Transcription
[Music] So Nepai, you're the CEO of Alphabet and Google. Welcome back to the coder.
Well, good to be back. Feels like a nice tradition post-IO to be talking to you. So good to be back. I think this is the third year we've done this after IO. I'm excited. Thank you for keeping the tradition alive. Lots to talk about. You announced a lot of things yesterday during the keynote. Uh, there's AI mode rolling out for US users. Big updates to Gemini. There's V3 and Imagine the generators. You solved Pokemon with robots, which is very exciting.
You know, my takeaway yesterday was that Google feels very confident now. There's there's a a real confidence about the technology coming to life and the products. A lot of things are shipping imminently. What's the one piece that gave you that confidence? Is it just the volume of things that are shipping? Is it one technology that clicked into being ready for consumers? Where where is it coming from?
Look, I think it comes from the depth and breadth of uh of the AI frontier. We are pushing like at a in a in a more fundamental and foundational way. We spoke a lot about this theme called research becomes reality. But it is you know always felt we are a deep computer science company and you know we've been AI first for a while. So putting all that together and and bringing it to our products at the at the depth and breadth is what I think it's really pleasing to see. For example, like you know people may not have noticed it much it was so quick we spoke about text diffusion models in the middle of the whole thing but you know but we're pushing the frontier on all dimensions right and so de spoke about world models so I think uh to me that's the exciting part like how deep we are pushing this frontier and then bringing it to users and so maybe that's what that's what makes it feel that way.
You mentioned research into reality several times. Obviously, a lot of these projects have been cooking in labs for a long time. Um, you've said many times you think AI will be as profound as electricity. Yes. Over the past many, many years that you and I have talked about it, but you said something yesterday that I think adds to that, which is that we're in a new phase of the platform shift, right? And people have talked about AI being a platform shift for quite a while. That always has meant to me that there's a user interface platform shift coming, right? We're going to interact with computers in natural language and more natural ways and they will interact with us back in that same way and everything will change. Is that the platform shift?
Yeah, there are you know you are right uh each of these platform shifts uh you know changes many things on the IO front uh nothing to do with Google IO just IO in the traditional uh computer science sense you know you could feel it yesterday when I watched the Android XR I've used them and played around with them but watching it to people talking in different languages you can envision the future one day where it'll actually be seamless in a way you couldn't have done it with phones you couldn't have done it without AI because there's nothing in your way you're looking at the other person and talking right and so that is an element of platform shift but there are many more elements right this is the only platform where I think the actual platform is over time capable of creating and self-improving and so on in a way we could have never talked about any other platform before so that's why I think it's much more profound than the other platform shifts it'll allow people to create new things in a way uh you know because at each layer of the stack there's going to be profound improvements and so I think that virtuous cycle you get uh in terms of how you can unleash this creative power to all of society be it software engineers be it creators I think that is in going to happen in a a much more multiplicative way and that that you know so when I say it's a next phase I'm talking about that part too.
Let me just put make that more concrete for people. I think the last platform shift we all understand is the shift to smartphones.
That's right. And that was right. We're going to have multi-touch. We're going to have faster cell connections. We're going to increase processing power that can go with you everywhere. And then there was a layer of applications that was enabled by all of those things. You can push a button and a Toyota Camry will show up wherever you are in the world is like a very powerful thing that required all of those ideas.
Well, how would you describe the phase we're in now compared to that? The phase of this because the first phase of AI was the transformers work and the models work and we can all see this capability.
Yeah. The second phase what what is it to you? Just just imagine um you know like the when when the internet came blogging became a thing. You know pre-internet very few people had a means by which they could put out their thoughts out to the world right you know with the internet came a new medium. It allowed people to create and express themselves in a new way. With mobile cameras and you could shoot and like you know you could create videos. um you know look at what what's happened with YouTube. For me the similar part of this is you know we're all talking about things like VIP coding yesterday you saw V3 right so we are now in that phase I think people are going to be able to create AI applications you can call it but you know VIP coding there are many names to it but that that power is yet to be unleashed we're barely scratching the surface right and these models are now you know they aren't quite there you can you can kind of do oneshot coding but you really need to know be a programmer to kind of go iterate and create something with polish right but that frontier is evolving pretty rapidly so I think we you're going to see a new wave of things just like mobile did just the internet did uh you know I came to go Google at the time when it was Ajax was the revolution uh the fact that the web became dynamic you know you had things like Google maps flicker Gmail all that suddenly came into existence right and but I think AI is going to turbo charge uh in a way we haven't seen before.
