Apply granular access control at the document level.
• Offload indexing and query workloads onto a dedicated search service.
• Easily implement search-related features: relevance tuning, faceted navigation, filters (including geo-spatial search), synonym mapping, and autocomplete.
• Transform large undifferentiated text or image files, or application files stored in Azure Blob Storage or Azure Cosmos DB, into searchable chunks. This is achieved during indexing through AI skills that add external processing from Azure AI.
• Add linguistic or custom text analysis. If you have non-English content, Azure AI Search supports both Lucene analyzers and Microsoft's natural language processors. You can also configure analyzers to achieve specialized processing of raw content, such as filtering out diacritics, or recognizing and preserving patterns in strings.

In January the company introduced "Grounding with Bing Search" in Azure AI Agent Service. "In the ever-evolving landscape of artificial intelligence, staying current is paramount," Microsoft said. "We recently launched the "Grounding with Bing Search" knowledge tool as part of Azure AI Agent Service, and we're excited to offer developers a powerful new capability that bridges the gap between the temporal limitations of large language models (LLMs) and the dynamic, real-time data available on the web."

Reflecting the ever-changing AI/search landscape, Microsoft Search in Bing will no longer be available as of March 31, with Microsoft365.com, Office.com, and SharePoint Online becoming the new homes for Microsoft Search.

Microsoft Search is an enterprise search solution embedded across Microsoft 365 applications, enabling users to find information seamlessly within their organization's ecosystem. Unlike traditional internet search engines like Google Search or Bing, Microsoft Search focuses on workplace productivity by helping users locate e-mails, files, documents, people, conversations, and even knowledge from third-party applications connected through Microsoft Graph.

Different Approaches to AI-Driven Search

These moves reinforce the differing AI/search directions of Google and Microsoft, with the former looking to enhance its search-specific experiences in general, while Microsoft is focusing on infusing AI-assisted search throughout its software ecosystem.

Both companies aim to redefine search experiences with generative AI, but their strategies reflect different priorities, business models, and technological foundations. Here's a summary:

Taking those different approaches into account, it's no wonder that Google's search-specific hegemony hasn't suffered much. Statista tracks global market share of leading search engines and recently reported: "In January 2025, the online search engine Bing accounted for 4.04 percent of the global search market across all devices, while market leader Google held a search traffic share of around 89.62 percent. Meanwhile, Yandex's market share was 2.62 percent, while Yahoo! represented around 1.34 percent."

For February 2025, meanwhile, StatCounter reported similar numbers: Google, 90.15%; Bing, 3.95%; YANDEX, 2.29%; Yahoo! 1.29%; DuckDuckGo, 0.7%; Baidu, 0.66%.