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Google’s AI Search Expert: How to Get Ahead Before AI Changes Everything

📌 Grab for FREE guide for using Gemini for faster research, smarter strategy, and scalable content creation: https://clickhubspot.com/186fae What makes AI recommend one business - and ignore another? In this interview, Robby Stein, VP of Product for Google Search, breaks down how AI now decides what gets discovered, ranked, and recommended — and what founders, creators, and marketers can do to stay visible in the new era of search. 00:00 - Teaser 1:00 - How Google Search has changed 2:08 - Personalization in Google search 2:47 - New features in AI mode at Google 3:05 - Live DEMO: testing new features 4:07 - Google can book restaurants? 6:02 - How Google decides which restaurants to show first 7:24 - How to use Gemini to save hours at work 8:39 - Will Google Ads disappear? 11:08 - LIVE DEMO: Google’s agent makes a real phone call 14:07 - How to get your business recommended by AI 15:00 - Why PR will define visibility in the AI era 15:45 - What to do if businesses buy reviews 16:20 - How to grow fast with smarter search strategies 18:03 - Shopping powered by AI - what’s changing 18:48 - LIVE DEMO: shopping by taking a picture 20:20 - Google vs ChatGPT 22:50 - How to design your home with AI 24:25 - TIPS to build products that stand out in the AI era 25:58 - How to find ideas that actually work 27:20 - The 2 principles behind every viral product Links: 📩 Follow my Newsletter: https://siliconvalleygirl.beehiiv.com/ 🔗 My Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/siliconvalleygirl/ 📌 My Companies & Products: https://Marinamogilko.co 📹 Video brainstorming, research, and project planning - all in one place - https://partner.spotterstudio.com/ideas-with-marina 💻 Resources that helps my team and me grow the business: - Email & SMS Marketing Automation - https://your.omnisend.com/marina - AI app to work with docs and PFDs - https://www.chatpdf.com/?via=marina 📱Develop your YouTube with AI apps: - AI tool to edit videos in a minutes https://get.descript.com/fa2pjk0ylj0d - Boost your view and subscribers on YouTube - https://vidiq.com/marina - #1 AI video clipping tool - https://www.opus.pro/?via=7925d2 💰 Investment Apps: - Top credit cards for free flights, hotels, and cash-back - https://www.cardonomics.com/i/marina - Intuitive platform for stocks, options, and ETFs - https://a.webull.com/Tfjov8wp37ijU849f8 ⭐ Download my English language workbook - https://bit.ly/3hH7xFm I use affiliate links whenever possible (if you purchase items listed above using my affiliate links, I will get a bonus). #podcast #siliconvalleygirl #google

Marina MogilkohostRobby Steinguest
Oct 30, 202528mWatch on YouTube ↗

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  1. 0:00 – 1:00

    Teaser

    1. MM

      Give me some tips as a business owner. What should I focus on right now to be recommended by AI?

    2. RS

      Interestingly, AI thinks a lot like a person would. If I were them, I would- [beep]

    3. MM

      This is Robby Stein, VP of Product at Google Search, the man behind how ranking actually works inside the world's biggest search engine.

    4. RS

      You can see what it's doing. It says, "Kicking off searches." It's looking for sushi restaurants, and so you could just book it. Yeah.

    5. MM

      Oh, wow! Remember those stories where a mention in ChatGPT or another AI app made a business blow up overnight? A small bistro in Paris doubled its bookings. A restaurant in LA went viral just because AI recommended it, and Google ranking works the same way. So now you're investing in PR not for people to see it, but for AI.

    6. RS

      Right.

    7. MM

      In this video, Robby reveals how to make your business AI visible and use Google's own systems to get discovered, ranked, and recommended faster than ever. This video is sponsored by HubSpot. Robby, welcome to Silicon Valley Girl. Let's talk about search.

  2. 1:00 – 2:08

    How Google Search has changed

    1. RS

      Thanks for having me.

    2. MM

      Okay, I want to start with this question, uh, that is aimed for my au- my audience, who are 20, 25 years old. How should they think about search these days, and internet in general? So what's going on?

    3. RS

      Well, I say, I say that search is now a place where you can truly ask anything and get pretty effortless information about whatever you have on your mind. And I think, ultimately, people are using it for so many different things, and that's not changing. Like, you can still use Google for all the ways you do to research homework, to look up, you know, specific, um, types of websites and find information that way. But also, you can ask natural language questions. You don't have to use what we call keywordese sometimes. Um, you can just ask exactly what you want. It could be multiple sentences, and now Google has AI that can tap into all of the knowledge and context that Google has about the web, about the world, about products, to help give you better information.