It feels like to me like what you're describing is we're in the phase where the products are developed, right? The capabilities were the first phase and now we're going to make some actual products and and more people can build products than ever before.
That's the multiplicative part I'm talking about. Not just this platform helps you create more products. The the process of creating, developing, etc. is going to be accessible to a much wider swath of humanity than ever before.
I'm wondering when you look at the landscape of products that exist now most people experience AI in Gemini or chat as a chatbot the general purpose interface to a bunch of knowledge that will talk to you what products do you see that will have the same kind of impact as the web two products you were talking about besides the general purpose chatbot.
You know uh well obviously you've seen away with uh coding ides right like you know that entire landscape is I can't even keep track of uh you know how many new companies have come into and people are using a lot of it right and yesterday we showed a bunch of partners with whom we are working so that's an area where because coding is where maybe AI is making the uh most progress you're seeing the application layer at least in terms of code uh code editors uh really come into vogue we've had success with notebook LM right we're launching products like flow yesterday right flow is a new product which allows you to create and imagine So those are all applications we are doing. Uh I think others are beginning to do you know people are working on like legal assistance and there are all kinds of startups uh you know I I was recently in a doctor's office and they do have AI kind of look at I mean transcribe the whole thing put it all in reports and so on that's at an enterprise application layer kind of completely works different than when I went to that visit 2 years ago. So all that change is happening across the board but I think we just in the early stages. So you know you will see it play out over the next three to five years in a big way.
Did you ask your doctor what model their transcription software is running?
No I didn't.
No I didn't.
Yeah. One of the reasons I'm asking this and I'm pushing on this is the amount of huge investment in the capability from Google and others has to pay off in some products that return on that investment. Notebook LM is great. I don't think it's going to fully return on Google's data center investment, let alone the investment in pure AI research. Do you see a product that can return on that investment at scale?
Look, do you think in 2004 if you had looked at Gmail, which was a 20% project which people were internally using internally as an email service. you know, how would we be able to think about, you know, Gmail is what led us to do workspace, get into the enterprise. I made a big bet on Google Cloud, you know, uh, which is, you know, tens of billions of dollars in revenue today, right? And, and so my point is, uh, you know, things build out over time, right? Um, think about the journey we've been with Whimo, right? And so I think one of the mistakes people make often in a period of rapid innovation is think about what is that next big business versus looking at the underlying innovation and say can you build something and put out something which people love and use right and and and out of which you you do the next thing and you know create value out of it. So when I look at it AI is the such a horizontal piece of technology across our entire business. It's why you know I mean it impacts not just Google search, YouTube cloud, all of Android you saw XR etc. Google Play things like Whimo isomorphic which is based on Alpha Fold. So I've never seen one piece of technology which can impact and help us create so many businesses right and you know AI is going to be so useful as an assistant. I think that people will be willing to pay for it too. We're introducing subscription plans. So there's a lot of you know headroom ahead I think and and obviously that's why we are investing because we see that opportunity some of it will take uh take time and it may not be always immediately obvious uh you know I gave the way example in fact 3 years ago people were the sentiment on was quite negative 3 years ago you know but I actually you know as a company we increased our investment into way more at that time right because you're betting on the underlying technology and you're seeing the progress of where it's going but these are good questions right in in some ways if you don't realize the opportunities that may constrain the pace of uh you know investment in this area but I but I you know but it I'm optimistic we'll be able to unlock new opportunities.
One reason I wanted to start here as the foundation of the conversation is you showed off Android XR yesterday. You showed off some prototype glasses. You have some partners making glasses. A lot of people think augmented reality glasses powered by AI will be the realization of the full platform shift. Right. You will have an always-on assistant that can look at the world around you. You showed some of those demos yesterday. The form factor will change. The interface will change. This will be a market as big as smartphones were. How close do you think we are to that as a mainstream product?
