Google introduced throughout Google I/O 2025 that it’s rolling out Mission Mariner, the corporate’s experimental AI agent that browses and makes use of web sites, to extra customers and builders. Google additionally says it’s considerably up to date how Mission Mariner works, permitting the agent to tackle practically a dozen duties at a time.
U.S. subscribers to Google’s new $249.99-per-month AI Ultra plan will get entry to Mission Mariner, and the corporate says help for extra international locations is coming quickly. Google additionally says it’s bringing Mission Mariner’s capabilities to the Gemini API and Vertex AI, permitting builders to construct out purposes powered by the agent.
First unveiled in late 2024, Project Mariner represents Google’s boldest effort but to revamp how customers work together with the web via AI brokers. At launch, Google Search leaders stated they seen Mission Mariner as a part of a basic consumer expertise shift, by which individuals will delegate extra duties to an AI agent, as a substitute of visiting web sites and finishing these duties themselves.
For instance, Mission Mariner customers should purchase tickets to a baseball sport or purchase groceries on-line with out ever visiting a third-party web site — they only chat with Google’s AI agent, and it visits web sites and takes actions for them.
Mission Mariner competes with different web-browsing AI brokers, corresponding to OpenAI’s Operator, Amazon’s Nova Act, and Anthropic’s Computer Use. These instruments are all in an experimental stage, and TechCrunch’s expertise has confirmed the prototypes to be sluggish and susceptible to errors.
Nonetheless, Google says it’s taken suggestions from early testers to enhance Mission Mariner’s capabilities. A Google spokesperson tells TechCrunch the corporate up to date Mission Mariner to run on digital machines within the cloud, very similar to brokers from OpenAI and Amazon. This implies customers can work on different initiatives whereas Mission Mariner completes duties within the background — Google says the brand new Mission Mariner can deal with as much as 10 duties concurrently.
This replace makes Mission Mariner considerably extra helpful in comparison with its predecessor, which ran on a consumer’s browser. As I famous in my initial review, Mission Mariner’s early design meant customers couldn’t use different tabs or apps on their desktop whereas the AI agent was working. This sort of defeated the aim of an AI agent — it could give you the results you want, however you couldn’t do anything whereas it was working.
Within the coming months, Google says customers will be capable of entry Mission Mariner in AI Mode, the corporate’s AI-powered Google Search expertise. When it launches, the function will likely be restricted to Search Labs, Google’s opt-in testing floor for search options. Google says it’s working with Ticketmaster, StubHub, Resy, and Vagaro to energy a few of these agentic flows.
Individually right now, Google unveiled an early demo of one other agentic expertise referred to as “Agent Mode.” The corporate says this function combines net looking with analysis options and integrations, in addition to with different Google apps. Google says Extremely subscribers will achieve entry to Agent Mode on desktop quickly.
At this 12 months’s I/O, Google lastly appears keen to ship the agentic experiences it’s been speaking about for years. Mission Mariner, Agent Mode, and AI Mode all appear poised to alter how customers navigate the online, and the way distributors work together with their prospects on-line. Net-browsing brokers have massive implications for the web economic system, however Google appears able to put all these brokers out on the planet.
