Google Cloud's CTO on their agentic AI plans | TechCrunch Disrupt 2025
By TechCrunch
Summary
## Key takeaways - **Two Paths for Agent Development**: Developers can choose between a code-first approach using an Agent Development Kit for fine-grained control and observability, or a no-code path with Gemini Enterprise to build apps where agent flows are integrated. [00:46] - **Agent Payments Protocol: Mandates and Trust**: The Agent Payments Protocol supports two use cases: defining parameters for an agent to find and prompt for purchase (mandate), or trusting an agent to curate items and finalize transactions. [03:32] - **Bots Shift from Malware to Customers**: CISOs must shift their thinking from viewing bots as threats to recognizing them as customers, creating opportunities in cybersecurity to build tools that can reason about and manage inbound agent traffic. [07:14] - **AI as a Judge for Content Evaluation**: A key unlock for AI workflows is 'AI as a judge,' where AI systems evaluate outputs against brand guidelines or enterprise data, addressing the challenge of AI generating content faster than humans can validate it. [14:44] - **Open Protocols vs. Walled Gardens**: Google Cloud bets on open protocols for AI infrastructure, similar to the foundations of the web, allowing builders to use various models and manage their own compositions, rather than proprietary, closed systems. [09:15] - **Cloud and AI Infrastructure: A New Game**: AI has redefined and restarted the cloud market, creating a new game for infrastructure with massive demand for both training and inference, driving innovation in specialized hardware like TPUs. [23:47]
Topics Covered
- Google Cloud's Agentic AI: Code-First vs. App-Building Approaches
- Google Cloud's Agent Payments: The Future of Value Exchange
- From Bots as Malware to Bots as Customers: The Shifting Paradigm
- Google's TPU Evolution: 1000x Performance Improvement for AI Inference
- Google's Decades of Experience in Scaling ML Infrastructure for Success
Full Transcript
[Music]
Nice moves.
>> Oh, thank you. Um,
yeah. So, this was I think when we
started talking about this panel, I
didn't even realize how much work you've
been doing on the Agentic Cloud. I think
it's sort of if it works, nothing
breaks. You don't hear about it. Um, but
so I guess let's start with that. You
were talking about the building blocks.
I think if people aren't building
>> cloud-based agents, they may not know
about everything that's out there to
build on. So, so what are the building
blocks that people in the audience could
use right now?
>> Sure. Sure. So, there's two paths. If
you want to go code first and uh you
know you want to really get into the
nuts and bolts of building um agents uh
you can take a path through like agent
development kit and more fine grain
control. This will give you like the
observability, the debugging, the u you
know tool management, tool creation, you
know, kind of all of those things uh
bound together in a nice little package
to help you get started if you're you're
really after like refining and building
agents themselves for the sake of
getting value from those uh first coded
agents. If you're more of like I want to
build an app and the agent flow is like
how I want to build an app, then we have
a completely you know separate track
which is Gemini Enterprise. And with
Gemini Enterprise, you can basically
just go into UI and you're like, "Hey, I
want to uh look ahead my calendar this
week and I want to prep for any
meeting." This is obviously one that I
use all the time and I want to prep for
any meetings that I have. And because it
has connectors to your calendar, you
know, built in because it has connectors
to thirdparty data sources already built
in like your CRM, you don't have to fuss
with all like the data engineering and
the data management. You can just define
an objective for your agent. You have
got the connectors built in. the agent
now has context. It'll run ahead. It'll
look at your calendar and it will uh and
it it will actually propose like, hey,
based on who you're meeting with and the
nature of those meetings. Here's some
ideas also for research. Uh here's some
ideas for background that uh may be
helpful to you in those meetings. So, uh
really depends, you know, what you're
building. You know, code first and agent
kind of optimization ADK uh and you and
that takes you down a path of also
orchestrating multiple agents. And we'll
get into I think probably agent, you
know, commerce as well. If you're trying
to build apps, you know, go to Gemini
Enterprise and take the easy button.
