Google Search Drops New Features You’ll Love

Following last week’s Google I/O 2026 developer showcase, the search giant is rolling out fresh updates to its core search experience. Chief among them is the expansion of the Preferred Sources feature into both AI Overviews and AI Mode, giving users even more control over the outlets that populate their results.

For those unfamiliar, Preferred Sources lets you handpick which news outlets and websites appear most prominently in Top Stories for any given topic. The capability has already been live worldwide across all supported languages, and users can now add any site that regularly publishes new content. Google reports that users who favor a particular source are twice as likely to click through, and the platform already boasts 345,000 unique user-selected sources.

Google is set to enrich its search results by showcasing a carousel of insights drawn from a diverse array of sources—ranging from lively online forums to trending social media chatter. Each carousel entry will also feature a “Highly Cited” badge, enabling users to instantly spot the original source that has been referenced by multiple news outlets.

Meanwhile, the tech giant is embroiled in a high‑stakes legal dispute in the European Union, where regulators are scrutinizing its alleged market dominance. Should Google fail to comply with the mandated reforms, it could be hit with staggering fines amounting to hundreds of millions of euros.

In addition to the legal pressures, Google is tightening its policy on Gemini, the company’s advanced AI model. The platform will now enforce a five‑hour cooldown between sessions and impose a weekly usage cap, curbing the previously near‑unlimited access that many users enjoyed.