Google Consolidates Agentic AI: Project Mariner Shutdown Marks Shift to Integrated Products

Google has shut down Project Mariner, its experimental autonomous web browsing tool, absorbing its agentic capabilities into core products like Gemini Agent and AI Mode. This consolidation signals a strategic pivot from standalone AI experiments to embedding intelligent automation into mainstream services, while countering similar offerings from competitors like OpenAI and Perplexity. The shutdown appears to clear the deck for new AI announcements expected at Google's May I/O conference.