NotebookLM just got its biggest upgrade since launch: Google adds web research and code

Google says NotebookLM now runs on Gemini 3.5 Flash, and this sounds like more than a routine model update. The app can now search the web for sources on its own and use a secure cloud computer, called Antigravity, to write and run code.

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That’s a different pitch from the usual “second brain” stuff. Until now, most AI note-taking apps have mostly helped people sort and summarize material they’d already gathered. Google wants NotebookLM doing more of the grunt work: finding sources, working through data, and turning the results into something usable.

In Google’s internal tests, the new system beat the previous version at advanced web research and source discovery 78.2% of the time. The company also says Antigravity adds more than 100 curated tools for analysis, calculations, file conversion, and other structured tasks.

So the workflow changes. Instead of babysitting a pile of uploaded PDFs and pasted links, you can hand NotebookLM a research task and let it run with it longer. Google says it can now turn that work into downloadable reports, presentations, spreadsheets, and charts.

And yes, this also helps explain why Google is suddenly talking about NotebookLM as a tool for law, medicine, and finance.

There’s a catch. Broader web access means more chances for weak sources, junk pages, or plain bad information to slip into the mix. A polished report built on shaky inputs is still shaky. And anything that relies on cloud-based processing is going to make some people nervous, especially when sensitive documents are involved.

This is probably NotebookLM’s biggest update since launch. Still, it makes more sense to treat it like a very fast junior analyst than some all-knowing research machine.