Biggest change to search engine in 25 years
Google chief executive Sundar Pichai speaks during the tech titan's annual I/O developers conference May 14, 2024, in Mountain View. Google on Tuesday said it would introduce AI-generated answers to online queries made by users in the United States in one of the biggest updates to its search engine in 25 years.
Google this week announced significant changes to its search box — that austere, single-line input field on its homepage that has been the world's most popular entry point into the web for around two-and-a-half decades. Behind the scenes, a bigger shift is under way. Google is merging artificial intelligence and traditional web search in a move that Liz Reid, who oversees search at Google, said brings"the best of web and the best of AI together.
"Critics say folding AI deeper into search risks further muddying the waters around the provenance of information gleaned from the web, and could take agency away from users. A chatbot is likely to return a summary with only a few links to further information, unlike a web search that returns many pages of links.
The company this week announced significant changes to its search box — that austere, single-line input field on its homepage that has been the world's most popular entry point into the web for around two-and-a-half decades. The new version looks similar to the old one-line text box, but it's dynamic, expanding with longer queries. Users can also drop videos, pictures and files into it for what Google calls"multimodal" search. Behind the scenes, a bigger shift is under way.
Google is merging artificial intelligence and traditional web search in a move that Liz Reid, who oversees search at Google, said brings"the best of web and the best of AI together.
" Critics say folding AI deeper into search risks further muddying the waters around the provenance of information gleaned from the web and could take agency away from users. A chatbot is likely to return a summary with only a few links to further information, unlike a web search that returns many pages of links.
But the shift is, in some ways, not surprising, given Silicon Valley's hard pivot toward AI, with Google and others investing billions in the technology and refocusing corporate strategies around it.
" — short summaries — at the top of some search results. "What we've seen with AI Overviews is that people don't want either just an AI or the web. They want a mix of both," said Reid. She said she's noticed that users have started to ask longer questions, with more natural language, rather than fragments or key words.
"They're asking the question that they really have," Reid said. For Google, that potentially unlocks new understandings of user intentions.
"If you start using more natural language, if you're having a conversation, when you've shifted from researching into buying, you've sort of indicated that. And so we can put better ads because we understand what that is," Reid said.
Google is also introducing agentic functionality to search, so that users can ask it to do tasks over time — like search for theater tickets at regular intervals or send shoppers a notification when something goes on sale or conduct a weekly scan of the internet for local events. Carolina Milanesi, an independent technology analyst, said Google is trying to make its cash cow business — search — richer and more personalized, and it will make shopping easier.
But there is a risk that users may have fewer choices about what to click.
"Right now it's: I ask a question, I get a bunch of answers and I feel that I'm in control as to which answer I take, or if I'm looking for something, which product I'm going to end up buying. That is going to be less so going forward," she said. Milanesi envisions AI-enabled search and agents proposing products to consumers — perhaps even those they have requested — but with less clarity or choice around where it's coming from.
"If you're going to say: 'I want a pair of Jordans, go find them,' you're not necessarily sure what steps have been taken and whether the AI has used a source or a store that was paid for and, therefore, came up in the search results," she said,"or if AI actually went and did their due diligence and picked the best for me as a customer. " Sarah T. Roberts, director of the Center for Critical Internet Inquiry at UCLA, said the algorithmic underpinnings of Google's web search results have long been"by design, inscrutable to end users," and there's more to it than simply the best of the web floating to the top of any given search.
Adding AI will only make the system more opaque, she said.
"What's happening now with AI is that that complexity that already existed will be further obfuscated and even more difficult to unpack," she said. And critics say that driving more Google users from web searches to interacting with AI will exacerbate the risks of the so-calledand suffocates the internet click economy as we know it. That includes online shops, web advertisers and news organizations that all depend on referred traffic from Google.
Early every Saturday for the last three and a half years, William Campbell, 61, leaves his Silver Lake home to be at the Angels Flight station for the first ride at 6:45 a.m.Campbell is one of a team of operators behind the proverbial wheel of the two near-identical funiculars — named Olivet and Sinai — that go up and down a 33% angle slope from Hill Street to Bunker Hill in downtown Los Angeles.
Early every Saturday for the last three and a half years, William Campbell, 61, leaves his Silver Lake home to be at the Angels Flight station for the first ride at 6:45 a.m. Campbell is one of a team of operators behind the proverbial wheel of the two near-identical funiculars — named Olivet and Sinai — that go up and down a 33% angle slope from Hill Street to Bunker Hill in downtown Los Angeles.