    4. MM

      Okay, and follow-up right here. What about information about me? 'Cause I have Gmail, right?

    5. RS

      Yeah.

    6. MM

      I have my YouTube channel, which runs on Google, right? I have my Google Drive with all the files, all of my spreadsheets. Does it tap into that knowledge or not yet?

    7. RS

      So something we're working on, we announced

  3. 2:08 – 2:47

    Personalization in Google search

    1. RS

      at I/O, um, an opportunity to... for users in the future to be able to opt in to an experience with enhanced personalization. So it's something that we're thinking about, too, for the same reason that you have. And, you know, we want people to be able to help Google and help the services know more about you so that it can be more helpful. 'Cause if you know the kinds of brands you love, if you know the kinds of places you go, um, if you know about a school project that's coming up, you can do more interesting things for people.

    2. MM

      When is it coming?

    3. RS

      So TBD, but we did launch recently some steps in this direction. So in Labs now, um, you can now opt in to a new experiment, um, if you at- turn on AI mode in Google Labs, for Search Labs, uh, for personalizing, shopping, and

  4. 2:47 – 3:05

    New features in AI mode at Google

    1. RS

      local restaurant- for local recommendations for restaurants. And so you'll start to see a, a little bit more enhancement there, but obviously we're excited to connect more services like Gmail down the road.

    2. MM

      Okay, this is something that I actually liked. Of course, I would've wanted it to access my channel analytics-

    3. RS

      Yeah

    4. MM

      ... and give me more personalized thing. But what I did is I uploaded,

  5. 3:05 – 4:07

    Live DEMO: testing new features

    1. MM

      uh, this research, like, what's gonna happen in 2027, and I asked it to create a narrative for me for my next videos and write a script. Uh, it did-

    2. RS

      Nice

    3. MM

      ... the whole scripting thing.

    4. RS

      Very nice.

    5. MM

      The only thing, thumbnails. I would ideally like it to actually generate thumbnails-

    6. RS

      Mm-hmm

    7. MM

      ... 'cause I asked it to generate thumbnails-

    8. RS

      Mm-hmm

    9. MM

      ... and it was like, "No, here's your text." [chuckles]

    10. RS

      Mm-hmm.

    11. MM

      Is there a way to ask it to follow my commands, I guess, more precisely? [chuckles]

    12. RS

      Yeah, we're working through a few of those kinds of things, but, um, you should be able to prompt it pretty specifically. We just- we don't have image gen as a core capability-

    13. MM

      Mm-hmm

    14. RS

      ... and so that piece, it's not gonna do, but it should be able to-

    15. MM

      But Gemini could

    16. RS

      ... find you images. Gemini right now is in a, uh, Gemini app feature.

    17. MM

      Okay. Yeah, from the user experience, it feels like you have so many cool things. I just want to bring them-

    18. RS

      Yeah

    19. MM

      ... all together in one super app because, like, now it's, like, using different, different tabs. Okay, the next one: "I only have an hour and need a quick lunch spot." This is actually super cool because it knows I'm in Los Altos-

    20. RS

      Mm-hmm

    21. MM

      ... so it gave recommendations about Los Altos.

    22. RS

      If you click on any of these

  6. 4:07 – 6:02

    Google can book restaurants?

    1. RS

      places, it brings all of the Google context forward into this viewer.

    2. MM

      Mm-hmm.

    3. RS

      So as you're browsing, not only do you have the AI that's reasoning and finding great places for you, but it makes it really easy to browse.

    4. MM

      Mm-hmm.

    5. RS

      So you can actually see the place before you're going. It shows you, you know, their open and close times. It has menu highlights. It has reviews, and so this is really bringing together the power of AI with all the Google's context and information. So you could kind of browse each of these places, um, before you go.

    6. MM

      Yeah, this is-

    7. RS

      And it all happens in one product experience.

    8. MM

      It's a convenient-

    9. RS

      Yeah

    10. MM

      ... representation. Okay, this one, right, about, like, lunch. Find and book it for me.

    11. RS

      So it's-

    12. MM

      Mm-hmm

    13. RS

      ... gonna probably take a few minutes.

    14. MM

      Okay.

    15. RS

      But you can see what it's doing. It says, "Kicking off searches." It's looking for sushi restaurants, OpenTable, uh, Resy sushi. It's finding options across a bunch of different... Yoshi Sushi, um, Sumo, and then it's gonna research this for you.

