Google is adding AI Mode shortcut in Chrome's toolbar

Google has already pushed AI mode as much as it can with the AI Mode tab in Search and shortcuts in the omnibox and in the search bar in new tab pages. Google appears to be testing an optional AI Mode button for the Chrome toolbar. The feature was discovered in the desktop version of Chrome Canary. However, it was also spotted in Chrome Canary for Android.

It can be found by activating a flag and following these steps:

1. Open Chrome Canary and go to chrome://flags
2. Enable “Contextual Tasks Pin Button In Toolbar”
3. Open a new tab page
4. Click on the Customize button
5. Find Toolbar and enable Google Search AI Mode

Once the AI mode button is visible in the toolbar, you can click on it to open a side panel.

google really won't stop shoving ai mode everywhere lol

The toolbar integration could drive much higher usage than the current search tab.

start paying attention to AI Mode now rather than waiting until it's fully rolled out. Google rarely adds this much visibility to a feature unless it plans to make it a bigger part of the search experience. Early adopters usually get the best understanding of where traffic and user behavior are heading.

ads studio said:

start paying attention to AI Mode now rather than waiting until it's fully rolled out. Google rarely adds this much visibility to a feature unless it plans to make it a bigger part of the search experience. Early adopters usually get the best understanding of where traffic and user behavior are heading.

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Google is adding AI insights to search console. It's currently not available to everyone but if we get it, we can check the impressions and clicks from AI overviews and improve our strategies to drive organic traffic from it.

However, I suspect that Google is making users comfortable with AI overviews so that it can feed ads directly to users without giving them choice to scroll past the ads in search results.