Google Undergoes Total Transformation, Search Button Disappears Replaced by AI Features

The familiar Google homepage, unchanged for decades, is undergoing a dramatic transformation. The legendary ‘Search’ or ‘Telusuri’ button that has always sat beneath the search box is being removed and replaced by artificial intelligence features. Users accessing the Google homepage without signing into an account are no longer seeing the standard search button. Instead, three new buttons have appeared, serving as direct shortcuts to AI capabilities: ‘Create Image’ to generate pictures from text descriptions, ‘Ask About a File’ to analyse and answer questions about uploaded documents, and ‘Brainstorm Together’ to help formulate ideas through conversation. The only classic element that remains is the ‘I’m Feeling Lucky’ button. The ‘AI Mode’ option within the search box is also still available. Regular search has not been completely removed. Users can still type keywords and press the Enter key to search as usual. However, the physical button explicitly stating ‘Search’ is no longer visible. This change was first observed in early August 2026 by search engine industry watchers. Robby Stein, Vice President of Product for Google Search, provided an explanation. ‘This is just a small-scale test on desktop to help users discover new capabilities they can perform through Search,’ Stein wrote in an official post. ‘There is no change to how the core search box works.’ Although described as a test, this move reinforces speculation that Google is increasingly prioritising AI-generated answers over lists of links to other sites. Previously, in May 2026, Google introduced a smart search box that directly displays AI summary answers, rather than just a list of links as has been the norm. Observers have voiced concerns that if users become more accustomed to getting direct answers from the Google page without needing to open other sites, traffic flowing to various websites will continue to decline. Many websites rely on visitors from search results to survive. To date, there is no information on when this new design will be rolled out uniformly to all users.