    16. MM

      Mm-hmm.

    17. RS

      And then you'll get an alert when it's finished-

    18. MM

      Mm-hmm

    19. RS

      ... and then it'll show you options of where you can book it. Yeah.

    20. MM

      There we go.

    21. RS

      And so it basically researched this for a little while-

    22. MM

      Interesting way-

    23. RS

      ... found you across Talk, if you go down.

    24. MM

      Yeah.

    25. RS

      Um, it has it across, um, OpenTable, and it looks like there's some Talk reservations for Hiroshi.

    26. MM

      Yes.

    27. RS

      And so you could just book it, and it has all the times there.

    28. MM

      But this is amazing.

    29. RS

      It's pretty cool to see.

    30. MM

      That's amazing.

  7. 6:02 – 7:24

    How Google decides which restaurants to show first

    1. RS

      using Google Search as a tool, doing Googling under the hood, and then finding relevant information. And it can both, obviously, do a standard Google search and understand the web results but also tap into the knowledge bases and real-time info systems at Google. So in this case, for local, it might pull information from 250 million-plus real-world places that exist. You know, it's updated business information, many of which have local businesses that have updated their Google listings, and it can use all that information, too.... So it would find all of that, and then based on your question, if you say, "Hey, I want Italian, I want it to be kind of, you know, fun. It's maybe a date night, like, make it worth it," then it might find questions or, or, or, or issue queries like, "Hey, great ex- great experience, great for date nights." And then based on reviews, based on information that it finds, it'll produce a set of recommendations for you.

    2. MM

      [screen whooshes] So what we just heard from Robby, AI isn't just part of search anymore. It is the new search, and honestly, we can't deny it. It's changing everything. People aren't just Googling now, they're asking AI. They're asking AI to make phone calls. And if you wanna stay ahead, you need to learn how to use Google's LLM, Gemini. HubSpot just dropped a practical guide for using Gemini for faster research, smarter strategy, and scalable content creation. As usual, it's all based on real workflows marketers and business leaders actually use today. What I love about this guide is that it puts everything in one place. Gemini helps you research faster and spot

  8. 7:24 – 8:39

    How to use Gemini to save hours at work

    1. MM

      patterns you'd normally miss. Planning campaigns? You can build full strategies, refine messaging, and get detailed plans done in minutes. No busywork. Creating content, like me, copy, visuals, multi-channel, it all just flows. And the dashboards, they show you what's working, your ROI, and what to do next. My favorite part, they actually built a four-week rollout plan to integrate Gemini into your workflow step by step. It's realistic, actionable, and really everything you need to move faster, work smarter, and get real results. Download the guide and start using Google Gemini like a pro today. Link is in the description. Big thanks to HubSpot for sponsoring this video. [screen whooshes] What about if someone paid for ads, uh, using this search query?

    2. RS

      So it doesn't use ads information. This is done entirely with, um, you know, what's on the web and what's within Google's, um, information system.

    3. MM

      Yeah.

    4. RS

      Um, but if a business has claimed their local business and have- has modified that, put menu information in there, um, it's eligible for reviews, that information could be used.

    5. MM

      Do you feel like Google Ads is going away in the future? 'Cause as a business owner, we rely on them, right? They, they drive traffic. Uh, and if they are going away, what should be our strategy?

    6. RS

      Don't see them going away. What people actually

  9. 8:39 – 11:08

    Will Google Ads disappear?

    1. RS

      do... What we're observing is that the way people use Google Search, um, isn't really changing. It's, it's really expanding is, is what's happening. So think about all the things you need in a given day. It's everything, like you need a quick insurance quote, you need to file your taxes, you need to look up a que- a kind of question about a local business question in your county.

    2. MM

      Yeah.

    3. RS

      Like, you're gonna use Google and find that you need that information. Um, but what's happened is that now you can do all these new things. So you could take a picture of your shoes and say, "Hey, these are my shoes. What are other cool shoes like this?" And we can answer that now or help give you, provide you context with that. Or you could ask about this local restaurant question. It can be five sentences about all your, you know, allergies, issues with this, "I have this big group, I wanna make sure it's got light," um, what kind of book in advance, and you can put that into Google now, too. I think that's an, an, an opportunity for in the future, um, to be even more helpful for you, particularly in advertising context. And so we, we started some experiments on ads within AI Mode and within Google AI-

    4. MM

      Mm-hmm

    5. RS

      ... experiences. Um, but we're- we've been really focused on building great consumer products first and foremost.

