Liz Reid, head of Google Search, recently talked about how AI agents could change the way people use the web in a big way, moving from human surfing to interactions with agents.
Reid’s Vision on AI Agents
In a March 2026 ACCESS podcast, VP and Head of Google Search Liz Reid spoke about AI agents’ potential. She asked if agents could be the new dominant web user, acting on behalf of humans as opposed to queries made directly by users. This marks a paradigm shift, Reid explained; agents are enacting complex workflows like data synthesis across sites, resulting in fewer clicks of the traditional sort but increased overall efficiency.
Web as Databases for Agents
Instead, Reid imagines a web matae that morphs into interconnected databases written for agent consumption instead of human reading. This echoes previous remarks from the chief executive of Google, Sundar Pichai, who envisioned an “agent-first web” in which sites cater to easy data extraction for A.I. — sort of takeout versus dining in. Pichai then pointed to a 45% increase in crawlable web pages over two years, despite fears that A. I. would diminish human creativity.
Publisher and Traffic Impacts
Publishers fear AI agents and features such as AI Overviews are hurting traffic; groups including the News Media Alliance describe it as “theft” when they’re using content for free, without compensation. Reid and Pichai rebut that Google brings more valuable traffic to wider content sources, with query volumes growing across the board, including follow-ups stemming from AI responses. Multimodal AI has the potential for auto-converting format (rechaining text to audio/video), helping content creators without additional work.
Enterprise Adoption Leads
For Reid, agentic web interactions will be more rapidly adopted by enterprises than consumers because of CIO mandate for interoperability. For example an agent could triage security alerts or a natural language query against databases, like described in Google’s AI Agent Trends Report 2026. Examples of agent tasks, such as filtering for apartments or planning vacations autonomously, are already demo’d with consumer tools like Chrome’s Gemini Auto Browse.
Broader Industry Shifts
The arrival of Google’s AI Mode and overviews is a step away from “ten blue links” to conversational search, with agents blurring the line between browsing and automation. Competition from the likes of OpenAI’s Atlas makes it even more pressure, yet Google still controls 65% of Chrome, putting them in a strong position. Reid will be focused on battling the “AI slop” and maintaining the open web so that verifiable sources prevail in agent-to-agent communications.