Google AI Mode: Availability Tracker, Timeline and Features

Google told French publishers, in a letter reported via Ouest-France, that AI Mode and AI Overviews will launch in France by September 23, 2026. France is the last major market without either feature, having been excluded from the October 2025 European rollout over the press neighboring-rights standoff.

The terms are the story: Google committed to a publisher opt-out, transparency about AI-driven traffic, and compensation under neighboring rights. That goes further than what publishers get anywhere else except the UK, where the CMA ordered an opt-out in June, and it sets a precedent every other press market can point at.

Google began rolling out information agents in AI Mode on June 12, the first of the Search agents announced at I/O 2026 to reach users. Ask AI Mode to "keep me updated on" or "alert me when" something and the agent keeps working after you close the tab: it watches blogs, news sites, social posts and real-time finance, shopping and sports data, then sends an update with links when something new appears, per 9to5Google's rollout coverage.

Availability is the caveat: information agents are exclusive to Google AI Ultra subscribers at launch, across every AI Mode language and market, with AI Pro access to follow later in the summer. For SEO this is a new surface to be cited on without being searched for, since the agent decides which pages are worth sending. We will watch whether agent-driven impressions show up in Search Console's Generative AI reports.

A Chrome Canary experiment that routed address-bar searches into AI Mode set off a wave of "AI Mode is becoming the default" reports. Google Search VP Rajan Patel shut the speculation down on the record: "This is an error, and we do not plan to make AI mode the default behavior for Chrome search."

That matches Google's line at I/O 2026: AI Mode is a tab and an entry point, not the default search experience, even as AI Overviews (which do show by default) hand off into it. We track this distinction in the availability table because "is AI Mode the default now?" is the most common misreading of Google's announcements.

Google announced Search Generative AI performance reports for Search Console: dedicated reporting for AI Overviews, AI Mode and Discover AI, rolling out to UK properties first. The catch: the reports cover impressions, not clicks, so publishers can finally see how often they appear in AI surfaces but still cannot measure what that appearance does to their traffic.

The same release added a control to block content from Google's AI features, the first explicit AI opt-out in the product. Until now AI Mode traffic has been invisible as such: since June 2025 it has been lumped into the "Web" search type with no filter. Full context in the SEO impact section.

At I/O 2026 Sundar Pichai said AI Mode had "surpassed 1 billion monthly active users" within a year, with queries more than doubling every quarter. Gemini 3.5 Flash became the default model globally, AI Mode and AI Overviews merged into one seamless flow worldwide, and Google shipped what it called the biggest upgrade to the search box in more than 25 years.

The roadmap: Search agents for Pro and Ultra subscribers in the summer, generative UI free for everyone "this summer", expanded agentic business-calling, and Personal Intelligence reaching about 200 countries and 98 languages without a subscription. Google was explicit that AI Mode is still not the default search experience.

Search Live expanded globally to all 200+ AI Mode countries and languages, upgraded to the Gemini 3.1 Flash Live model. Search Live is AI Mode's real-time layer: a spoken conversation with Search that can also watch through your camera. It launched in the US in mid-2025 and had been limited to the US and India before this expansion.

Canvas reached general availability for everyone in the US. Introduced through Labs in July 2025, Canvas opens a side panel where AI Mode drafts and iterates on documents, code and simple apps across a session, powered by Gemini 3. It is the clearest example of AI Mode absorbing assistant-style work that would never have been a classic search query.

Google Search SVP Nick Fox announced 53 new AI Mode languages, the largest single language addition since launch, taking AI Mode to just under 100 languages and covering roughly a billion more people. The path to here: English only at launch (March 2025), five languages including Hindi, Japanese and Korean (September 2025), Spanish (September 2025), 35+ more in the big October 2025 wave, and now 53 at once.

Alphabet's Q4 2025 earnings gave the deepest usage picture yet: daily AI Mode queries per US user have doubled since launch, AI Mode queries are about three times longer than traditional searches, and roughly 1 in 6 arrive as voice or image rather than text. Monetization remains in "early stages", with a Direct Offers pilot testing merchant offers inside answers.

Sundar Pichai also addressed the existential question directly, saying AI Mode is not cannibalizing core Search. Publishers have no independent data to test that, which is the recurring theme of AI Mode's SEO story.

Alongside making Gemini 3 the global default for AI Overviews, Google shipped a mobile handoff: continuing from an AI Overview opens an AI Mode conversation that already carries the query and answer context. Google's framing: "one fluid experience... a quick snapshot when you need it, and deeper conversation when you want it."

This was the moment the two products stopped being separate features. The full merger followed at I/O 2026 in May.

Google launched Personal Intelligence for AI Mode: an opt-in connection to Gmail and Google Photos that personalizes answers with your own context, starting with US English AI Pro and Ultra subscribers. By I/O 2026 Google said it would reach about 200 countries and 98 languages without requiring a subscription.

Google made Gemini 3 Flash the default AI Mode model globally, pitching it as "frontier intelligence built for speed" with faster reasoning on complex questions. A month after Gemini 3 reached AI Mode as a subscriber option, every AI Mode user worldwide was getting a Gemini 3 model by default.

The same update opened Gemini 3 Pro to everyone in the US through the "Thinking with 3 Pro" picker and expanded Nano Banana Pro image generation to more US users, with AI Pro and Ultra subscribers keeping higher usage limits. The default changed again at I/O 2026, when Gemini 3.5 Flash took over globally.