    6. MM

      Yeah.

    7. RS

      Um, but I think users are starting to see some ads experiments there, too.

    8. MM

      Interesting. So will I be able to, like, pay to get recommended- like, for AI to even consider my business?

    9. RS

      I mean, we don't think that there should be any barrier to f- people finding information. So if there's information out there, it should be found. Um, but I think what you'll find is that there could be new and novel ad formats that if you're, let's say, shopping or you're, you know, looking for... You know, you have a complex thing, like you're doing a house remodel.

    10. MM

      Yeah.

    11. RS

      Like, there's all kinds of interesting services that could be helpful for you, that if we had more information and you could articulate more what you needed, "Hey, I have this kind of wood. These are the kind of contractors I have. This is my constraints. This is the price range," you could give even more fine-tuned recommendations or potential other services that you could consider or deals that could be more useful to you.

    12. MM

      Yeah.

    13. RS

      So those are all things we're thinking about. Um, I'd say it's, it's early days in finalizing kind of how ads might appear in these systems, um, but something that we're thinking about.

    14. MM

      [screen whooshes] Can you show the agentic call?

    15. RS

      Oh, yeah. Let's see. There we go. Have AI call. Yeah. So you can go, "What kind of pet do you have?"

    16. MM

      Dog.

    17. RS

      Dog. Next. Um-

    18. MM

      Toy Poodle.

    19. RS

      Select a breed. Okay.

    20. MM

      Here we go.

    21. RS

      Boom. It's a little one.

    22. MM

      Very little, yeah.

    23. RS

      Okay.

    24. MM

      Extra small.

    25. RS

      Baby.

    26. MM

      Under one year. [chuckles]

    27. RS

      Bath and brush?

    28. MM

      Uh, haircut.

    29. RS

      Okay, haircut. Nice.

    30. MM

      Let's make it look like a teddy bear. [chuckles]

  10. 11:08 – 14:07

    LIVE DEMO: Google’s agent makes a real phone call

    1. MM

      Yeah.

    2. RS

      Great.

    3. MM

      It's good.

    4. RS

      Near Los Altos, and so it puts your order in here, and so now what it's gonna do is it's gonna kick off a process where it's gonna make phone calls, um, on behalf of you to a bunch of-

    5. MM

      Really?

    6. RS

      ... different local businesses. So these are businesses that there's no web- there's no easy way to access them-

    7. MM

      Uh-huh

    8. RS

      ... on the web. Many of them are local.

    9. MM

      Yeah, yeah.

    10. RS

      They're run by-

    11. MM

      Most of the businesses

    12. RS

      ... small businesses, right?

    13. MM

      Yeah.

    14. RS

      It's just, like, a person running a business.

    15. MM

      Yeah.

    16. RS

      Um, and then you will get, um, an email when it's done, and it'll give you all the times, and you can follow up from there.

    17. MM

      Do you record any conversations so we can, like, hear them or...?

    18. RS

      No.

    19. MM

      No?

    20. RS

      No.

    21. MM

      'Cause it would be interesting to hear-

    22. RS

      No

    23. MM

      ... like, how it understood.

    24. RS

      Yeah.

    25. MM

      Yeah.

    26. RS

      That would be cool, but no, we... Those are, um, not recorded. Yeah.

    27. MM

      And how long is it gonna take?

    28. RS

      It depends on the-

    29. MM

      How many-

    30. RS

      ... on the question

  11. 14:07 – 15:00

    How to get your business recommended by AI

    1. MM

      in your PR.

    2. RS

      So-

    3. MM

      That's something I've been hearing a lot.

    4. RS

      So it's not, it's not really different from what you would do in that regard.

    5. MM

      Yeah.

    6. RS

      I think ultimately, how else are you gonna decide what business to go to? Well, you'd wanna understand that.

    7. MM

      But also, like, sometimes I invest in PR and ask my friends, "Have you seen that article?" And they're like, "No."

    8. RS

      [chuckles]

    9. MM

      But then I ask AI, and it really sees the article, and it uses that information. So now you're investing in PR not for people to see it, but for AI entities to see it.

