Google's classic Search button is gone in a new AI-first homepage
The homepage adds Create images, Ask about files, and Brainstorm below the search box instead of the usual Google Search button, while an AI Mode button appears inside the search field. We spotted the homepage while using Google Search in the stable version of Chrome without a signed-in account. We also saw the same layout in Microsoft Edge and Perplexity’s Comet browser. googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('rezonence-slot'); }); Image Credit: Venkat | Search Engine Watch These controls do more than promote Google’s AI features.
- ▪The homepage adds Create images, Ask about files, and Brainstorm below the search box instead of the usual Google Search button, while an AI Mode button appears inside the search field.
- ▪We spotted the homepage while using Google Search in the stable version of Chrome without a signed-in account.
- ▪We also saw the same layout in Microsoft Edge and Perplexity’s Comet browser. googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('rezonence-slot'); }); Image Credit: Venkat | Search Engine Watch These controls do more than promote Google’s A
Hacker News (AI / LLM) files mainly under ai. We currently carry 4,318 of its stories.
Story provenance
Source · retrieval · rights · ranking — open for full record
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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 | Search Engine Watch - SEO, AI Search, PPC News & Analysis |
| Canonical URL | https://searchenginewatch.com/google-tests-ai-focused-homepage-for-signed-out-users/ |
| Publication time | Mon, 10 Aug 2026 17:05:54 +0000 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-08-10T17:15:43.041Z |
| Last seen | 2026-08-10T17:15:43.041Z |
| 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 | UvHwjNM3KFla · 1 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
googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('header-ad-slot'); }); News Google's classic Search button is gone in a new AI-first homepage Date published 10 August 2026 Author Venkat Categories News Google appears to be testing a more AI-focused version of its homepage for people who are not signed into a Google Account. The homepage adds Create images, Ask about files, and Brainstorm below the search box instead of the usual Google Search button, while an AI Mode button appears inside the search field. We spotted the homepage while using Google Search in the stable version of Chrome without a signed-in account. We also saw the same layout in Microsoft Edge and Perplexity’s Comet browser.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at Search Engine Watch - SEO, AI Search, PPC News & Analysis.
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