“You’re a part of living history,” said Campbell, who is dressed in an orange and black waistcoat and bow tie, and wears a bowler hat with a monarch butterfly on top. There’s a reason for that, he said mysteriously.
“I was just looking at a local tourist place, and I just saw this small, cute railway,” said Michael Nguyen, who was alongside his mother and sister. “I was like, oh, this looks interesting. And I saw that you can actually go on it. I was like, OK, that’s pretty dope.
” Masterminded by lawyer, politician and engineer Col. James Ward Eddy, the Angels Flight “hillevator” opened on New Year’s Eve 1901 as a way for people to travel up and down Bunker Hill, which was then the place where the city’s wealthy population lived.
The journey took them down to the streets and stores below and from 1917, Grand Central Market, with the first passengers paying just a penny fare for what was billed as the “shortest railway in America,” traveling just 298 feet. When he’s not working his weekday full-time day job investigating animal cruelty and abuse, Campbell spends his spare time looking through online newspaper archives for any information about Angels Flight.
Originally located by the 3rd Street Tunnel — at the end of the block from where it is now — the train has been through several changes, as has Bunker Hill itself.
“All the wealthy people moved to Beverly Hills, and Brentwood, and Bel Air, and beyond. And all their wonderful Victorian mansions were turned into boarding houses, and it attracted a lower income, more diverse population, which resulted in blight and crime — at least according to the city,” Campbell said of Bunker Hill's transformation.
City officials authorized Bunker Hill to be all but razed in the 1950s and '60s, and Angels Flight was put into what was promised to be temporary storage for a year or two, despite protests from singer Peggy Lee and others. A round-trip ticket is $3, which is orange and has a souvenir portion. A one-way trip is $1.75 or $1 for TAP cardholders. The year was 1969.
And it took nearly three decades for its return. Angels Flight welcomed passengers again in 1996 to its current location after test runs were made with cases of beer and soft drinks weighing 9,000 pounds. The cable cars were rebuilt exactly as before, but with modern safety requirements, such as Sinai having wheelchair space.
A 2001 accident in which one person died and seven were injured saw another long closure until 2010, and there was a derailment in 2014, which saw another short shuttering. But Angels Flight has been running ever since 2017, save the odd mechanical problem. Campbell describes himself as a cheerleader for Angels Flight, and you can easily see why.
During his shift he pins up a 1904 photo of the city’s landscape taken from an 80-foot-high observation tower at the original location, so people can compare it to the skyscraper skyline of today. There is also a display about near-forgotten Bunker Hill folk artist Marcel Cavalla, and Campbell gives away Angels Flight bookmarks, stickers and maps, all of which he researches, designs and prints out of his own pocket.
One of his projects, old advertisements from 1901 to the 1940s, is displayed in the panels above the seats, and was installed a couple of months ago. There's everything from old Market Basket supermarket ads, to Barbara Stanwyck shilling for Lux toilet soap, to a standard power mower from John Bean manufacturing, to one for the Catalina Carrier Pigeon Service, which operated from 1894 to 1902, taking messages from Avalon to Bunker Hill. And the monarch butterfly on his hat?
That’s related to his Angels Flight “holy grail,” the one question he can’t definitively answer: why were they painted orange and black? With that, Campbell grabs his binoculars and sees there are passengers waiting for a ride up, so I get into Olivet and wave goodbye as I travel down to Hill Street. The volunteering effort is not just to tidy things up – but to clear lots of fire fuels as the region enters fire season.
The group is founded by Antoinette “Toni” Bailey-Raines, who grew up in Altadena and whose parents and sister all lost homes in the fire. A group called Neighbors Helping Neighbors has been clearing overgrown weeds for free on fire survivors' empty lots in Altadena. They’ve finished 10 with many more to go. They’re keeping at it not just to keep things tidy, but to avert another disaster as the region enters fire season — and their efforts are spreading.
More than 200 homeowners have signed up, after hearing about the group from its “I'm 5 feet 2 inches tall, but there were weeds 6 and 8 feet tall,” said Antoinette “Toni” Bailey-Raines, the ringleader. She is also a co-founder of Altadena Talks Foundation, a nonprofit started in the wake of the Eaton Fire. Bailey-Raines lives in San Dimas but grew up in Altadena. Her parents and sister all lost their homes in the Eaton Fire.