    10. RS

      That's actually a good way of thinking about it, 'cause the way I mentioned before how our AI models work, they're issuing these Google searches as a tool. And so in the same way that you would optimize your website and think about, "How do I make helpful, clear information for people?" So people search for a certain topic, my website's really helpful for that. Think of an AI doing that search now-

    11. MM

      Yeah

    12. RS

      ... and then knowing for that query, here are the best websites given that question. That's now com- will come into the, [lips smack] uh, context window of the model, and so when it renders a response and provides

  12. 15:00 – 15:45

    Why PR will define visibility in the AI era

    1. RS

      all of these links for you to go deeper, that website's more likely to show up.

    2. MM

      Yeah.

    3. RS

      And so it's a lot of that standard best practices around building great content really do apply in the AI age, for sure.

    4. MM

      What about reviews? 'Cause some people buy [chuckles] reviews.

    5. RS

      Yeah.

    6. MM

      I wonder, like, how it's gonna affect the system.

    7. RS

      It's hard. I mean, the reviews... I, I think, again, it's kind of like a person, where, like, imagine something is scanning for information and trying to find things that are helpful. So it's possible that if you have reviews that are helpful, it could come up, but I think it's tricky to say, to pinpoint any one thing like that. Um, I think ultimately it's about these general best practices, where what you want is reliable... Kinda like if you were to google something, what pages would show up at the top of that query? It's still a good way of thinking about it.

    8. MM

      So basically the same as SEO, right? Or-

    9. RS

      I think there's a lot of overlap.

    10. MM

      Yeah.

    11. RS

      I think maybe one added nuance

  13. 15:45 – 16:20

    What to do if businesses buy reviews

    1. RS

      is that the kinds of questions that people ask AI are increasingly complicated-

    2. MM

      Mm

    3. RS

      ... and they tend to be in different-

    4. MM

      It's not like a-

    5. RS

      ... spaces

    6. MM

      - pair of keywords, right?

    7. RS

      Right.

    8. MM

      Yeah.

    9. RS

      And so if you think about what people use AI for, a lot of it is, like, how to for complicated things or for purchase decisions or for advice about life things. So people who are creating content in those areas, like if I were them, I would be a student of understanding the use cases of AI and where- what are growing in those use cases. I think there's been some p- you know, studies that have done around what pe- how people use these products in AI. Um, those are really interesting to understand.

    10. MM

      As a small business owner, how can I understand what people are

  14. 16:20 – 18:03

    How to grow fast with smarter search strategies

    1. MM

      looking for, where I can potentially get recommended? Is it still Google Trends or...?

    2. RS

      Google Trends is a really useful thing. I actually think people really underutilize that. Like, we have real-time information around exactly what's trending. You can see k- keyword values. I think also, you know, the Ads, uh, has a really fantastic estimation, too. Like, as you're b- as you're-

    3. MM

      Yeah

    4. RS

      ... booking ads, you can see kinda traffic estimates for various things. So there's- Google has a lot of tools across Ads, across, um, you know, the, the Search Console and Search Trends, to get information about what people are searching for, and I think that's gonna increasingly be more interesting as, you know, a lot more of, um, people's time and attention goes towards not just the way people use Search, too, but in these ex- these, these areas that are growing quickly.

    5. MM

      Yeah, yeah.

    6. RS

      Um, and particularly these long, specific questions people ask, and multimodal, where they're asking with images, or they're using voice to have live conversation.

    7. MM

      Do... Are you gonna provide some of that information to advertisers to see?

    8. RS

      I think down the road, we wanna provide a glimpse into what people are searching for broadly.

    9. MM

      Yeah.

    10. RS

      Um, advertisers-

    11. MM

      Just like to understand, right?

    12. RS

      Not just advertisers, too.

    13. MM

      Yeah.

    14. RS

      Yeah.

    15. MM

      Yeah.

    16. RS

      It could be for ever- for anyone.

    17. MM

      Mm-hmm.

    18. RS

      Um, but ultimately, I think more and more people are searching in these new ways, and so the systems need to better reflect those over time.

    19. MM

      Absolutely. Okay, you mentioned shopping. We just heard the news today, Shopify and ChatGPT. What will be Google's [chuckles] response to that?

    20. RS

      Yeah, well, I mean, actually we're already... For a long time in Search, you can search for whatever you want, and there's, you know, 50 billion products in the shopping graph that are available. There's live product updates. Two billion times an hour there's a change, and these are merchants all over the world updating their live inventory. Is it in stock or not? What's the price? Is there a price drop? This is already a part of Google. We've been working on this for a long time. The cool thing now is that this is connected to Google's AI, so if you ask about

  15. 18:03 – 18:48

    Shopping powered by AI - what’s changing

    1. RS

      any product in the world, it's likely that that model can tap into that knowledge and give you the exact price in a really comprehensive way, that it has everything.

