Google is testing a Chrome feature that bypasses its own search results page entirely.
A flag named "Fulfill Searchbox Queries in AI Mode" has appeared in Chrome's Canary build — Google's bleeding-edge experimental channel. When enabled, typing a query into Chrome's address bar would route users directly into AI Mode rather than the traditional results page. Canary is where Google tests ideas that frequently never ship, so this could die quietly. But the intent is legible.
For years, Chrome's address bar has been Google's most reliable on-ramp to search — and to the ads that pay for everything else. Routing users past the results page into an AI-generated answer would accelerate a transition already underway: blue links are losing real estate to AI Overviews, and publishers who depend on search referrals would take another hit. The structural problem is that Google is using a browser it controls to entrench a product that competes with the open web.
Google is already under antitrust scrutiny for using Chrome and Android to lock in its search dominance — a feature that makes AI Mode the default exit ramp for every query adds one more exhibit to that argument.