Google CEO Sundar Pichai said that Google’s AI search box, app-creation tools, and agent products will ultimately come together into a single experience. In an interview with Nilay Patel, editor-in-chief of The Verge, Pichai also pushed back on publishers’ concerns that Google will eventually stop driving traffic to the open web. “Through it all, we are very committed to both meeting user expectations and also connecting them to what’s out on the web,” Pichai said. Still, his remarks underscored why those worries are intensifying: Google is steering Search toward conversational experiences, agents, and AI-driven tools that can respond to queries or carry out tasks without users needing to click through. Why we care. Ahead of I/O, many feared AI Mode would replace the traditional Search interface as the default. That didn’t happen, to the relief of many. AI Mode still isn’t the primary Search experience, but Pichai described a roadmap in which Search, Gemini, and agents blend into a unified AI layer for information discovery, content creation, and task completion. Agents are the future. Pichai called AI agents the next big shift for both Search and the broader web: “I look at agents, and that is the next evolution of the web. I think it will evolve the web pretty profoundly.” Google is developing agentic capabilities across Search, Gemini, Spark, and Antigravity, and Pichai said these offerings should ultimately be integrated for users. He has previously described the future of Google Search as becoming an “agent manager.” One product. When asked if Google’s AI search box, app-building tools, and agent offerings are destined to become a single product, Pichai replied: “It will.” Pichai said…