    2. MM

      Let's do the visual stuff-

    3. RS

      Sure

    4. MM

      ... right? Can we try and find similar cream to this? Is this how you use it?

    5. RS

      Yep.

    6. MM

      Take a photo.

    7. RS

      Yep, and then you can go ahead and tap in there to go to AI Mode. Yep.

    8. MM

      Find me similar, right?

    9. RS

      Yep.

    10. MM

      Is it gonna analyze the ingredients, or what is it- is... Or is it just gonna like-

    11. RS

      It's what we want it to do. Oh, if you just say, "Similar," it'll do what its reasoning- it, it will be just finding things that are similar products overall. But if you say, "Similar ingredients," it might help it. So are those similar products? Drunk Elephant, Bobbi Brown.

    12. MM

      ... Where is the shopping feature?

    13. RS

      It's there.

    14. MM

      Oh, so I just click this?

    15. RS

      Yeah.

    16. MM

      But I need to go to the website, right? So I can't buy directly-

    17. RS

      You need to go to the website. Yeah.

  16. 18:48 – 20:20

    LIVE DEMO: shopping by taking a picture

    1. MM

      But-

    2. RS

      But if you keep going here, some of these are shoppable. So see it says, "In stock, Sephora"?

    3. MM

      Mm-hmm.

    4. RS

      So you could tap on that, and then, um, a few of these have more direct shopping links, so that takes you directly to the app.

    5. MM

      It takes you to the app.

    6. RS

      Yeah.

    7. MM

      But do you think in the future we're gonna be- just be able to press a button?

    8. RS

      I think we wanna be able to make it as easy as possible for you to do what you need. I think what we find is a lot of the systems that do things on your behalf make a bunch of mistakes, especially if you're purchasing things. You've gotta be careful there.

    9. MM

      Yeah.

    10. RS

      But I do think we wanna make it easy, so you can just tap the thing.

    11. MM

      Yeah, right.

    12. RS

      Um-

    13. MM

      Just get it for me. Get it.

    14. RS

      As easy as possible.

    15. MM

      [screen whooshes] Quick pause here. If you're enjoying this podcast, you will absolutely love my Inner Circle newsletter. So what I basically do is I take all the tips from these podcasts, and I apply them to my personal life, to my investment portfolio, and to my businesses, this media company, and my language teaching business. Sometimes we get amazing results, and I share our real tactics. Sometimes we don't, and I share that, too. Think of it as an insider version of this podcast. The link is in the description. Join my free newsletter to stay ahead. [screen whooshes] How do you think about competition in general? Like, we used to say, "Google it," now a lot of people are GPT-ing it. How do you think about it, and, uh, as a product owner, right, what are your daily thoughts on that?

    16. RS

      Yeah, I mean, I think in general, you have to get in touch with why people use and appreciate and love what you're building, and then you wanna figure out ways to expe- extend on that. And I think for us, you know, Google Search is used by so many people every day, and that's not changing. It's just that people want more, and we see that. People are asking natural language questions in Google before it could even really support it

  17. 20:20 – 22:50

    Google vs ChatGPT

    1. RS

      with AI Overviews.

    2. MM

      Yeah.

    3. RS

      We saw people asking, after we launched AI Overviews, they added the word AI to the end of a bunch of queries 'cause they wanted the AI-

    4. MM

      Oh, interesting

    5. RS

      ... to, like, show up for them. Um, they're using multimodal, so they're taking pictures of stuff. Lens, uh, as a, as a product, is growing. Um, you know, 70% increase year over year on visual search is one of the fastest-growing ways people are finding information. So you kind of understand the trends of your own product, and, and then you try to really do much better. And for Google, there's lots of people- reasons people use AI. They use it for productivity, they use it for creation, they make flyers for their business. Google Search is about information, and we wanna give the absolute highest quality experience when finding information. So you have an informational task, you know, whether it's booking this restaurant or trying to research something that happened in history or trying to know if- what place to go to and get high-quality info and make sure that place exists, like, we think Google can be an amazing place for that, and that's where we spend our, our energy.

    6. MM

      And from the product standpoint, what do you think is the- this unique feature that makes Google stand out?

