Google is running a limited desktop A/B test that, for signed-out users, replaces the classic Search button with three AI task buttons — "Create images," "Brainstorm," and "Ask about files." A Google Search VP confirmed it on social media; there is no blog post, and Google won't say how many users see it.

If you opened an Incognito tab on Google's homepage this week, you may have noticed the button that has said "Google Search" for a quarter-century was gone. In its place: three AI shortcuts — "Create images," "Brainstorm," and "Ask about files."

It's real, and Google has confirmed it — though the confirmation is worth reading closely. The Mountain View company is running what its Search VP of Product, Robby Stein, called "a small test on desktop to help people find new things they can do with Search." That statement did not come in a blog post or a press release. It came in a social-media reply, first reported by Search Engine Land on Monday. There is, as of Tuesday, no official Google announcement of the change at all.

What Google will confirm is narrow. The buttons appear for signed-out desktop users — they vanish when you sign in — which is why they surface in Incognito. Core search still works: "just add your question and hit enter as usual," Stein wrote, "which is how most people search anyways." "Create images" requires a Google account; "Brainstorm" and "Ask about files" don't. Beyond that, the company has disclosed nothing measurable — no share of users in the test, no geographies, no duration, no ship date. Reporters at multiple outlets couldn't reliably reproduce the UI across sessions, a sign the rollout is gated server-side.

This is the top of the same funnel Google has been building all year: Gemini became the default model behind AI Overviews in January, and I/O in May promised background "information agents" in Search. Reading this test as the next step in that push is reasonable — but it's press inference, not something Google has said.

An SFGATE columnist framed the change as an assault on the human spirit. The narrower, verifiable version: a company that owns most of the world's search traffic is quietly A/B-testing how far it can demote its own oldest button, and won't say to how many people. Watch for whether it survives past the experiment — most of these don't — and whether Google ever files it under an actual announcement.