TL;DR
- Global Expansion: Google has expanded AI Mode’s agentic restaurant booking to eight new markets, including the UK, Australia, and Canada.
- Booking Partners: Eight reservation platforms power the feature, including OpenTable and TheFork, requiring no extra integration from restaurants.
- Interface Redesign: A new bottom sheet replaces the mobile pop-up menu, adding Gallery, Camera tools, and a Gemini model switcher.
- Agentic Momentum: AI Mode has grown to 75 million daily active users since its May 2025 launch across Search.
Google is rolling out AI Mode’s restaurant booking feature to eight countries, letting users in the UK, Australia, Canada, and five other markets reserve tables directly through Search for the first time. The announcement, made on April 10 via the Google Blog, pairs the geographic expansion with a redesigned mobile interface that adds a Gemini 3 model switcher and a new bottom sheet prompt box.
Beyond a simple feature update, this expansion marks Google’s broadest push toward making AI Mode an action-taking agent rather than an information tool. With no Labs opt-in required, users in all eight new markets can book restaurant tables directly through Search without leaving the AI interface, a feature that had been limited to the US since AI Mode’s launch in May 2025. According to Google, AI Mode had reached 75 million daily active users by January 2026, and this international rollout represents the feature’s first step beyond American borders.
Agentic Booking Goes Global
Users can describe what they want in natural language, specifying time, location, cuisine, party size, or even ambiance preferences, and AI Mode searches multiple reservation platforms to surface bookable options. A prompt like “find a table for two at a dog-friendly Italian restaurant in Shoreditch for Saturday at 7 p.m.” triggers the system to check availability across partner platforms and return a curated list with direct booking links.
Eight reservation platform partners power the feature: TheFork, SevenRooms, ResDiary, Mozrest, Foodhub, Dojo, DesignMyNight, and OpenTable. Combining global platforms like OpenTable with regional services such as Dojo and DesignMyNight in the UK gives Google localized coverage that a single-partner approach could not match. Restaurants already listed on any of these services become bookable through AI Mode without additional integration work, effectively turning existing reservation infrastructure into a Google Search feature.
Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, India, New Zealand, Singapore, South Africa, and the UK make up the eight new markets. Google pointed to rising consumer interest in dining tools as context for the timing: Google Trends data shows UK searches for “when to book a table” surged 140% in 2026.
“We’re bringing new agentic capabilities to AI Mode in Search, helping those in the U.K. go from planning to booking in just a few steps,” Laurian Clemence wrote on the Google Blog.
Google’s decision to skip the Labs experimental phase for international markets signals confidence in the booking workflow’s stability. Earlier AI Mode features typically launched behind experimental flags before reaching general availability, giving Google a controlled testing period. The direct rollout suggests US deployment provided sufficient data to justify a broader launch, and the eight-partner approach distributes risk across multiple established reservation systems rather than relying on a single untested pipeline.
Mobile Interface Overhaul
Alongside the booking expansion, Google is redesigning AI Mode’s prompt box with a bottom sheet for mobile, replacing the previous pop-up menu. This redesign mirrors changes already made to the Gemini app, converging the UI language across Google’s AI surfaces and creating a more consistent experience for users who move between Search and the standalone Gemini app.
The new bottom sheet includes large buttons for Gallery and Camera, a Tools section with image creation, and a Gemini 3 model switcher offering Auto or Pro modes. Auto handles routine queries with lower latency, while Pro applies the full Gemini 3 model for complex, multi-step tasks like restaurant discovery and booking. Both Android and iOS users on the stable channel receive the redesign, making it available to the broad user base rather than just beta testers.
Surfacing the Gemini 3 model switcher directly in the AI Mode interface signals that Google views its latest model generation as a consumer-facing differentiator, not just backend infrastructure. Google launched Gemini 3 in November 2025 and deployed Gemini 3 Pro to AI Mode in January 2026, with CEO Sundar Pichai framing the rollout as “shipping Gemini at the scale of Google.” By offering users the choice between Auto and Pro modes, Google extends that vision to individual query-level decisions, turning model selection into a product feature rather than a technical detail.
Gallery and Camera integration also points to Google’s ambition for AI Mode to handle visual queries alongside text. Combined with the booking feature, the interface creates a path from visual or conversational discovery through to a confirmed reservation within a single Search session.
AI Mode’s Agentic Evolution
The international booking expansion continues a trajectory that began when Google announced AI Mode at Google I/O in May 2025, launching it in the US with agentic checkout and restaurant booking capabilities. Since then, AI Mode has evolved from a search enhancement into a transactional platform that can complete purchases and reservations on behalf of users.
In November 2025, agentic checkout launched with retailers including Wayfair, Chewy, and Quince. By January 2026, Google reported that AI Mode had reached 75 million daily active users, the company had deployed Gemini 3 Pro to power the feature, and Personal Intelligence capabilities connected the tool to Gmail and Google Photos for AI Pro and Ultra subscribers. In March 2026, AI Mode’s Canvas feature expanded to US users broadly, adding document drafting and custom tools within Search.
Google has simultaneously built out AI Mode’s monetization layer. In January 2026, the company introduced Direct Offers, an advertising format that lets brands surface exclusive deals within AI Mode responses. By February, Google was testing shopping ads, travel category ads, and a Universal Commerce Protocol checkout flow. In March, Google SVP Nick Fox confirmed in a Wired interview that ads were actively being tested in AI Mode, with Google’s VP of Ads Vidhya Srinivasan describing the strategy as “reinventing what an ad is.”
Google moved from US-only restaurant booking to eight new international markets in under a year, while simultaneously adding retail checkout, ad monetization, and personal data integration. This trajectory positions AI Mode ahead of competitors like ChatGPT and Perplexity, which remain primarily focused on answering questions rather than executing transactions. ChatGPT’s share of general search queries has tripled from 4.1% to 12.5% according to recent industry data, with 66% of Gen Z now using it for information, but neither ChatGPT nor Perplexity offers the kind of embedded booking workflow that AI Mode now provides across multiple countries.
For traditional reservation platforms, the integration offers access to Google’s massive search audience but at the cost of ceding the customer relationship to a conversational interface. The eight partner platforms gain distribution through Google Search, yet each completed booking originates from an AI-mediated conversation rather than the platform’s own app or website. For users, the value proposition is fewer tabs, fewer apps, and a single interface that handles the full journey from discovery to confirmed reservation. Whether this shifts meaningful booking volume away from direct platform use will depend on how quickly consumers adopt conversational search as their default path to a dinner reservation.