>> Yeah. Well, so this is commerce. I'm
going to I'm going to pick that right
up.
I got really interested in this because
in the last few months you've rolled out
this new payments protocol that
basically is allowing agents to maybe
just put things in your cart for you to
buy or maybe actually buy things for
you. Really handing over the credit card
to the to the intern so to speak. I
guess h how do you build up to that?
>> Yeah. So it really uh depends on your
use case but there are there are kind of
two main um paths for using this agent
payments protocol and again you know
we'll we'll think about this in like
terms of a stack. So first we had to you
know get agents up and running and give
you the tools get agents up and running
quickly. So that's the ADK. Then on top
of that you know a lot of these
workflows are going to be multiple
agents. So we have the agentto agent
protocol. And then like once you're
transacting and you're interacting
across multiple agents you want to
exchange value. And so that's the agent
payment protocol. And there are kind of
two main use cases. One is I'm going to
give you some parameters and I want you
to go and like if if you're a sneaker
head, you know, and you always miss out
because the bots are getting you, you
know, because they're getting to the
sneaker sales before you're able to get
to the sneaker sales, you can define an
agent that says, you know, I I want this
type of sneaker and kind of these cost
parameters, these features, and when
it's available, I want you to let me
know. And that's what we call a mandate.
you give this agent a mandate and it'll
go out and it'll be uh monitoring the
web and once that condition those
guardrails are met it'll come and prompt
you and then you have the choice to go
and put something in the card and to
finish the transaction. There's another
one which is you know what uh I trust
the agent to go and kind of curate all
these things to put it in the cart and
all I really want to do is finish the
transaction and so this has kind of two
levels of mandate there's like this
initial you know set of guardrails and
then there's a trust mandate and uh
think of like travel you know going you
want to go somewhere you want to have uh
you know a bunch of options put together
for uh airfare hotel experiences you're
going to need multiple agents going out
bringing those things back putting them
into the cart and saying like, "Okay,
it's time to check out." And then the
human can just check out. One really
important thing about this um as a
technologist is that because we're in
the early days of agents, um agent
payment protocol is is like a whisper of
the future, which is how do you automate
the exchange of value? And this is
relevant to, you know, if you're uh a
startup and you're trying to advertise
your inventory, you know, the future is
you're going to be advertising inventory
to a bunch of agents and you want to get
those transactions done in as much an
automated fashion as quickly as
possible. And actually like human
slowness and human weirdness about, you
know, like they'll go and scan your
website, they'll look at your inventory,
they'll leave it, they'll abandon the
cart, they'll do all this stuff. You
know, in a way, we're also building, you
know, one this kind of new commerce of
the future and more of a consumer
version, but also in a B2B scenario, you
can imagine if you're like a large
shipping company and you get millions of
invoices every day, you want to be able
to complete those transactions in the
background, you know, receive invoices,
pay valid invoices, flag ones that might
be, you know, a little bit out of band,
um, and do that in a highly scaled and
automated fashion. So, you know, expect
to see more of these multi-agent
automated, you know, real-time
fulfillment, but we had, you know, you
had to start somewhere. So, you have to
start with the foundations just like the
web, you have to start with the
protocols and the rules of engagement
for how you uh transact.
>> Yeah. So, I'm glad you, you know, I
think this idea of the transition to a
commerce is so interesting and so kind
of fraught. I want to pick on one thing
you said. You were sort of saying, "Oh,
okay. If you're a sneaker head and those
terrible bots keep snapping up the early
sneakers,
but like what you've built here is a bot
for buying sneakers.
>> Yes. Yes. But it is a precision bot that
you control and now you are on a level
playing field with these aggregators
that would go and take all this
inventory and then they'd resell it and
they jack the prices up. So in a way
we're also you know fine-tuning these
agent flows so that you can get more
value out of you know a workflow and as
an individual consumer or as a business
maybe you don't have to pay those
intermediaries anymore. Maybe now you
can operate with like the power that
only you know these kind of these
aggregators had in the past.
