We as humans are not wired for this pace of change. It's not easy to live through a period of massive change.
YouTube and the media landscape is changing. And of people like me who grew up on YouTube, we don't want this amazing product to change. What would you say to the skeptic about the opportunities that these new AI tools bring?
You know, you still have to put it in the hands of people so that they can express themselves better with these tools. And I think that's the holy grail. Look, I'm very confident. Three years from now, you would look back at what we had today and you will realize they were pretty primitive. It's like looking at a flip phone. You look at a flip phone, you're not going to be impressed. At one point people were so excited about those phones.
Something like my mom would ask: she does not care about benchmarks. Benchmarks are great for us nerds, right? But for the regular person, they don't really care about benchmarks. They have maybe ChatGPT on their phone. Why would she switch to Gemini? In one sentence, what would you say is the reason to switch?
All right. Sundar, thanks so much for doing this. Thanks for your time.
It's a real pleasure to be here.
Thanks for joining us again.
Yeah. So I got to ask. You guys announce everything at I/O, and it's like 50 different announcements all in one. Have you ever thought about just spreading it out? Because you could dominate the news cycle over a month.
It's a great question. In some ways, you're right. It is a lot. It allows us to tell an end-to-end story across everything we are doing, what's our direction, how we are taking the company forward. So I think I appreciate the chance to tell it across our products, across our full stack approach. But yeah, sometimes it does tend to get crazy and some things may get lost. So it's a balance. Yeah. But I'm glad we do it this way.
Yeah. I'm still digging into everything. I think Omni was definitely my favorite announcement for the day. It's really, like for three years, image and video has been kind of treated as separate from reasoning, but now you have Omni, which is kind of like Nano Banana for video.
It's a good way to think about it.
What do you think the future of content creation looks like with this in everyone's toolkit now?
I think the important thing is, I don't think the future of content is... you know, you still have to put it in the hands of people so that they can express themselves better with these tools. And I think that's the holy grail. That's what the audience wants eventually. And I think back to CGI and when CGI came, nobody just wants it all CGI all the time. You know, you don't feel the artistry or the creativity come through. And I think we are in that similar moment. We are empowering someone from a high school to, over time, make incredible movies, films. So the world is changing that way. I think it will allow more people to express themselves, just like YouTube has allowed more people to be creators and producers. So I think we are taking big steps in that continuum. But I think that's the trick. You know, how do you do it? Which is why I like the fact that we are bringing a lot of this in YouTube for creators. We are putting it in tools like Flow, giving people a chance to edit around it, tell a story. And I can't wait for new ways in which people tell their stories. That's what I'm looking for.
Yeah, I think it's just more tools to the toolkit, allows creators to be more expressive with what they want to generate. I actually talked with Mark Zuckerberg a few months ago, and he told me that when we achieve superintelligence, that Meta probably won't just recommend content on Instagram. It'll actually start generating content on the fly as well. Basically like hyper personalized AI feeds. I'm curious to hear your take on this. With AI tools like Veo and Omni, what's kind of YouTube's strategy on that?
I think particularly in YouTube, I think we are going to be very creator first. And I think people come to YouTube, they have these connections with different creators. I find myself looking for creators. If they've uploaded a new video, I want to know about it. But I think there is that connection there between users and creators. That's what I think makes YouTube special. So I think for us, that's going to be an important way we think about the evolution. Of course, creators can use these tools and there will be time users to, like, you see. But ask YouTube, you can say, well, we are using AI to kind of give you a better answer, allowing you to explore in the direction you want. So we'll do those things too. But I think it's important in the platform at the end of the day, the human to human connection is always there. That's how I think about it.
I agree. I want to touch on Ask YouTube because this is a new feature. It was very short in the keynote, but was very interesting. Where you can really dig into YouTube videos further and compare them even. How are you guys protecting creators where, you know, they might be fearful in that, you know, Ask YouTube or even the chat with YouTube videos, it could potentially hurt watch time for creators. So what are your thoughts on that and how are you combating that?
I think whenever you go through these new transitions, you are exposing the users to more videos. That's true across a lot of what they do. And I think overall in our experience, what we find is it will drive... if you make the product better for users, people tend to use it more and it grows. And the growth has to come from somewhere. But look, we are very... you know, YouTube creators are an important part of the ecosystem. So we'll listen to their feedback. I think it's a combination of making sure we are helping users with what they are trying to do, that a lot of information queries coming into YouTube. And actually I think things like Ask YouTube will even pull in more information queries. So it's an opportunity to the platform will grow. And that's how I think we can make it all work for creators too. But you know, we'll have to prove it out. But how things work out. Roll it out slowly. That's right. That's why we are testing it. And you know, we care about watch time and like you know and yeah. So we are very thoughtful as we work through these things.
Actually on a personal note, I'm a university dropout and I've learned everything off YouTube. Like I wouldn't be sitting here right now with the Google CEO if I didn't have YouTube to actually learn.
It's great to hear. And that's why we do the products we do.
Yeah. I mean, but without a doubt, like YouTube and the media landscape kind of as a whole is changing. And, you know, a lot of people like me who grew up on YouTube, it's a little bit fearful, right? It's like, you know, we don't want this amazing product to change because it's been so amazing already. What would you say to the skeptic about, you know, the opportunities that these new AI tools bring?
Look, I think the technology shift is pretty profound. We are trying to make sure YouTube creators are the forefront. And they are among the first movers of learning how to use the technology and interpret it in a way that works for their audiences. And I think they're pretty committed to being in this journey together, in a way. I think the strength of YouTube as a platform in the past and the future will be based on the strength of the creator ecosystem. And both in terms of, you know, to us, we view creators as businesses, next generation media businesses on this platform. And like we feel a lot of responsibility because we view it that way. And so every evolution we take, we have that deeply in our mind. Neal and team are constantly thinking through those things as we make progress.
