What Are Google's New Information Agents

What Are Google's New Information Agents and How Do You Use Them?

Google just did something it has never done before: it turned its search engine into a platform for deploying personal AI agents.

On May 19, 2026, at Google I/O, the company announced information agents — personalized AI agents you can create directly inside Google Search. Once created, they run in the background, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, monitoring the web and alerting you when something relevant happens. You don't need to search again. You don't need to check a website. The agent does it for you.

This article explains what information agents are, how they differ from everything that came before, who has access right now, and exactly how to set one up.

The Origin Story: Google Alerts, Upgraded by 23 Years of AI Progress

To understand what information agents are, it helps to understand what they're replacing.

Google launched Google Alerts in 2003. The idea was simple: tell Google what topics matter to you, and it would email you a digest of new web pages mentioning those keywords. It was the first consumer-facing product that did something automatically on your behalf — it was, in a very primitive sense, an agent.

Google Alerts still exists. But it has barely changed since 2003. It matches keywords. It emails links. It has no understanding of what matters to you. It cannot distinguish between a major development and a minor mention. It cannot synthesize information across multiple sources. It cannot take action.

Information agents are what Alerts would look like if you rebuilt them in 2026 with access to Gemini 3.5 Flash, Google's entire real-time data infrastructure, and the entire modern AI agent stack.

The Upgrade in Concrete Terms

What Exactly Can You Monitor With an Information Agent?

Google's information agents can monitor anything that appears on the web or in Google's real-time data feeds. The categories with the most utility for US consumers:

Financial Monitoring

Set up an agent to track specific stocks, ETFs, or crypto assets. The agent monitors market activity throughout the day, tracks earnings announcements, summarizes analyst reports when they publish, and alerts you when your defined thresholds are crossed — without you needing to check a financial site.

Example prompt: 'Alert me whenever $NVDA drops more than 3% in a single day, and summarize why when it happens.'

Real Estate and Rental Markets

The apartment hunting example from Google's own I/O keynote: 'Find me a two-bedroom apartment under $2,500 in Brooklyn with a dishwasher.' The agent scans listings continuously — Zillow, Apartments.com, Craigslist, and other sources Google indexes — and notifies you when something matching your criteria appears. For competitive housing markets, this is a meaningful advantage over checking manually every day.

Example prompt: 'Monitor Austin, TX for 3-bedroom houses between $450K-$550K with a garage listed in the last 24 hours.'

Sports and Entertainment

The sneaker collab example from Sundar Pichai's I/O keynote: 'Let me know the instant any of my favorite pro athletes announce a sneaker collab.' Fans can also track team news, trade rumors, injury reports, and ticket drops for upcoming events — all in one agent that sends push notifications rather than requiring you to check beat reporters, team websites, and social media separately.

Competitive Intelligence and Industry News

This is where information agents are most powerful for professionals. Track competitor product launches. Monitor industry regulation changes. Follow key executives' public statements. Receive synthesized weekly briefings on a specific market segment — all without delegating the monitoring task to a human employee or spending 30 minutes each morning reading newsletters.

Example prompt: 'Monitor AI agent industry news and send me a daily briefing each weekday morning by 8 AM with the three most important developments.'

Travel and Pricing

Track flight prices for a specific route and alert when they drop below a threshold. Monitor hotel availability for a specific destination during a target window. Watch for rental car deals in a city you're visiting in six weeks. None of these require repeated manual searches — you describe what you want and the agent watches.

Job and Career Monitoring

Track job postings at specific companies or in specific roles. Monitor salary data for a professional category you're interested in. Follow a particular company's news when you're considering joining them. The agent aggregates what would otherwise require daily checks of LinkedIn, Indeed, Glassdoor, and company career pages.

How to Set Up Your First Information Agent: Step-by-Step

Information agents are built and managed inside AI Mode in Google Search. Here's the complete setup process:

Prerequisites

•       A Google account with an active Google AI Pro ($19.99/mo) or Google AI Ultra ($249.99/mo) subscription

•       Access to AI Mode in Google Search (available at google.com — look for the 'AI Mode' tab next to 'All', 'Images', 'Shopping')

•       The Google app installed on your phone for push notifications (iOS or Android)

Creating Your First Agent

1.     Open Google Search and click the 'AI Mode' tab

2.     Type a monitoring goal in natural language. Don't think in keywords — describe what you actually want to track. The more specific your goal, the more useful the agent.