>> Yeah. I just I I think it kind of gets
to the social complexity of it where as
as we're in this world where maybe some
people are using agents to buy things
and other people are buying things on
the internet. Maybe some people are
still buying things in stores. Like how
do you think about the perspective of
the store where they say, you know, are
they going to be glad when the agentic
buyers show up
>> eventually? Uh
>> eventually. Yeah.
>> And the reason I say that is because uh
if how you know how many of us have been
designing against like robots.ext text
and like these you know automated bots
that come into your uh website or into
your business. Uh and in the past we
might call these malware or we might
call these you know cyber security
incidents. So if you're the CISO or if
you're the head of security for any
organization of a reasonable size right
now you have really had to flip your
thinking from you know the the bots are
bad to the bots are your customer. So
that's why I say eventually because you
know there right now and it's kind of
like this AI play counterplay. So now
the CISOs and there's a huge opportunity
in cyber security where if you can build
tools that can reason and and
rationalize this kind of inbound swarm
or flood of agents into your
organization into your website into your
uh commerce platforms then you're going
to be able to take advantage of this
kind of early mover. And if you aren't
designing AI systems to kind of reason
about these new behaviors, uh, then
you're going to get left behind. And as
a again, you know, as a technologist,
one of the things I always think about
is how do I get learning loops as
quickly as possible. And so a lot of the
leading edge companies right now,
they're, you know, they're creating
perimeters or they're creating kind of
sandboxes. They're creating ways that
they can characterize the flood of these
agents coming in and they can learn how
to instrument against it faster. So it's
kind of like you have to let them in a
little bit so you can get the learning
curve. Um but a lot of that's being
designed right now.
>> Yeah. Yeah. So one of the alternate
visions of this the other you know major
uh agentic commerce idea is of course
OpenAI's instant checkout where we're
seeing these
sort of company by company launching
with Stripe. Okay. Now we're partnering
with PayPal so PayPal can do it too.
It's not the open protocol approach, but
we're kind of back in the classic
technologist struggle of okay, do we
want the walled garden? Do we want the
open protocol? I guess h how do you
think about the consequences of that?
>> Uh I bet on open. I mean, if you look at
uh the foundations of the web, if you
look at the foundations of commerce
today, underneath all of them are
standards and protocols that were built
in communities. And that goes from you
know how packets transit a network to
how you trust that a site is exactly the
site that it should be um to authorities
around security uh starting with open is
absolutely critical and that's act and
that's why like in ADK that I mentioned
earlier you can bring models other than
Gemini you know into ADK and build
agents using other people's models. uh
this has been an approach that we have
taken and you know I've been at Google
cloud now for 11 or 12 years and you
know since the very beginning it was
kubernetes it was tensorflow it was open
standards it's how do we give you as
builders an option where if you want to
compose and manage yourself you know you
have these open versions and you have
lots of choice if you want to take
advantage of some of the managed bits
you know we can do that for you as well
and so uh right now like scaled use of
AI infrastructure it turns out that uh
customers and businesses and builders
don't want to pay reseller fees to get
AI models and AI uh infrastructure these
days. So they like coming to a place
like Google Cloud where we have our own
firstparty models, we have our own
firstparty AI infrastructure and we're
not just reselling somebody else's
stuff. And we also learn how to optimize
because that's true because we have
these things. Uh we learn to optimize.
So if you want scaled AI infrastructure,
we can give you managed scaled tensor
processing units through Google
Kubernetes Engine GKE in a managed way.
Or if you want to roll your own like
abstractions and you want to manage them
yourself, you know, like uh Anthropic
and others, customers have been learning
how to build and go from GPUs to TPUs
along the way, too.
