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AI & Advertising

Google Just Linked Your Apps To Gemini. Sorry, To AI Mode.

Black ink illustration of a hand crossing out the word Gemini on a label and writing AI Mode just below it, with a blue ink smudge over the correction, symbolizing the naming confusion around Google's AI products.

Google just wired Instacart, Canva and YouTube Music straight into its AI answers. Good news if you’re the user: query to action, no new tab. Bad news if you’re the one explaining the feature to a client: it took me ten seconds to figure out whether this was coming from Gemini, from AI Mode, or from “Google” in general.

Officially, it’s called Connected Apps and it lives inside AI Mode. Search Engine Land and TechCrunch are both clear on that. A user types “what do I need for a Thai curry,” Google answers AND offers to jump straight to groceries via Instacart, a visual via Canva, or a playlist via YouTube Music. No tab switch required.

Except even the most wired-in users can’t keep it straight either. On launch day, a post on r/artificial titled “Gemini is EVERYWHERE” lists it out: Chrome, AI Mode, Overviews, the default assistant on Android (and apparently now on iPhone), Circle-to-Search, Maps, Gmail, Docs. A pile of overlapping brand names and features, to the point nobody’s sure which one does what anymore.

What it means for your account

The product name barely matters, the mechanic does. Every query that routes straight to a third-party app (groceries, design, music) is a query that never clicks through to a site, not yours, not a competitor’s who’s paying to be there. The funnel closes before it ever reaches a results page.

For now it’s US-only and limited to three apps. But the direction is clear: Google isn’t just answering anymore, it’s executing. The day Connected Apps lands in France with an e-commerce app in the mix, that’s a new channel to negotiate, not a feature to shrug off.