Google CEO Sundar Pichai on the future of search, AI agents, and selling Chrome

Good to be back. Feels like a nice tradition post I/O.

Look, I think it comes from the depth and breadth of the AI frontier we are pushing. Like 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 bringing it to our products 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 are pushing the frontier on all dimensions, right? And so then we spoke about world models. So I think 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 makes it feel that way.

Yeah, there are, you know, you are right. Each of these platform shifts, you know, changes many things on the I/O front. Nothing to do with Google I/O, just I/O in the traditional 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. 'Cause 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, you know, because at each layer of the stack, there's gonna be profound improvements. And so I think that virtuous cycle you get 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 gonna happen in 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.

Just imagine, you know, 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 came cameras and you could shoot and like, you know, you could create videos. You know, look at what's happened with YouTube. For me, the similar part of this is, you know, we are all talking about things like vibe coding. Yesterday you saw VEO three, 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, vibe coding, there are many names to it. But that power is yet to be unleashed. You're barely scratching the surface, right? And these models are now, you know, they aren't quite there. You can kind of do one shot 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 you're gonna see a new wave of things just like mobile did. Just like the internet did. You know, I came to go Google at the time when there was the AJAX revolution, the fact that the web became dynamic. You know, you had things like Google Maps, Flickr, Gmail, all that suddenly came into existence, right? But I think AI is gonna turbocharge in a way we haven't seen before.

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 process of creating, developing, etcetera, is gonna be access accessible to a much wider swath of humanity than ever before.

You know, well, obviously you've seen a wave with coding IDs, right? Like, you know, that entire landscape is, I can't even keep track of, 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 most progress. You're seeing the application layer, at least in terms of code editors really come into vogue. We've had success with NotebookLM, right? We are 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. I think others are beginning to do, you know, people are working on like legal assistance and there are all kinds of startups. You know, I was recently in a doctor's office and they do have AI kind of look at it. I mean, transcribe the whole thing, put it all in reports and so on. That's an enterprise application layer kind of completely works different than when I went to visit two years ago. So all the change is happening across the board, but I think we are 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.

No, I didn't, yeah.

Look, do you think in 2004, if you had looked at Gmail, which was a 20% project, which people are 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, which is, you know, tens of billions of dollars in revenue today, right? And so my point is, you know, things build out over time, right? Think about the journey we have been with Waymo, 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 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 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 XR, etcetera, Google Play, things like Waymo, Isomorphic, which is based on AlphaFold. 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 gonna be so useful as an assistant. I think that people will be willing to pay for it. We are introducing subscription plans. So there's a lot of, you know, headroom ahead, I think. And obviously that's why we are investing, because we see that opportunity. Some of it will take time and it may not be always immediately obvious. You know, I gave the Waymo example. In fact, three years ago people were, the sentiment on Waymo was quite negative three 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 some ways, if you don't realize the opportunities, that may constrain the pace of, you know, investment in this area. But I'm optimistic we'll be able to unlock new opportunities.

You know, it was a nice reflective moment all the way back from Google Glass. You know, wearing the product, I think there's a difference between goggles and glasses. You know, everyone at Virgin understands this well. But for, you know, obviously we are also shipping goggles. You know, we have announced products with Samsung to come later this year. On the XR side, I think I'm excited about our partnership with Gentle Monster and Warby Parker. We'll have products in the hands of developers this year, and I think, but I think those products will be pretty close to what people will eventually see as final products. So I'm excited. I think the pace is actually pretty palpable. So I'd be shocked if you and I were sitting next year, you know, I wasn't wearing one of that when I'm doing the.

You know, there are, you're wearing something on your face. People like I have prescription, right? And 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 I don't think necessarily next year it's as mainstream as what you're talking about. But would millions of people be trying it? I think so, yeah.