Um, you know, it was a nice reflective moment all the way back from Google Glass. Uh, you know, wearing the product. I think there's a difference between goggles and glasses. uh you know everyone at Verge understands this as well but you know obviously we are also shipping goggles you know we have announced uh uh products with Samsung to come later this year on the XR side I think I'm excited about our partnership with Gentle Monster and Barbie Parker will have products in the hands of developers this year and I think but I think those products will be pretty close to what people eventually see as final products so I'm excited I The pace is actually pretty uh we palpable. So I'd be shocked if you you and I were sitting next year. Uh you know I wasn't wearing one of that uh when I'm doing the interview next year.
Do you think but that will be like a mainstream iPhone level replacement product cuz there's a lot of hardware that needs to get developed along the way to pull that off.
Yeah, there are there are look you're wearing something on your face. people like I have prescription uh right and uh you know the bar is higher I think in terms of making the experience seamless enough that you're willing to wear it in your face and enjoy it for all so so I don't think nely next year it's as mainstream as what you're talking about but would millions of people be trying it I think so yeah so both are both are true I think so.
I have to ask you just before we sat down OpenAI announced that Johnny IV was selling a company he had started called IO to the company and IV and his design consultancy love from would take over all design. They didn't announce a product but they said it's the future of computing and it's coming next year. Is do you anticipate more of that competition that your competitors who don't have a smartphone operating system will go even harder in this direction? I'm looking forward to a open IO announcement ahead of Google IO the night before.
No, first of all, look, stepping back, I mean, Johnny IV is, uh, you know, uh, one of a kind. You know, you look at this track record over the years. I've definitely, uh, I've met him only once or twice, but, you know, I've admired his work obviously like so many of us. Uh, so I think it's it's exciting, shows, you know, this is why I feel like it's such there's so much innovation ahead. Uh, and I think people tend to underestimate this moment in some ways. people tend to I always like to point out when the internet happened Google didn't even exist right I think what people so when you when you think about I think AI is going to be bigger than the internet there are going to be companies products categories created which we aren't aware of today so I think the future looks exciting I think there's a lot of opportunity to innovate around uh uh innovate around hardware form factors at this moment with this platform shift so I'm looking forward to seeing what they uh you know we are going to be doing a lot as well and I think you know it's it's a exciting time to be a consumer it's an exciting time to be a developer so I think looking forward to it.
I've in that video described the phone and the laptop is legacy platforms which is very interesting considering his own history. Are you all the way there that the phone and laptop are legacy platforms?
Look I think these things if anything uh I found through this AI moment using the web a lot right? Because I'm like it's easier to create a V3 video on my browser in a big screen, right? And and and so um I think the way I've internalized is computing will be available in like you don't have to make these hard choices. You know, you will computing is will become so essential to you. You're going to have it in multiple ways around you when you need it, right? like I use a phone, a tablet, a laptop, and I have my workstation, right? And so I have the breadth of it. Um, and but but you know, I I you know, over time it makes sense to me at some point in the future consuming content by pulling out this black glass display rectangle in front of you and looking at it is not the most intuitive way to do it. But I, you know, but I think it's going to take some time.
I feel like we could do a full hour just on Android tablets and where they could go. We're going to come back for that.
A big part of what you're describing implicates search in in really big ways, right? We're going to be surrounded by information. Search or Gemini or some future Google product will organize that information, take action for you across the web in some way and you will have a a companion and maybe you only pull out your tablet to watch a video or something. A lot of what's going on with search has downstream effects on the web, downstream effects on information providers broadly. Are you starting? Last year we spent a lot of time talking about those effects. Are you seeing that play out the way that you thought it would?
