Is Google playing catchup on search with OpenAI?

Take AI Mode, which it announced March 5. It's cool. But it's pretty much a follow-along of what OpenAI was already doing. Google already had something called AI Overviews in search, but AI Mode is different and deeper.) As the company explained in a blog post, "This new Search mode expands what AI Overviews can do with more advanced reasoning, thinking and multimodal capabilities so you can get help with even your toughest questions." Rather than a brief overview with links out, the AI will dig in and offer more robust answers. You can ask followup questions too, something AI Overviews doesn't support.