I'm looking forward to a open I/O announcement ahead of Google I/O the night before. First of all, look, stepping back, I mean, Jony, I was, you know, one of a kind, you know. You look at this track record over the years have definitely, I've met him only once or twice, but, you know, admired his work, obviously like so many of us. So I think it's exciting. Shows, you know, this is why I feel like it's such, there's so much innovation ahead 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 think about, I think AI is gonna be bigger than the internet, there are gonna 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, innovate around hardware, form factors, at this moment with this platform shift. So I'm looking forward to seeing what they do. You know, we are gonna be doing a lot as well. And I think, you know, 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.

Look, I think these things, if anything, I found through this AI moment using the web a lot more, right? Because I'm like, it's easier to create a VEO 3 video on my browser in a big screen, right? And so, I think the way I've internalized this is, computing will be available and like, you don't have to make these hard choices. You know, you will, computing 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 and, but, 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 interior way to do it. But I, you know, but I think it's gonna take some time.

Okay. You know, it depends. I think, I do think people are consuming a lot more information 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. I think there are more creators, people are putting out more content, you know, and so people are generally doing a lot more. Maybe people have a little extra time in their hands. And so it's a combination of all that. On the web, look things which have been interesting and, you know, we've had these conversations for a while. You know, obviously in 2015 there was this famous, the web is dead. You know, I always have it somewhere around, you know, which I look at it once in a while. Predictions, it's existed for a while. I think the web is evolving 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 of.

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, etcetera. That doesn't explain the trend we are seeing, right? So generally there are more webpages, right? So, you know, at an underlying level, so I think that's an interesting 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 cross-platform, cross format way. you know. I look at the quality of video content you put out, it's very sophisticated, right? You know, and very different from how words used to be maybe five 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 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 element, right? The fact you can throw a bunch of documents at it and you have a podcast and you can join, learn from it. So I think this notion, this 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 is one of the incredible opportunities to be unlocked, right, ahead. And so, but maybe I didn't wanna drift from the question we were having, but look, I think. I think people are producing a lot of content and I see consumers consuming a lot of content and you know, we see it in our products, others are seeing it too. So that's how I would probably answer at the highest level.

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, you would've a extraordinary web presence.

Maybe. Look, I, you know, I'm not, you know, I'm not fully sold on that, like, you know, but you know the space. I acknowledge you know that space better than I do. So I don't mean to be, you know, I don't have that intuition, which you do here. But look, I see, in fact you say the web application platform is an all time high, but I've looked, you know? I was vibe coding with Replit a few weeks ago. You know, create. I mean, the power of the future you're gonna be able to create on the web, we haven't given that power to developers in 25 years. So that is gonna come ahead. So, you know, it's not exactly clear to me, you know, maybe today you're looking at it and say, I wouldn'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 I'm not fully, 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 web traffic seems to be growing. We see more web pages in our, so somewhere we have to explain all of that too.

Look, I, you know, first of all, through all the products, I mean, AI mode is gonna have sources and you know, we are very committed as a direction, as a product direction to make sure, I think part of why people come to Google is to experience that breadth of the web 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, that's the pattern we see today, right? And if anything, over the last year, it's clear to us the breadth of where we are sending people to is increasing. And so I expect that to be true with AI mode as well, right?

Look, more than, you're always going to have areas where people are robustly debating value exchanges, etcetera, right? Like app developers and platforms. That's not on the web, etcetera, right? It's inherently, 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 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're not going to do, right? We are the only ones which make it a high priority, agonize and so on. Look, we'll engage, and you know, we've always engaged. There are going to be 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 the nature of it will evolve. But, you know, I, you know, I'm confident that that's the direction we'll continue taking.

Look, the way we look at it is, I mean, obviously we take a lot of, we are definitely sending traffic to a wider range of sources, publishers, because, just like we've done over 25 years, we've been through the same with featured snippets, the quality of, you know, it's higher quality referral traffic too, so, right? And we can observe it because the time and people spend as one metric and that 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 always are also growing and, you know, the growth compounds over time. So whenever we have worked through these transitions, it ends up posted. That's how Google has worked. And, you know, and we end up sending more traffic over time. So that's how I would expect all this to play out.