Google has quietly discontinued its "What People Suggest" AI search feature, which used artificial intelligence to aggregate crowdsourced health advice from online discussions and surface it alongside traditional search results. The feature was launched with considerable fanfare at Google's "The Check Up" health event in New York in March 2025, where then-Chief Health Officer Karen DeSalvo described it as showing "the potential of AI to transform health outcomes across the globe." A Google spokesperson confirmed the removal to The Guardian, attributing it to a "broader simplification" of the search results page rather than any concerns about information quality or safety.
The timing raises questions that Google's framing does not fully answer. The removal follows a January 2026 Guardian investigation that found Google's AI Overviews — shown to approximately 2 billion users per month — were surfacing false and misleading health information that independent medical experts flagged as potentially harmful — a problem that <a href="/news/2026-03-14-ai-chatbots-health-records-hipaa">extends beyond Google's systems</a>. In the wake of that investigation, Google removed AI Overviews for some medical queries. The company's claim that the "What People Suggest" scrapping was publicly announced directed reporters to a November 2025 blog post by search advocate John Mueller that makes no mention of the feature at all.
Google's insistence that the removal was a UI decision rather than a safety one is hard to square with the sequence of events: a January investigation finds harmful health misinformation, Google quietly pulls medical AI features, and then points to a blog post that doesn't mention the feature when asked for evidence it told anyone. The core problem with "What People Suggest" was structural — wrapping forum posts in AI-generated themes gives the content an authoritative visual format that the underlying source material doesn't earn. Google's next "The Check Up" event, scheduled for Tuesday, will see current Chief Health Officer Michael Howell outline further AI health initiatives, signaling the company intends to keep building in health AI even as it walks back some of its earlier bets.