Searching on the Web may get even more intuitive. Google parent Alphabet said the chief of its Internet search unit is retiring and will be succeeded by John Giannandrea, vice president of engineering at Google, who runs the company's artificial intelligence unit.

Giannandrea's work involves deep learning — networks of hardware and software that analyze and learn from neurons in the human brain. It's the technology behind familiar products like image recognition for Google Photos search, and the smart reply for Google Inbox.

Google's search engine is currently driven by algorithms, but with Giannandrea at the helm, artificial intelligence will become a bigger part of the product's functionality.

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Deep learning is a technology that trains machines to recognize patterns then categorize them, using less input from human engineers