    7. RS

      I mean, I think it's access to Google knowledge, honestly, is, like, the big one. And so right now, if you ask about, you know, plotting a certain set of stocks, for example, around top pharma stocks or Mag Seven, well, the first question is, like, "What are those stocks?" And so the reasoning model looks that up and determines it. But then it can use Google Finance as a search, as a, as a tool call, to find the very high-quality financial information to plot a graph if you asked for financial performance. And if you extend that to all of these other areas, around local, around shopping, and these are areas that have been built out for years, the AI model that's, you know, using Gemini 2.5 and advanced reasoning, sitting on top of this knowledge, is an incredible combination. And obviously, um, maybe most importantly, it's connected to the web, and so it understands all of this vastness of what you could then click on and dive in. And what we see is, when you're trying to buy a mattress, people wanna see what experts say. They wanna click in, they wanna read more, and that's what Google's all about.

    8. MM

      Mm-hmm.

    9. RS

      And so I think those become really unique aspects of what Google does. Um, and then I think that the newest one, which is around visual and inspiration, and p- I mentioned le- uh, Lens and, and, and Photos. People come to Google and image search for all kinds of things. "Decorate my daughter's bedroom," "I'm doing landscape lighting," "I'm trying to design my kitchen."

    10. MM

      "Find me similar pants." [chuckles]

    11. RS

      "Find me similar stuff."

    12. MM

      Yeah. [chuckles]

    13. RS

      And but AI is- is, is, has been bad at inspiration. Like, if you talk ab- if you think about what AI does, it's been a... It's a language model, so it knows text. So you, you talk to it. It grew up as a chatbot. Um, but how come it can't help you more easily shop or design your home? And so now that's something home- people come to Google for all the

  18. 22:50 – 24:25

    How to design your home with AI

    1. RS

      time, and you can now do that with our AI products. And you can ask, "Help me decorate my daughter's bedroom," it'll give you beautiful imagery, and you can have a follow-up que- question about it, um, in Design.

    2. MM

      It's gonna be generated? Is that, like-

    3. RS

      Not generated.

    4. MM

      Mm-hmm.

    5. RS

      It's actually with web images, and so it'll find-

    6. MM

      Oh, okay, like inspiration

    7. RS

      ... beautiful images. Yep, inspirational images from the web.

    8. MM

      Mm-hmm.

    9. RS

      And then you can click on them, you can ask follow-up questions, and it's a way to use natural language for inspiration. But see there's this, uh, little live icon there now. So if you tap on that, say, "Allow," and then you can ask a question.

    10. MM

      Oh, with a video as well.

    11. RS

      You can use video, so you could even... Yeah, you could point it at something.

    12. MM

      Okay, what is this device? [device clicks]

    13. SP

      What I'm seeing here is an iFlytek A-I-N-O-T-E Air2. It's a digital note-taking tablet with an 8.2-inch-

    14. MM

      Can you buy it for me?

    15. SP

      ... E Ink screen.

    16. MM

      [chuckles] It understand-

    17. SP

      I'm sorry, I cannot make purchases for you.

    18. MM

      [chuckles] Okay.

    19. SP

      Would you like me to search for online retailers where you can buy it yourself?

    20. RS

      Oh.

    21. MM

      No, I already see Amazon is good. Thank you.

    22. RS

      [chuckles] Okay, cool.

    23. MM

      Uh, you've built so many amazing products. I mean, you built Reels, right? Uh-

    24. RS

      One of them, yeah.

    25. MM

      That's fascinating. Now you're building Google Search. From a product owner standpoint, can you give people tips on how to build in 2025 when everything is moving so fast, when everything is so competitive? Some people have... I have this feeling that software, like small startups, are becoming a commodity 'cause it's so easy to build-

    26. RS

      Mm

    27. MM

      ... something in two days. What do you think as a product?

    28. RS

      Yeah, well, what's interesting is I think every product is a reaction to the time. It's like, what do people need, and how do you make the- how do you make products today? So when there weren't any mobile experiences, everyone needed a mobile experience, and, and people wanted more mo- and there was this gap in the market. So I

  19. 24:25 – 25:58

    TIPS to build products that stand out in the AI era

    1. RS

      think as a product owner and as a entrepreneur, you have to be a student of gaps. And so what are the things now that people wish technology could do better? I mentioned one with inspiration and how AI is not great at that today, so that became a big focus for what we're thinking about with AI Mode, and now we're gonna- we're launching something, I think, exciting there. I think every entrepreneur and business owner can think that way, and I think f- and how it's built, increasingly, you'll be able to build things just by talking with language.

    2. MM

      Yeah.

