Google changes its search box for the first time in 25 years
Google has redesigned its search box for the first time in 25 years, making it larger and more interactive. This change allows users to input longer questions and even upload images and videos. The new features will be powered by Google's AI model, Gemini 3.5 Flash, which aims to enhance user experience and increase advertising revenue.
- ▪Google's search box has been updated to accommodate longer and more complex queries.
- ▪The new search features include a chatbot for follow-up questions and digital assistants for automated searches.
- ▪The AI model Gemini 3.5 Flash is designed to improve performance and reduce operational costs.
3 outlets in our directory ran this story, first to last over 7 hours. Coverage spans 2 points on the political spectrum — 1 lean left, 1 centre.
Straits Times — World files mainly under world. We currently carry 1,485 of its stories.
Story provenance
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Story provenance
Attribution is not the same as permission. This drawer separates discovery metadata, excerpts, WeSearch-generated summaries, reuse status, and whether the publisher receives the visit. Nothing here claims a legal grant the publisher has not made.
Record
| Original publisher | Straits Times — World |
| Canonical URL | https://www.straitstimes.com/world/google-changes-its-search-box-for-the-first-time-in-25-years |
| Publication time | Wed, 20 May 2026 09:00:00 +0800 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-05-20T01:04:58.863Z |
| Last seen | 2026-05-20T01:04:58.863Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | t4SqbH20LUL- · 3 stories |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
Rights status (four layers)
WeSearch handling by dimension
| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
Google changes its search box for the first time in 25 yearsSign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inboxGoogle will also offer digital assistants to automate searches so someone who might be apartment hunting can get notified of a new listing without opening a real estate site.PHOTO: BLOOMBERGTripp Mickle, Kate Conger and Brian X. ChenPublished May 20, 2026, 09:00 AMUpdated May 20, 2026, 09:00 AMMOUNTAIN VIEW, California – For 25 years, Google’s iconic search box was a long, slender bar where people typed in keywords like “World Cup”.But over the past three years, artificial intelligence allowed people to type in longer, more complex questions like “Who are the top 24 teams in the World Cup, and what chance does the United States have of advancing?”On May 19, Google said the…
Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at Straits Times — World.