>> Yeah. Please be careful rolling your own
abstractions, though. That's
>> Yeah, I would agree with that. You're in
for a p in for a pound, I guess, is uh
is way to think about it.
>> So, I mean, we're describing a kind of
world of agent commerce that is not
really here yet, but I guess how do you
how fast do you see this coming down the
road?
Well, I mean, I work with a lot of uh
startups, a lot of uh enterprises, and I
can tell you that the first iterations
of these agentic workflows, generally
speaking, it's kind of small uhish like
numbers of agents. So, I would say like,
you know, the swarms of hundreds or
thousands aren't here yet, but in the
tens to, you know, getting to hundreds,
the orchestration of them is a really uh
important thing to think about. Um
but there are quite a few deployments of
um AI agents right now. One for example
uh Sully AI which is a startup that
provides um in healthcare basically like
healthcare task automation agents as
like a service to healthcare workers. So
like there are a lot of administrative
tasks you take care of every single day
in healthcare and Sully AI has basically
created agents that allow them you know
using Google cloud that allow healthcare
workers to take a lot of that
administrative burden and minimize it so
they can focus on patient care. Um so
they are out in the real world and they
are you know creating value today. I
think it's more of the multi- aent
interactions, you know, complex
multi-agent orchestration that is the
frontier.
>> And so, do we think when are we going to
start to see that? I mean, is that like
>> five years out? Is it five months out?
>> You're ask you're asking a technologist
and a CTO to give a roadmap timeline
with assurityity in front of a large
crowd. So,
>> yeah,
>> it's not my first rodeo, Russell. Um,
>> fair. But what I will say is I think you
can bet on like waves of innovation. So
the the first wave which is just b um
building singular task agents to
accomplish singular function is here now
and it's growing rapidly. So you could
also kind of this is semi close to RPA
and kind of the first you know
iterations of uh you know automation but
we're rapidly getting to uh multi- aent
uh orchestrated workflows within I'd say
like one use case. So for example,
marketing uh generating uh creative
right now you can uh use you know Gemini
as a front end and you can say hey I I
really have an idea for this interesting
creative thing and using you know
imagine under the hood or nano banana
under the hood it'll give you a first
order like this is what it could look
like and then you can send it to VO and
it can uh turn it into a short form
video but then you have other things
that you need like brand guidelines and
you need you know AI as a judge to say
like Is this content even something I
would put out to my users? And so in
those workflows, a lot of the
innovations happening right now is like
the AI being capable of evaluating the
outputs. So that um uh in my team we
talk about like if you're a manager now,
if if you're in the in the flow of of
any work, basically AI has made your
life a nightmare because uh it's
stacking up all of these things that
need validation or evaluation. And as a
human, you know, I think of it like
folders on a desk. That's how old I am.
So, you know, when you were a manager
back in the day, it's like you have a
desk and people bring you their stuff
and it's in a folder and you have to
like approve it. And in and in, you
know, the old days, you know, it was
gated by what humans could put on your
desk, how fast they could get the work
done. So, it's like, okay, cool. Like
every single day, I get like 20 to 100
folders. I burn down through as many as
I can. By the end of the week, as long
as it's down to zero folders or a low
number, it's great. Problem is now is
that AI can create like infinite folders
almost instantly. So one of the big
unlocks for the you know in the shorter
run is going to be AI as a judge AI
evals grounding in like brand guidelines
or grounding in enterprise data that
allows the outputs of these things to be
contextual to be useful and to be things
that companies are proud of and can
actually use. Um whereas like I think
these big agent swarms I think there's a
lot of fragility right now in for
example um like in financial services
say you want to build uh I want to build
the the um like financial adviser bot
well there's no financial adviser bot
because financial advising is a series
of tasks there's like 10 to 14 tasks are
involved in that and trying to get 10 or
14 agents to reconcile their
perspectives and synthesize that into
like one output that can be delivered to
a human today is a very complex process.
and is very much on the frontier and I
would say there's still room to go.