“I went to my parents' lot one day,” she said. “I loaded up the back of my car with my lawnmower, my blower, my rake, because I wanted to make sure their lot was cleaned up. ” It took seven hours, but she figured all that overgrown vegetation can't be good for Altadena with the fire season just around the corner. The very first lot, just south in Pasadena, was cleared in mid-April.
Bailey-Raines said the property was getting notices from the city to clear the lot or face escalating fines. Pasadena conducts brush clearance inspections every spring and summer.
“You lost everything, and then somebody's gonna tell you they're gonna give you a fine because you have weeds on your lot and you're not even here to see that? ” Bailey-Raines said. That day, she rounded up a group of nine people, including her son and his friend. A neighbor across the street was suspicious at first, but eventually told her,"You have me for about an hour.
" He stayed for two. One of them — a 14,000-square-foot lot — belongs to Sarkis Aleksanian and his family. He had reached out to Bailey-Raines in late April, after learning about the group from a neighborhood WhatsApp chat.
“I was looking into cleaning up the lot and really daunted by the prospect,” he said. “I was worried that the lawn would dry up and be a problem. ” Aleksanian and his wife were on hand to help out. It’s the one thing that Bailey-Raines requires — for the homeowners to be there.
“I've asked them that if they're able-bodied to be here and help,” she said. “You're here. You're encouraging people, and you're helping on your lot. was doing everything from weed-eater, to chainsaw, to whatever, and that's what it's about. ”“It was just remarkable, I tell you,” Aleksanian said.
He said he recognized some of the volunteers that morning — folks he sees in the community. And he did encounter someone he knew — a high school acquaintance from years back.
“It's neighbors helping neighbors, just like she called it, you know? ” Aleksanian said. With a growing waitlist, what is needed are people and equipment — from gloves and trash bags to the hardware.
“I have six brush cutters and two chainsaws and a couple trimmers, but I need, like, triple that at least,” she said. “My dream is one Saturday morning to have 500 people and that we clear a whole street, a whole block — so that this list of 200 can go down, and as others hear about it, they get on it, and we as a community do this as neighbors to help one another,” she said.
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NASA plans to open the contract to manage the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada Flintridge to a competitive bidding process, according toSince NASA was established in 1958, Caltech has managed JPL for the federal space agency"through a contractual relationship that has been regularly reviewed and renewed," according to Friday's memo. NASA began its regular process of evaluating the contract last year..
The lab and the university are leaders in civilian space science, with missions that have sent spacecraft into Earth orbit, to. The lab is also a major employer in the region and hosts massive classes of interns from around the world. The news about the contract was first reported by thethat the space agency intends to issue a request for proposals for management of JPL.
"This process will take several years, and I do not anticipate it having any impact on the projects underway or the location of the facilities," Isaacman wrote. "It does, however, provide an opportunity to evaluate management costs, overhead burdens and ideally find ways to get after the science faster and more affordably. "Caltech's contract runs through the end of September 2028. "This announcement comes as no surprise," Caltech's president and JPL's director wrote to staffers Friday.
"Caltech is well prepared with a team established last summer to ensure we are positioned for success, and we will respond to the request for proposal once released. "There’s a day for everything, and Saturday is World Turtle Day. This is the story of how humans helped a vulnerable native California turtle. Southwestern pond turtles in the San Gabriel mountains were almost wiped out by the Bobcat Fire in 2020.
But biologists rescued 11 adults that were held at the San Diego Zoo until 2024, when they were released. But then something happened that scientists didn't expect:"One baby, two baby, three baby, four baby. Fifteen babies later," is how a wildlife care manager at the zoo described it. Yes, the rescued turtles had laid eggs in their temporary home, and the hatchlings were emerging.
Once they'd grown a bit, the zoo released the young turtles into San Gabriel River where they belong in April. After fires and floods, Southern California’s only remaining native freshwater turtle recently got a boost. Just last month, 15 southwestern pond turtle hatchlings were released into the San Gabriel River — a major milestone in an effort to restore the vulnerable turtle population. The fire eventually scorched more than 180 square miles — mostly forest in the San Gabriel Mountains.