Google expanded Gemini 3 Pro in AI Mode to nearly 120 countries and territories in English, for Google AI Pro and Ultra subscribers, two weeks after its US debut. Nano Banana Pro, the Gemini 3 Pro image model that can turn answers into visuals and infographics, expanded to more countries alongside it.

For the first time, a new Gemini model reached Search on its launch day: Gemini 3 arrived in AI Mode the day it was announced, for Google AI Pro and Ultra subscribers in the US through a new "Thinking" option in the model picker, with a broader US rollout to follow.

Gemini 3 also brought generative UI to AI Mode: dynamic visual layouts and interactive tools and simulations built for the specific question, such as a physics simulation or a custom loan calculator. Complex questions route to the frontier model while faster models handle simpler ones, and an upgraded query technique made the web searches AI Mode runs behind an answer smarter.

Google made the AI Mode button on Chrome's mobile new-tab page official: a pill-shaped shortcut under the search bar on Android and iOS, starting in the US with 160 more countries and additional languages, including Hindi, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean and Portuguese, to follow. After the Chrome desktop omnibox in September, this put AI Mode one tap from the mobile browser's front door.

The same update took agentic booking beyond Ultra subscribers: any US user opted into the "Agentic capabilities in AI Mode" Labs experiment now gets it, and it can work through event tickets and beauty and wellness appointments as well as restaurant reservations, using Project Mariner's live web browsing. AI Pro and Ultra subscribers keep higher usage limits.

Alphabet's Q3 2025 earnings put the first daily usage number on AI Mode: more than 75 million daily active users, in 40 languages, with US queries doubling over the quarter and over 100 product improvements shipped in Q3. Google described strong and consistent week-over-week usage growth since launch.

The framing also debuted the argument Google has repeated since: AI Mode and AI Overviews are driving incremental query growth for Search. The disclosures continued at Q4 (daily queries per US user doubled since launch) and I/O 2026 (past 1 billion monthly users).

Google shipped AI Mode's biggest expansion to date: more than 35 new languages and over 40 new countries and territories, taking AI Mode past 200 countries and territories in total, rolling out over the following week on the custom Gemini model for Search. It was AI Mode's first EU availability, with Germany, Italy, Spain and Poland among the new markets, and Google noted AI Mode questions run nearly three times longer than traditional searches.

The notable absence was France, left out over the press neighboring-rights standoff. It stayed the last major market without AI Mode until June 2026, when Google committed to a French launch by September 23 with a publisher opt-out and compensation.

Google confirmed to Search Engine Land at the end of September that Search and Shopping ads had begun rolling out inside AI Mode in the US, on desktop and mobile, saying the rollout had started earlier that week. There was no standalone Google post for the milestone; the plan dated to Google Marketing Live in May, when Google said Sponsored-labeled Search and Shopping ads would come to US AI Mode from existing Search, Shopping and Performance Max campaigns using broad match.

Google has kept the testing frame ever since: its own 2025 highlights page still describes ads in AI Mode as a US test, appearing below and integrated into AI Mode responses, and Alphabet was calling AI Mode monetization early stages as late as its Q4 2025 earnings. The US remains the only market with ads in AI Mode.

Google made Search Live generally available in English across the US, no Labs opt-in required. Search Live is a hands-free conversation with Search that can also watch through your camera: tap the new Live icon under the search bar in the Google app on Android or iOS, or start it from Lens, and talk back and forth while it answers aloud with web links on screen.

It had been a US Labs experiment since June 2025, voice first, with camera input added in July. The global expansion to every AI Mode country and language followed in March 2026.

As part of a broader set of Chrome AI announcements, Google brought AI Mode to the Chrome desktop omnibox: an option in the address bar to ask complex, multi-part questions and keep asking follow-ups without leaving the page you are on, rolling out in the US in English with "more countries and languages in the weeks ahead".

The address bar is the most direct entry point in the browser, so this put AI Mode one click from every search a Chrome user makes. It is an option, not a new default: when a Chrome Canary flag later routed address-bar searches into AI Mode automatically, Google called it an error and denied any plan to make AI Mode the default for Chrome search.

Google added five new AI Mode languages: Hindi, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean and Brazilian Portuguese. AI Mode had been English-only for the six months since its March 2025 launch, even as it spread to 180+ new countries in August, so this was the start of its multilingual era.

The pace from here was steep: Spanish followed within weeks, 35+ more languages arrived in the October 2025 wave, and a 53-language addition in February 2026 took AI Mode to just under 100 languages.

Google expanded AI Mode to over 180 new countries and territories in English, up from just the US, India and the UK. The EU was not part of this wave; EU availability came with the 40-country, 35-language expansion in October 2025.

The same announcement shipped AI Mode's first agentic booking flow, restaurant reservations for Google AI Ultra subscribers in the US via Labs, plus US personalization starting with dining recommendations and links for sharing an AI Mode conversation with others.

AI Mode launched in the UK as a tab on the results page and in the Google app on Android and iOS, in English with no Labs opt-in, powered by a custom version of Gemini 2.5 and taking text, voice and image queries. The UK became the third country with full availability, after the US in May and India in early July.

Google's UK post also shared an early usage signal it would keep repeating: people were asking questions two to three times the length of traditional searches.

AI Mode got its first premium tier: Google AI Pro and Ultra subscribers in the US could select Gemini 2.5 Pro from a model dropdown in Labs, along with Deep Search, which issues hundreds of searches and reasons across the results to produce a fully cited report.

The same announcement shipped Google's first agentic Search capability to actually reach users: having AI call local businesses to check pricing and availability, rolling out to all US Search users with higher limits for subscribers.