    3. RS

      You don't need to code and-... even with really sophisticated things I'm looking at internally, you can largely just u- just tell the model, "Hey, you- here's a data set, here's how it works, here's the schema," and the model can handle it. And so I think that's gonna be very democratizing for getting ideas out there. So on the one side, it's gonna mean that there's a surge of people trying ideas, which means there's more competition. And, and the other side, though, it means anyone can try something. And so I think the grounds will be less how technical is the idea and more how interesting is the idea.

    4. MM

      How do you spot those interesting ideas?

    5. RS

      I think there's a few things. I think one is talking to people. Like, I think there's kinda like two, two things I think about a lot. Like, one is like, how do you understand people? And, and a lot of it is you need to observe them, talk to them, research them. In everything I've ever built, you know, we spend a lot of time with people. You know, we watch them use our products, we, we, we ask them questions about what they're missing. We ask, "What's the time you use this and you realize you wanna keep using it forever?" Like, that, that-

    6. MM

      Mm.

    7. RS

      You know-

    8. MM

      I love that question.

    9. RS

      And that, that's actually a critical question.

    10. MM

      Mm.

    11. RS

      Um, in, in actually, this, this, uh, Clayton Christensen book, um, Competing Against Luck, it's, it's an interview technique in there around

  20. 25:58 – 27:20

    How to find ideas that actually work

    1. RS

      eliciting that moment, 'cause that's the moment that caused the user to love your product.

    2. MM

      Mm.

    3. RS

      And if you can know that, and engineer for that, that's gonna get lots of people to love it.

    4. MM

      Mm.

    5. RS

      And inversely, there's a moment to say, "When was the time you tried some- our, our product, and you decided you're not gonna use it anymore?" And then that's how you get fired from-

    6. MM

      Mm

    7. RS

      ... your product. And understanding that is just as important. And so I think the people who understand people well, and they try ideas fast, they ask them these kinds of questions to get it market fit, and they're f- they're building things that are resonating, um, are gonna do really well in this next phase. Which I think before, it was kinda like, well, did you have a good idea? It could be a pretty good idea, but not a great idea. But hey, you can build it, and not a lot of people can build it, and so maybe it'll fly. But I think in the next era, lots of people will be able to build it, and so you really have to build something useful to people.

    8. MM

      How many interviews do you think you need to figure out if the idea is worth it?

    9. RS

      Honestly, I don't think a lot. I, I think, like, I'm a big believer in small numbers, going very deep with, like, a dozen people.

    10. MM

      Mm.

    11. RS

      And i- if you give someone a prototype and you say, "Hey, here's a product, try it out," and even your friends, they'll use it the first week 'cause they're your friend. But if you look two months later, are they using it every day? I don't care how good a friend they are, they are not gonna use your product every single day for months unless it's doing something for them. They're just not, and so-

    12. MM

      So for you, the metric is

  21. 27:20 – 28:12

    The 2 principles behind every viral product

    1. MM

      make them use it every day?

    2. RS

      I think it's a dai- I think for most... You have two types of products. You have really daily habits and products that you wanna be mainstream, large consumer products. You have other products that are utilities. They solve specific problems for people. It's like, okay, I have a telescope app for-

    3. MM

      Yeah

    4. RS

      ... looking at the scar- the stars and using AI. That's gonna be a different business model. You might, you know, have people who are hobbyists pay money for it, so you wanna study that demographic differently. But for mainstream consumer products, kinda the areas I've worked in-

    5. MM

      Mm

    6. RS

      ... um, you're looking for daily value.

    7. MM

      Stickiness, yeah.

    8. RS

      And stickiness. That's right.

    9. MM

      Love that.

    10. RS

      Fantastic.

    11. MM

      I think that was it.

    12. RS

      Thank you.

    13. MM

      Thank you so much!

    14. RS

      Yeah, it was great. Thank you so much.

    15. MM

      Agentic calling made me super excited.

    16. RS

      Okay, good. You'll be my first call when we have personalization in Gmail.

    17. MM

      Oh, yes, please.

    18. RS

      We will talk the first day. [laughing]

    19. MM

      Oh, yes, please, please.

    20. RS

      [laughing]

    21. MM

      That's like... That has been my wish.

    22. RS

      I will personally ping you about it, okay? [notification sound]

    23. MM

      And, and adding things-

    24. RS

      Yeah

    25. MM

      ... to Google Calendar.

    26. RS

      Yes, and I will ping you about that, too.

    27. MM

      That's my favorite thing, too. [laughing]

    28. RS

      Yeah. You'll be very excited about some stuff coming up.

Episode duration: 28:12

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