Look, I um you know it depends. Uh I think I do think people are consuming a lot more information. Um and you know web is one specific format. So we should talk about the web but zooming back out you know there are new platforms like YouTube and others too. So I think people are just consuming a lot more information right. So it feels like an expansionary moment. Uh I think there are more creators, people are putting out more content. Um you know and so people are generally doing a lot more maybe people have a little bit extra time in their hands and so it's a combination of all that on the web. Look things which have been uh interesting and you know we've had these uh conversations for a while you know obviously in 2015 there was this famous the web is dead uh you know I I always have it somewhere around you know which I look at it once in a while uh predictions it's existed for a while I think the web is evolving pretty pretty profoundly I think that is true when we crawl when we look at the number of web pages available to us that number has gone up by 45% in the last two years alone.
Right. So that's a staggering thing to think about. Can you detect if the if that number if that volume increase is because more pages are generated by AI or not? This is the thing I I worry about the most.
Right. I um it's a good question. We generally have many techniques in search to try and understand the quality of a page including whether it was machine generated etc. This trend that doesn't explain this trend we are seeing right. So generally there are more web pages right? So uh you know so so you know at an underlying level. So I think that's an interesting uh phenomenon. I think everybody as a creator like you do at Verge I think today if you're doing stuff you have to do it in a crossplatform cross format way uh in a uh you know I look at the quality of video content you put out. It's very sophisticated right? You know and uh very different from how words used to be maybe 5 to 10 years ago right? It's profoundly changed. So I think things are becoming more dynamic cross format. I think the thing another thing people are under underestimating with AI is AI will make it zero friction to move from one format to another right because our models are natively multimodal. We kind of tease people's imagination with audio overviews in notebook right the fact you can throw a bunch of documents at it and you have a podcast and you can join and learn from it. So I think this notion the static moment of like you produce content by format whereas I think machines can help translate it from it's almost like different languages and they can go seamlessly between I think it's one of the incredible opportunities to be unlocked right ahead and so uh but maybe I didn't want to drift from the uh question we were having but I look I I think I think people are producing a lot of content and I see consumers consuming consuming a lot of content and and you know it's we we see it in our products others are seeing it too so that's that's how I would probably answer at the highest level.
The way I I see it currently is that the web is at an all-time high as an application platform, right? The fact that Figma exists and is as successful as it is and its primary interfaces as a web app is I think remarkable. A lot of the products you were talking about are expressed as web apps even now.
Some of the most interesting search results you showed yesterday are, you know, Google would generate a custom web app for you and display it in a search result to do some data visualization. I think that's all looking incredible.
I think the web as a transaction platform is reaching new heights, especially with rulings that mean smartphone makers have to let people push transactions to the web. There's something very interesting happening there. As a media platform, it feels like it's at an all-time low, right? If I was starting The Verge, the web—that's a media platform. The web is a media platform, is an information platform. If I was starting The Verge today, uh, with 11 of my co-founder and friends, we would start a TikTok channel. We, we might start a YouTube channel. We would definitely not start a website with the dependencies we have as a website today. And that's the dynamic that it feels like AI is pushing on even harder.
I'm not fully sure I agree. Right. I think, you know, I think if you were to go and restart Verge again, I bet you would start a, uh, you would have an extraordinary web presence at best. No, I, I've thought about this a lot. I think at, at best our web presence would look like a Substack or a Ghost or something, right? Uh, maybe. Look, I, u, you know, I'm not, you know, I'm not fully sold on that, like, you know, but you know, you know the space. I acknowledge, you know, that space better than I do. Uh, so I don't mean to be, uh, mean to be, you know, I don't have that intuition which you do here. Uh, but look, I, I see—in fact, you say the web application platform is at an all-time high—but I've looked, you know, I was wipe coding with Replit a few weeks ago, uh, you know, create—I mean, the power of what you're going to be able to create on the web, we haven't given that power to developers in 25 years.
Mhm. So that is going to come ahead. So, you know, it's not exactly clear to me. Uh, you know, maybe today you're looking at and say, "I won't put all the investment in because it looks like a lot of investment to do that." But that may not be true two years out, right? Like, you know, if you feel like you would create a TikTok channel, then, you know, maybe with like 2% extra effort, if you could have a robust web presence, why wouldn't you? Right? And so, so I'm not fully, I, you know, I'm not fully sold on it, but I think it's a good question to ask, but you know, you have to somehow reconcile that with the fact that overall that traffic seems to be growing; we see more web pages—in so somewhere we have to explain all of that too.
