Somewhere between asking Google’s new advanced AI to explain, in detail, how to become an expert birdwatcher in my neighborhood and using Google’s new AI moviemaking tool to create cartoons of my 4-pound Chihuahua fighting crime, I realized something. Either Google is having a midlife crisis or I am. It could be both.

Google has been quite publicly freaking out since the launch of ChatGPT in late 2022, but things got more serious last fall, when OpenAI released ChatGPT Search, a direct competitor to Google Search. Last week, Google announced 100 new things at its I/O developer conferences, most of which involved going all in on AI. Suddenly, there’s a new narrative: The search giant is for sure having a midlife crisis, and “it’s glorious,” one industry expert said.

I’ve spent the past week tinkering with Google’s new AI tools, and I can confidently say the company is somewhere between crisis and glory. It may take years before we know which path wins.

Google has dominated not only the way we use the web but also the web’s very existence for the last 15 years, mainly through its search and advertising divisions. As AI encroaches on every corner of our digital experience, it’s not clear which company will dominate the next era or how we’ll interact with it. It almost certainly won’t be by typing keywords into a search engine.

To find something online today, you typically type some keywords into Google, pick a blue link that you think has the information you’re after, and click. Companies bid on search terms in order to get their ads in front of people browsing the web, powering

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