AI Mode May Default to the Last App Used

You've heard the pitch. Build an app for Google's AI Mode, and Google will hand your product to people at the moment they want it.

Google's help page describes something narrower. It says Google may default to the last app you used for a certain task. Where a category holds more than one app, the first account a person links could be the one that keeps the job.

That is my reading of Google's wording, not a behavior Google has described. I would watch the moment of account linking as closely as the listing.

The pitch spread on X after Google opened the Connected Apps Platform. Elliot Garreffa wrote on October 30 that Google is now organically surfacing these apps at the moment of intent after prompts. Google had announced the platform on October 28 as one place to build apps for Search and the Gemini app. Search Engine Journal covered the preview on October 31 and quoted Google Search Advocate John Mueller calling it "still extremely early." SEJ notes he does not work on the product.

The help page is where Google says how AI Mode picks an app. A person can "either specify the app directly, or make a general request and then select your desired app from the available app list." If the app is not connected yet, the person gets the option to connect it. Then comes the default line: "Google may default to the last app you used for a certain task, but you can change which app you use to complete an action at any time (pending app availability on AI Mode)."

For now that default has little to act on. The page says the feature is "currently available in AI Mode in the US, in English." It lists five apps. Instacart is the only grocery app, Canva the only design app and YouTube Music the only music app, beside two fantasy football apps from Yahoo and Sleeper.

Google says more are coming. Developers choose before review whether an app goes live in Search, the Gemini app or both, and SEJ reports that Google reviews and tests each app before it can be published. Its blog post says the company has launched more than 50 Connected Apps across Search and Gemini, and that partners such as Adobe and Experian will reach Search in the coming weeks.

Then there is a rumor. On November 2, Abhishek Yadav wrote on X that Google is preparing to bring Swiggy to AI Mode, with Zepto and BigBasket also on the list. His post says it is not live and Google has not announced it. Those are delivery services built for India, and the help page still limits the feature to the US in English. Nothing in the post dates a US launch, but it shows what a crowded category would look like.

Google already polices how apps compete for selection. Its policy, quoted by SEJ, bars "overly broad or deceptive capability descriptions to influence the model into selecting the Connected App over another Connected App." That rule is about descriptions. It says nothing about what a person's earlier choice does to the next request.

A person asks AI Mode to build a grocery cart. Two grocery apps are available, and the person picks one and links an account. The next time, Google's wording suggests AI Mode may start with the app that person used. Linking alone would not settle it. The person would have to use the app and then ask again, and could always name a different one.

My guess is that this makes the link prompt the step to design for, more than the description Google reads. The build-focused pitch treats getting listed as the win. If the default works the way the help page implies, the win is being the app a person links first and uses once. That is a hypothesis, and it needs two apps in one category to test.