You know, the publishers, as they often do, responded to Google I/O announcements. So the News Media Alliance, uh, after AI Mode was announced yesterday, I would say they're very upset. Uh, here's, here's a statement from the president of the News Media Alliance: "Links were the last redeeming quality of search that gave publishers traffic and revenue. Now Google takes content by force and uses it with no return, no economic return. That's the definition of theft." And they go on to say the DOJ lawsuits must address it. That's pretty furious. That's not a negotiation, right? That's a "we just want this to stop."
How do you respond to that very loud set of people who say, "Yeah, okay, maybe it's growing somewhere, but for us it's crushing our businesses?"
Look, I, um, you know, first of all, through all the products, I mean, AI Mode is going to have sources, and you know, one of—we're very committed as a direction, as a product direction—to make—I think part of why people come to Google is to experience that breadth uh of the web and and go in the direction they want to, right? So I view us as giving more context; yes, there are certain questions which may get answers, but overall—and that's the pattern we see today, right?—and and if anything, over the last year it's clear to us the breadth of where we are sending people to is increasing, uh, and and so I, I expect that to be true with AI Mode as well. But if it was increasing, wouldn't they be less angry with you?
Look, I, more than—you're always going to have areas where people are robustly debating value exchanges, etc., right? Like app developers and platforms—that's not on the web, etc., right? It's inherently the, uh, you know, you know, there's always going to be, when you're running a platform, these debates. I would challenge—I think more than any other company, we, we think about, we prioritize sending traffic to the web. No one sends traffic to the web in the way we do. I look at other companies, newer emerging companies, they openly talk about it as something they are not going to do, right? We are the only ones which make it a high priority; agonize, nice, and so on. Look, we'll engage, and you know, we've always engaged. There are going to be uh debates through it all, but we are committed to—you know, I've said this before—everything we do across all—you will see us five years from now, sending a lot of traffic out to the web. I think that's the product direction we are committed to. I think it's what users look for when they come to Google, right? And, uh, and the nature of it will evolve. But you know, I, I, I, you know, I'm confident that that's the direction we'll continue taking.
Is there public data that shows that AI overviews and AI Mode actually send more traffic out than the previous search engine results page?
Look, it's, you know, the way we look at it is—I mean, obviously we take a lot of, we definitely, uh, sending traffic to a wider range of, uh, uh, sources, publishers, and and because just like we've done over 25 years, we went through the same with featured snippets; the, the quality of, you know, it's higher quality referral traffic too, so, right? And we can observe it because the time when people spend as one metric, and there are other ways by which we measure quality of our outbound traffic is also increasing. So, and overall, through this transition, I think generally AI overviews are also growing, and you know, the growth compounds over time. So whenever we have worked through these transitions, it ends up—that's how Google has worked for uh 25 years, and you know, and we end up sending more traffic over time. So that's, that's how I would expect all this to play out.
So why do you think that there is so much general economic turmoil on that side of the, the house, right? If you're sending more traffic and the goal over time is to make sure that that sending traffic to—we're a year into it, right?—and it, it doesn't seem to have gotten better over there.
No, look, we are sending traffic to a broader source of people. People may be, you know, uh, surfacing more content, looking at more content. So somebody individually may see less. I mean, there are all kinds of—at the end of the day, we are reflecting what users want.
Mhm. Right. You know, if you do the wrong thing, users won't use our product, go somewhere else. Right. And, and, and so you have, uh, uh, you know, you have all these dynamics underway, and I think we have genuinely, you know, we took a long time designing AI overviews, and we are constantly iterating, uh, in a way that we prioritizes, you know, sources and sending traffic to the web.
