Information agents are AI assistants in Google Search that keep watching a topic for you. You describe once what you want to follow, such as news about a supplier or a price drop on equipment you want to buy. The agent keeps searching in the background, day and night, and sends you a summary when something relevant changes. Google announced them in May 2026.
What did Google announce?
At its I/O conference on 19 May 2026, Google said Search was entering "the era of Search agents": agents that you create, customise and manage in Search itself. Information agents came first (Google's Search announcement). According to Google, such an agent works in the background, 24/7. It looks across blogs, news sites and social posts, plus Google's real-time data on finance, shopping and sports, watches for changes related to your question, and sends a synthesised update with the option to act on it. Google's examples are apartment hunting, where the agent tells you when a listing meets your requirements, and a new sneaker release by your favourite athlete. You can run several agents at once. According to Google's list of I/O announcements, information agents would roll out in summer 2026, first to Google AI Pro and Ultra subscribers.
Is the idea new?
Following a topic is older. Google Alerts, launched in 2003, emails you new search results for a topic. The difference Google describes is the step after finding: the agent reasons across what it finds and sends a synthesised update. The term is older too. In 1999 Matthias Klusch edited Intelligent Information Agents, a survey of research on software agents that find and manage information on the internet.
How do they differ from Gemini Spark and Daily Brief?
On the same day Google announced two background agents in the Gemini app (Gemini app announcement). Gemini Spark is "a 24/7 personal AI agent" that works with Gmail, Docs, Slides and other Workspace apps. It went to trusted testers first, with a US beta for Google AI Ultra subscribers planned a week later. Daily Brief, once you opt in, goes through your inbox and calendar overnight and prepares a morning digest with suggested next steps. Information agents watch the web for a question you set in Search; Spark and Daily Brief work with your own apps and data. All three are always-on agents: they work in the background without you starting each step. The blog post on Gemini Omni and Google's always-on agents covers the announcements in more detail.
Where are the limits?
In May 2026 these were announcements. Google's posts describe what information agents are meant to do and give no figures on how often they catch a change or miss one. An agent that reads blogs and social posts reads text written by strangers, and hidden instructions in such text are a known route for prompt injection. Google's I/O posts do not say how information agents guard against that. For Spark, Google says it asks first before high-stakes actions such as spending money or sending emails; the Search announcement describes no such check for the actions an information agent can offer.
Example
Suppose the owner of a bicycle shop sets up an agent: "Tell me when the price of these three e-bike models drops at the big online shops, and when a Dutch news site reports new rules for e-bikes." The agent checks news sites and Google's shopping data in the background. When one of the models gets cheaper, the owner receives one summarised update, where Google Alerts would send the new search results that mention the models. Google's own examples, an apartment or a sneaker release, work the same way.