3.     Google's AI will parse your prompt and suggest an agent configuration. Review what sources it plans to monitor, how frequently it checks, and what trigger conditions will cause a notification.

4.     Adjust the configuration if needed. You can specify: frequency of checks (real-time, hourly, daily), types of sources to include or exclude, notification format (brief summary vs detailed briefing), time of day for scheduled digests.

5.     Confirm the agent setup. It begins running immediately.

6.     Enable push notifications in the Google app on your phone. This is how the agent delivers its findings.

Managing Your Active Agents

All your active information agents appear in your AI Mode history. From there you can:

•       Review recent findings from each agent

•       Refine or update the agent's criteria — 'Actually, I only want apartments in Park Slope, not all of Brooklyn'

•       Pause an agent temporarily without deleting it

•       Turn off an agent you no longer need

•       Ask follow-up questions about anything an agent surfaced

Writing Good Agent Prompts: The Difference Between Useful and Useless

The quality of your information agent is almost entirely determined by the quality of your initial prompt. Here are the patterns that produce the most useful agents:

Be Specific About What Triggers a Notification

Vague: 'Monitor Tesla news'

Better: 'Alert me when Tesla announces a new model, a significant earnings beat or miss (more than 10% vs estimates), or a major regulatory action in the US. Ignore routine press releases and minor product updates.'

Include Time and Geography Where Relevant

Vague: 'Track remote software engineering jobs'

Better: 'Monitor US-based fully remote senior software engineering jobs at Series B or later startups, posted in the last 48 hours, with a salary range above $150K. Filter out contract and freelance postings.'

Specify the Synthesis You Want

Vague: 'Follow AI industry news'

Better: 'Send me a daily AI industry briefing at 7 AM Pacific, covering: major model releases, significant funding announcements, US regulatory developments, and one notable enterprise AI agent deployment. Format as 3-5 bullet points with a one-sentence context for each.'

Use the Agent for Ongoing Monitoring, Not One-Off Research

Information agents are not replacements for a single research query. Use AI Mode directly for 'who is the CEO of Anthropic?' Use an information agent for 'notify me every time a major AI company announces a new CEO.'

Personal Intelligence: Connecting Information Agents to Your Gmail and Calendar

Information agents become significantly more powerful when you connect Personal Intelligence in AI Mode — Google's feature that allows Search to access your Gmail, Google Photos, and (coming later in 2026) Google Calendar.

With Personal Intelligence enabled, your information agents can cross-reference web monitoring with your personal context. Monitoring a company for job opportunities? Your agent can notice that your college roommate just posted about working there, based on an email you received, and surface that connection. Tracking apartment listings? Your agent can check your calendar for when your lease ends and prioritize listings based on your move-out timeline.

To enable Personal Intelligence, in AI Mode settings, select 'Personal context' and choose which apps to connect. You can revoke access at any time. Google's privacy policy specifies that personal context data is not used to train its general models.

How Information Agents Compare to Competing Tools

What to Read Next

•       Google's Agentic Booking Is Live — Here's How to Book Things With AI in Search — step-by-step booking walkthrough

•       How Google's New AI Agents Are Changing Search — And What It Means for You — full pillar page

•       AI Mode vs Traditional Google Search: What's Actually Different in 2026 — feature comparison

Already published on this site:

Cluster 1 — Agentic Coding & CLI Agents:

•       AI Coding Agents Explained: CLI vs IDE, and Which One to Use in 2026 — the definitive coding agent guide

•       Claude Code vs Cursor vs OpenCode: Which AI Coding Agent Should You Use? — full comparison

•       Why CLI Agents Are Beating IDE Assistants for Real Software Work — delegation vs assistance explained

•       5 Things Claude Code Can Do That ChatGPT Can't (Yet) — concrete feature breakdown

Cluster 2 — Personal & Consumer AI Agents:

•       Personal AI Agents 101: What They Are, How They Work, and How to Set One Up in 2026 — consumer agent primer