Google reinvents search before AI rivals replace it

Google is reinventing the product that made it one of the richest companies in history: search. Why it matters: Search is the cash cow that funds Google's sprawling empire. But it faces an existential threat from AI chatbots, so the company is moving proactively to upend its own core business before someone else does. It's also an acknowledgment that describing what you're looking for in conversational language is a better way to find information than guessing the right keywords. Driving the news : In what it billed as the biggest change to the search box since its debut, Google announced Tuesday that it is allowing the box to expand for longer queries and chat-style exchanges. Google has been headed in this direction for a while. It already puts AI-generated summaries at the top of search results and has a more chat-like experience known as AI Mode. But the company's announcement pushes that strategy much farther, signaling Google's determination to keep more users from drifting to st