For comparison, the 2025 Eaton Fire burned about 22 square miles. As the Bobcat Fire spread, biologists grew worried. The fire was burning in the West Fork of the San Gabriel River, a biodiversity hotspot and refuge forIt’s also home to the largest remaining — and possibly only — population of southwestern pond turtles in the entire watershed. Their exact numbers aren’t known, but it’s likely less than 200.
The small, shy turtles grow to about 8 inches and range from Baja California to just south of the San Francisco Bay. They spend most of their lives in streams, rivers, lakes and other watery environments. They primarily eat small insects and plant matter. The California Department of Fish and Wildlife lists them as a Species of Special Concern, and they're being considered for federal protections under the Endangered Species Act.
“Because this hadn’t burned in decades and decades and decades, there was big concern about debris flows,” said Robert Fisher, a biologist with the U.S. Geological Survey. Scientists hoped the turtles would be able to ride out the fire itself by staying in the water, but any rain after would likely lead to a deluge of mud, trees and other burned materials.
That would be akin to an avalanche for the turtles in the river, and it had the potential to wipe out the entire population. Once the flames died down, Fisher and a team of biologists, in partnership with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife and U.S. Forest Service, trekked to the home of the pond turtles.
Susan Tellem and her late husband, Marshall Thompson, coined the day in 2000 after founding a turtle and tortoise rescue 10 years earlier at their home in Malibu.
“When I first started helping turtles, there were hardly people helping the needs of turtles,” Tellem told LAist. “We decided to help educate people internationally so that turtles can live a longer and happier life. ”The turtles were taken to the San Diego Zoo, where the plan was to hold them until their mountain habitat recovered enough for them to return.
By 2024, the San Gabriel Mountains were looking far better — biologists even found some pond turtles that survived major debris flows.
“Just before we were getting to release, we found a baby turtle, which is amazing,” said Brandon Scott, wildlife care manager of herpetology and ichthyology at San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance. “You don't know how long it's going to take to restart that process of them actually being able to breed, with the stress and it's a new habitat. ”The turtles and the new baby were all returned to their home in the San Gabriels. But then came another surprise.
And another. Female southwestern pond turtles lay and bury their eggs in late spring or early summer. Juveniles emerge months later, only about the size of a quarter. Their goal for the 11 rescued turtles was to make sure they could thrive before being released back into their habitat.
“But in the process,” Scott said, “yes, we made it comfortable enough for them to breed. ”The new generation of southwestern pond turtles was released in April near the spot their parents were rescued from in the San Gabriel River.in the face of more catastrophic fires. All but two of the biggest fires in recorded history have been in the last 20 years.
Fisher said a similar rescue of pond turtles had occurred only once before, after the 2009 Station Fire in the San Gabriels. That time, the turtles were quickly returned to their habitat. A staff member of the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance releases a juvenile southwestern pond turtle into the San Gabriel River.
That rescue, in part, inspired the U.S. Geological Survey to work with the San Diego Zoo to build a conservation habitat for southwestern pond turtles nearly two decades ago. And the Bobcat Fire became the first time it was used for wild rescues, Fisher said.
“We’ve known about for decades, but it’s not really thriving,” he said. “So this helped give it a head start. And because the fire was so intense, it opened up a lot of habitat. ”Southwestern pond turtles have lived here for millennia, but invasive species and habitat destruction have nearly wiped them out.
They’re currently being considered for protection under the federal Endangered Species Act. Nonnative turtles — such as red-eared sliders, many of which are abandoned pets — are outcompeting them in their habitats. And native pond turtle hatchlings are easy prey for invasive animals such as bullfrogs and crayfish. On top of that, pollution in our atmosphere is driving longer, hotter droughts, which dries out the streams and rivers where they live.
Worsening “weather whiplash” means more dangerous mudflows after fires, which can wipe out entire aquatic animal populations.
“Because the site was so forested and hadn’t burned in so long, we don’t think they were having good success at breeding,” Fisher said. “Now we think we’ve really enhanced the population by putting more animals out there, especially young animals. ” Scott and Fisher said the saga has inspired preliminary conversations about formalizing breeding efforts to support the population. The little turtles' myriad threats have yet to let up, so they’ll likely need more help in the future.
But at the moment, there’s a little more hope — at least 16 hatchlings and 11 adults' worth of hope, to be exact — for California’s only native freshwater turtle.
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