Former AI search experience lead appointed as new head of Google Search

Elizabeth Reid's appointment as the head of Google Search suggests that the company is pushing for more AI capabilities for Search

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Google’s Search department has gone through a major overhaul recently. Elizabeth Reid, who was overseeing the AI-powered Search Generative Experience (SGE), announced on her LinkedIn profile that she will now be the head of Search.

According to a report by The Verge, Pandu Nayak, who was an executive overseeing ranking and quality, is now going to be chief scientist of Search. Meanwhile, Cheenu Venkatachary, who has been working on AI products in Search, will fill Nayak's previous role.

Although it is unknown what implications these changes will have on Google Search, especially on the consumer front. However, Reid’s new role as the head of Search suggests that the company is planning on integrating more AI features into Search.

In her post on LinkedIn, Reid said, “With SGE, we are able to serve a wider range of information needs and answer new types of questions, including more complex questions, like comparisons or longer queries. More coming soon!”

Reid in a statement to The Verge, during the launch of SGE last year, said that the company believes that with AI, Search can be transformed into a more multimodal feature that can take in both text and media as input to provide context-rich output. This combined with Google's recent push into AI, suggests that Search will most likely look more like SGE over-time, providing relevant information upfront on the search page, instead of showing links of multiple websites that may have information related to search query.