In a sign of how important Google views artificial intelligence (AI) technology, the company has just announced that its AI chief John Giannandrea will take over as senior vice president of Search from the soon-to-retire Amit Singhal, who currently occupies the position.

Singhal, who Re/Code describes as “an incredibly powerful figure” at Google, gave notice that he’s planning to retire at the end of this month. And once Giannandrea takes over, Google said it’s going to merge its AI research with its search business, which indicates Google’s search algorithm is about to get a whole lot smarter by embracing new machine learning technologies.

The move hints at profound changes in the way Google is going to scour the Internet to help people find things online. AI is advancing all the time, leading to the creation of machines that understand their environment and can handle tasks such as recognizing handwriting and speech, spotting online fraud, and even driving cars without human drivers. Google is more invested in AI research than most, and now it looks like it’s going to apply its knowledge to its most popular product.

“Search has transformed people’s lives; over a billion people rely on us,” wrote Singhal in a post announcing his retirement. “Search is stronger than ever, and will only get better in the hands of an outstanding set of senior leaders who are already running the show day-to-day.”

When approached by Bloomberg Business, Google confirmed Giannandrea would be taking over from Singhal but declined to comment further.

Still, the fact that Giannandrea has landed one of the most important executive jobs at Google is a clear indicator of how important it views AI technologies. It’s important because Google is desperately looking to create a new business that can match the revenues it gets from advertising. The company has already made some substantial progress with its AI projects – just last week, DeepMind, Google’s London-based AI business, said it had created a program that beat a human expert at Go, an ancient Chinese game that’s considerably more complicated to play than chess. And just this week, as Alphabet reported its fourth quarter earnings, CFO Ruth Porat described AI as one of the firm’s most important “moon shots”.

Singhal will be sorely missed by Google, having achieved the distinction of becoming a “Google Fellow”, a title that’s only bestowed upon the company’s most accomplished employees.

Giannandrea joined Google back in 2010 when the Internet giant acquired his data startup Metaweb Technologies, Inc., developer of an “open, shared database of the world’s knowledge” called Freebase. Prior to that, Giannandrea served as CTO of Netscape Communications.

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