I mean, my, my criticism of this industry, just be clear, is that everyone's addicted to Google, and it would be better if they weren't, but they're addicted to Google, right? And they're, they're feeling it. And then on top of that, you see, you've mentioned several times, like overall queries are increasing on Google services, but they're, they're changing, right? They're getting longer. They're getting more complicated. AI Mode might walk you through several steps. Maybe some people are searching on TikTok now. Eddie Cue, uh, on the stand in the trial the other day said, uh, search and Safari for the last month dropped for the first time in 22 years. That's a big stat. Obviously your stock price, uh, was affected by it. There was a statement. Is that trend bearing out that the standard Google search is, is dropping from devices and different kinds of searches are increasing?
No, look, uh, we've been very clear. We are seeing overall query growth in search. Um, you know, it looks—but have you actually seen the drop in Safari?
Look, we have a comprehensive view of how we look at data across the board. Uh, there's a lot of, there can be a lot of noise in search data. Uh, but everything we see tells us we are seeing query growth, including across Apple's devices and platforms. Uh, and specifically, you know, I think we quantified the query growth from AI overviews, and what's, what's healthy is that the query growth is continuing to grow over time. This is what I, I've said before. It feels very far from a zero-sum game to me. I said this last year. It's interesting. We spoke about TikTok, right? Think about like how profound a new product TikTok was. How has YouTube done since TikTok has come? Right? You could ask all these questions there. Like, why is it that TikTok comes and YouTube has grown? I think what we always underestimate in these moments is people are engaging more, doing more with it; we are improving our products, and and so, you know, so that's how I would, I would think about these moments.
Let me just broaden that out to agents, right? Uh, I watched Dennis Hassabis yesterday; he was on stage with Sergey Brin and Alex, and Hantritz asked him what does a web look like in 10 years, and Dennis said, "I don't know that an agent-first web looks anything like the web that we have today. I don't know that we have to render web pages for agents the way that we have to see them." That kind of implies that the web will turn into a series of databases for various agents to go and ask questions to and return those answers. And I, I've been thinking about this in the context of services like Uber and DoorDash and Airbnb. Why would they want to participate in that and be abstracted away for agents to use the services they've spent a lot of time and money building?
Two things, though. First, there's a lot to unpack. It's a fascinating topic. Um, the web is a series of databases, etc. We build a UI on top of it for, for all of us to consume. This is exactly what I wanted; is the web is a series of databases. It is like, you know, but I think, I think, I, I listened to the, uh, te surrogate conversation yesterday; I enjoyed it. I think he's saying for an agent-first web, like, so, you know, for a web which is interacting with agents, you would, you would think about how to make that process more efficient. Today you're running a restaurant; people are coming, dining and eating, and people are ordering takeout and delivery. Obviously, for, for you to service the takeout, you would think about it different than all the tables and the clothing and the furniture and the like, you know, so, but both are important to you. You could be a restaurant which decides, "I'm not going to participate in the takeout business. I'm only going to focus on, on, on the dining experience." You're going to have some people—vice versa—"I'm going to say I'm going to go all in on this and run a different, uh, experience." So, to your question on agents, right, I think, think of agents as, uh, you know, a new powerful format. I do think it'll happen in enterprises faster than consumer.
Mhm. Because in the context of an enterprise, you have a CIO who's able to go and say, "I really don't know why these two things don't talk to each other. Yeah. Right. I'm not going to buy more of this unless you interoperate with this." Uh, so I, I think partly why you see on the enterprise side a lot more, uh, agentic experiences; on the consumer side, I think what you're saying is a good point, right? People have to think about and say, "What is the value for me to participate in this world?" And it could come in many ways; it could be because I participated in it and overall my business grows, right? Some people may, feel that it's disintermediating, right? And like it doesn't make sense. I think all of that are you, all of that can happen, but users may vote with their feet, right? Like, you know, you may find like some people are supporting the agentic experience, and your life is better because of it, and so you're going to have all these dynamics, and like, you know, and I think they're going to try and find an equilibrium somewhere is how, you know, everything evolves.
