What the Googlers not on stage said at I/O 2026

For a first-time attendee, Google I/O’s energetic, optimistic ambiance felt nearly like a coronation.

Final 12 months’s bets at the moment are development pillars as a result of they labored. Ask Maps turned the playbook for rolling out Ask YouTube. Gemini 3.5 Flash powers Antigravity — assume Claude Code, however Google — and Googlers are already utilizing it to construct the options demoed on stage.

All the things shipped quick, and the whole lot felt assured.

There was one thing for everybody.

• Gemini Omni, which was in comparison with Nano Banana however for video (I’ve bizarre proof).
• Sensible glasses are making a comeback.
• Online game-like experiences that may be prompted and performed in actual time.
• Workspace can now speak paperwork into existence.
• Google Maps photos might be was surrealistic fever goals through prompting (I requested what the use case was, and it sounded extra like an answer in search of an issue: Hollywood studios may forgo taking pictures on location?).
• I even have Gemma working on my cellphone so I can converse with a smaller mannequin on an airplane. (P.S. American Airways now has free Wi-Fi, so I’m good.)

However I haven’t even gotten to the half that’s most curious.

Gemini is turning into extra like Search. Search is turning into extra like Gemini.

There at the moment are options throughout each merchandise that serve the identical intent: monitoring the online and proactively notifying you when one thing related seems.

In Search, it’s data brokers. In Gemini, it’s Spark or Day by day Transient. The overlap is clear.

So I requested one of many product managers straight: “How are you excited about long-term characteristic administration and the bloat of utilities that largely overlap?”

The reply: “Proper now, it’s all about velocity.”

They’re transport relentlessly. Three different PMs behind flagship I/O options stated the identical factor. Each a type of options was began and shipped this 12 months, in 2026. That was mind-blowing.

The PM added: “The way in which velocity is achieved is much less managerial overhead.”

I took that to imply: get on the board now and determine it out later.

When you see it, you possibly can’t unsee it

With that framing, the remainder of the day seemed completely different. I noticed loads of spectacular demos, however saved questioning: what do I really do with these subsequent?

I now have Gemma on my cellphone, however one of many builders couldn’t supply a lot of a day-to-day use case. I received a demo of AI Mode’s monitoring capabilities by prompting “preserve me up to date” and noticed how the items related. However after I requested a follow-up — “How will I handle these alerts alongside the whole lot else? What occurs after they go stale?” — there wasn’t a solution. Granted, it’s nonetheless a demo, however the non-answer was telling.

The second-order results of many of those options don’t appear absolutely thought of. It gave me the sense that engineers dogfood these fashions from the command line, not the entrance finish.

One small however revealing instance: as of this writing, I nonetheless can’t delete previous Gemini chats within the internet browser, though I can within the Mac app.

Common Cart: The characteristic that received everybody speaking

One characteristic that got here up repeatedly in conversations with each engineers and customers was Universal Cart, Google’s new cross-surface buying protocol.

When individuals requested what I believed, I stated: “In the event you’re Google, you have to be very excited, as a result of if this will get adopted, you personal extra of the end-to-end expertise. In the event you’re everybody else, you’re in all probability fearful.”

That didn’t appear to concern the group I spoke with, lots of whom felt oddly indifferent from the rising anti-AI sentiment within the U.S.

Later, I spoke with an search engine marketing skilled at a big ecommerce model already implementing Common Cart. Once I talked about the rate remark, they stated: “That seems like what we skilled throughout implementation. It feels rushed.”

The AI content material tips paradox

The speed-over-oversight mindset additionally helps clarify why Google’s AI content guidelines have been so controversial.

4 days earlier than I/O, Google’s Search high quality group told publishers to “write for humans, not AI.” Then the AI agent group took the stage and demonstrated a future the place Google’s personal brokers browse, interpret, transact on, and generate content material throughout the online.

If the long run is more and more AI Mode — with brokers constructing, fetching, and appearing on customers’ behalf — the steering to publishers begins to ring hole.

Why this issues for the online ecosystem

I don’t wish to diminish the work these engineers are doing. I instructed them that straight. As somebody constructing merchandise for search and for our shoppers, I empathize. You principally hear criticism, not reward.

However I can’t assist questioning what occurs when all these overlapping options — the bloat, the shortcoming to delete, handle, or reconcile issues cleanly — turn out to be technical debt that must be unwound. Proper now, the AI playbook appears to be: characteristic utilization first, repair it later.

Nonetheless, I truthfully respect that an organization as massive and established as Google is transferring this quick, and I’m genuinely excited to see how a few of this performs out. With their money circulation and their capacity to fabricate their very own TPU chips, they’ll afford to position a number of bets and see what sticks.

I wished to maintain speaking with that PM, however we had been unceremoniously kicked out of the world.

The brilliant spots are actual

Google reported that final quarter noticed an all-time excessive in search queries. They’re taking authentication and provenance critically, with SynthID increasing into Search and Chrome, new adoption companions like OpenAI, and C2PA content material credential verification for crawl.

These are significant steps ahead.

However this tempo will doubtless create unintended penalties. My hope is that the frenzy to maneuver quick doesn’t additional destabilize an already-rattled internet ecosystem by breaking too many issues alongside the way in which.

All of that is to say: it’s an thrilling time to be in search.

Dig deeper.