Yeah. I mean, I think the idea that the web is a series of databases and we change the inter—first of all, this is like the most decoder conversation that we've ever had; I'm very happy with it—but you know, I had Dara from Uber on the show. I asked him this question from his perspective. And his answer attracts yours broadly. He said, "First, we'll do it because it's cool, and we'll see if there's value there, and if there is, you know, he's going to charge a, a big fee for the agent to come and use Uber because losing the customer for him, losing the ability to upsell or sell a subscription." None of that is great, right? That it's the same is true for Airbnb. I keep calling it the DoorDash problem. Like, DoorDash should not be a dumb pipe for sandwiches, right? That they, they're trying to actually run a business, and they want the customer relationship. And so if the agents are going across the web and they're looking in all these databases and saying, "Okay, this is where I get food from, and this is where I get cars from, and this is where I book—" I think the demo was booking a, a vacation home in Spanish, right?—"And I'm going to connect you to that agent, uh, that travel agent." Is it just going to be tolls that everyone pays to let the agents work? Because the, the price—I, I still don't—the CIO gets to just spend money to solve the problem. Yeah, he says, "I want this capability for you, and I'm just going to pay you to do it." The, the market, the consumer market doesn't have that capability. Right?
All kinds of models may emerge, right? Uh, I can literally see envision 20 different ways this could work, right? Consumers could pay a subscription for agents, and the agents could rev share back, right? So, you know, so that, that is a CIO-like use case you're talking about. That's possible. We can't rule that out. uh, rule that out. I don't think we should underestimate—people may actually see more value participating in it. You know, I think this is, uh, you know, it's tough to predict. Uh, but I do think, uh, over time, like, you know, like if you're removing friction and improving user experience, you know, it's tough to bet against those in the long run, right? And so I think it, you know, I think if in general you're lowering friction for it, uh, you know, and people are enjoying using it, right? Somebody's going to want to participate in it and grow their business.
Yeah. Right. And like, would brands want to be in retailers, why don't they sell directly today? Yeah. Like, why won't they do that? I, I don't know. Because retailers provide value in the middle, right? And like, you know, uh, why do merchants take credit cards, right? Like, why pay—I'm just saying so like there are many parts like—and, and you find equilibrium because merchants take credit cards because they see more business as part of taking credit cards than not, right? And which justifies the increased cost of taking credit cards—um, it may not be the perfect analogy, but I think there are all these kinds of effects going around—but, but what you're saying is true that, you know, some of this will slow, uh, progress and agents just because we all are excited about A2A and MCP and we think—no, like some of it will slow, uh, slow, slow progress. Um, but I think it'll be, it'll be very dynamic.
Yeah. Yeah. There's other pressures on Google. There's antitrust pressures. The government would like you to sell Chrome. Can you do all the things you want to do if you're made to sell Chrome?
Look, I mean, I, you know, I don't want to comment on—Look, we are, uh, you know, we are in a legal process. Um, you know, I look at having directly been involved in building Chrome, uh, right? I look at the—I think there are very few companies which would have appro—you know, we, we not only improved our product, we improved like the state of the web by building Chrome; we open-sourced it; we provided as Chromium; everyone else has access to the browser. So I think the amount of R&D, the amount of innovation we put into it, uh, the investments in security, etc., we do—so I think we—to sell it. Can you do all the things that you want to do? Um, look, I, I don't think that's the, uh, scenario we're looking at. Stepping back, you know, as a company, look, I, I think as a company, I think of ourselves as a deeply foundational technology company, uh, which then translates it into products that touch billions of people, and you know, so we do it across many, many things, and so of course, I think, look, as a company, we are going to continue investing and doing our best to innovate and build a successful business in all scenarios, uh, so this how I would answer it.
The Trump administration is, extremely transactional, I would say, you know, the tech industry has a new relationship with Trump in a second term. You were at the inauguration. Have you had conversations about what a settlement might look like and what the Trump administration might demand to make these problems go away?
No. No. Like, look, we, we've always, we, we've engaged with the DOJ or like we do o over the years on in the context of all the, all the cases we have. So, that's, you know, that's, that's how we normally do these conversations.
Trump has very publicly said he doesn't like his search ranking and he wants it changed in some way. Would you ever adjust the search ranking for Donald Trump?
No. Like, you know, we have a—I can't—today the way Google search works is I cannot, no person at Google can influence the ranking algorithm. AI Mode is different, right? We've seen system prompts adjusted in very chaotic ways from some of your competitors. Is that something that you would be open to in a world where you're serving the full answer? So, so would you adjust the AI Mode responses in response to political pressure?
No. Because we, we've seen certainly in Grok and others that system prompts change the answers in dramatic ways. No, like the way we do ranking, like, you know, the way we do ranking is sacrosanct to us. Uh, you know, we've done it over 25 years. uh, you know, we make a lot of—when there's a lot of ranking signals we take into account and stuff—and if there's broad feedback from people that something isn't working right, we will look at it systematically and try and make changes, but you know, we don't take—look at individual cases and ever change ranking.
When you think about those sources of information, one of the things that I have been thinking about a lot is—I don't know—the CDC web pages have changed a lot recently, right? Diversity, equity, inclusion language has been removed from pages across the government; those used to be very high-ranking sources in Google search, right? We would, we just implicitly trusted the CDC's web pages in some ways. Are you re-evaluating that, that there might be misinformation on some of these pages that then gets synthesized into AI results?
No, it's a misunderstanding of how search works, right? We don't individually evaluate the authoritativeness of like a page, right? And like it's what our signals does, you know, PageRanked. It's, you know, obviously our signals are multiple orders of magnitude more complicated than PageRank today, but to use PageRank as an example, we weren't the ones determining how authoritative a page is. It's how other pages were linking to it, like an academic citation, etc. So, so we don't, you know, so we are not making those decisions today. And so I don't, I don't see that changing.
As you synthesize more of the answers, do you think you're going to have to take more responsibility for the results?
Look, we are giving context around it, and but we still anchoring it in, you know, the sources we find. Uh, you know, but we've always felt a high bar, you know, in, in
In Google. I mean, last year when we launched AI overviews, I think, you know, people were adversely querying to find errors, and the error rate was 1 in 7 million for adversarial queries. And so, but that was a big—but that's the bar. We've always operated as a company, and so I think to me nothing is—nothing has changed. Like, you know, Google operates under a very high bar; that's the bar we strive to meet. And, and you know, our search page results are there for everyone to see. With that comes that natural, uh, accountability, and you know, we have to constantly earn people's trust. So that's how I would approach it.
What do you think the marker is for the next phase of the platform shift after this one? We opened by talking about we're in a second phase; what's the marker for the final phase or the third phase of the platform shift? You mean of the AI platform? What—what are you looking for as the next marker?
Oh, you know, look, I think, you know, the—the—the real thing about AI, which I think why I've always called it more profound is, you know, self-improving technology, right? And, you know, uh, having watched AlphaGo, you know, start from scratch, not knowing how to play Go, and you know, within a couple hours or 4 hours be better than a top-level human player, and in 8 hours, you know, no human can ever aspire to play against it, right? So, you know, and that's the essence of the technology, obviously, in—in—in a—in a deep way. So I think, look, I think there's so much ahead, uh, you know, on the opportunity side. You know, I—I'm blown away by the ability to discover new drugs, you know, completely uh, change how we treat diseases like cancer over time, etc. You know, the opportunities there, um, you know, I—the creative power which I talked about, which we're putting in everyone's hands—like the next generation of kids, everyone can program and will to. If you think of something, you can create it. I think I—I—I don't think we have comprehended what that means, but that's going to be true.
The part which—the next phase of the shift which is going to be really meaningful is when this translates into the physical world through robotics.
Mhm. Right. So that aha moment of robotics—I think when it happens, that's going to be the next big thing we will all uh, grapple with. Right. Today they're all online, and you're doing things with it. But you know, one hand, you know, today I think of way more as a robot, right? So we are running around, uh, driving around a robot, but I'm talking more uh, general-purpose robot. And you know, and when AI creates that magical moment with robotics, I think that'll be a big platform shift as well.
Yeah, I'm looking forward to it. Next year we're going to do this with glasses and robots. It's going to be great. We'll—we'll give it a shot. Thank you so much.
All right. Thanks. I appreciate it.
Are these setups getting more and more stuff? I just feel like I have to say something more important just for this time.