>> Okay. Yeah. This idea of like stacking
folders is so visceral but it's also I
mean right now we're still trying to
evaluate I mean AI evals I when I hear
it I think oh you're talking about
benchmarking and humans evaluating AI
and it's like no we need AI systems that
can evaluate AI outputs absolutely and
start clearing the folders out. we need
to move at the same p. The thing is that
like human cognition and human, you
know, like uh evaluation runs at human
speed, but like AI can generate content
way faster than humans are able to go
like that's good, that's bad. And so you
have to that is like one of the key
problems to solve in almost any workflow
is how fast the decisions how fast the
content how fast the analysis the
synthesis the reports depending on which
use case you're in how fast you can get
AI to kind of sort through take out the
stuff that's obviously bad uh and really
queue up the human for the highest value
like Eval's most complex edge cases uh
you know that's super critical.
>> Yeah. So that gets to this question that
I think keeps coming up when we talk
about these obviously AI agents are
making huge technical progress.
I wonder if sort of are they there yet?
Is is the missing piece really kind of
more capabilities from the underlying
agentic tech itself?
>> I think it's um it's multiple things. So
for example uh you know Gemini today you
know leading frontier model it's been
that way for you know kind of six months
plus which in this world feels like an
eternity and that has to continue. So we
definitely need innovation we need more
like reasoning capabilities we need more
um kind of navigating and and kind of
like ambient capabilities inside the
front end or like a frontier model like
Gemini. So you need that but you also
need grounding tools. uh you need the
ability to bring in enterprise data more
easily. You know, some of this is going
to be through connectors and you know
creating tools and kind of like the old
school publish and subscribe. If
anybody's been around for a while like I
have, you know, this is concept of like
publish and subscribe where you have
data sources and they publish their
availability and then you have consumers
that subscribe to topics. We're back
again. You know, we just use different
words. And so now, you know, there's
also a need for companies and
organizations if they haven't
externalized their data through an API
or through a tool, you know, they're at
risk of like getting left behind or
becoming irrelevant in a world like
this. So, you need the, you know, you
need the connectors, you need the tools
created, you need this kind of rich
ecosystem of data sources available and
APIs, you need API management, you know,
you need a way to sort through and
navigate against all of these different
um options. So, and that's just like
three layers of the stack. If we had,
you know, another like three days, we
could go through kind of all the layers
of it because there's also a lot of
bindings in between that make these
workflows useful like in the real world.
But you have to you can't just choose
one area like as as Google Cloud like we
can't just choose one area to innovate.
We have to provide and that's why we do
a complete end-to-end AI stack that is
both first party but also has uh you
know is built kind of with open in mind.
So, you know, we have model garden, we
have, you know, agent gardens, we have
these places where if what we have isn't
at that point in time exactly what you
need, you can go get it from somebody
else. Those are the table stakes to be,
you know, on the frontier of technology
today.
>> Yeah. Well, so I want to ask about one
specific layer that I think gets
overlooked a lot, but these are
incredibly powerful tools. Not everyone
on the internet is as nice and friendly
as we are. I guess I hear about, you
know, generating these endless folders,
doing all of this work at scale,
particularly once payments are in the
mix. Yeah. And I worry about the
security aspect of do do we need better
tools for identifying bad actors, for
validating agents so that we can sort of
smoke out bad activity?
>> Yeah. Well, the answer to that is is
absolutely yes. Um and we're just at the
beginning of this. So you know within um
like Google cloud one of the things that
we focus a lot on is uh governance
security um trust and quite often trust
you know it's interesting because in the
generative AI world you know trust has
this kind of new layer of do I it's not
deterministic you know and so it's like
do I really trust the outputs and how do
I create systems of trust and I find
that's as much a barrier or something to
solve as you know like classic
identifying potential you know malware
um you injection threats. Um, so there's
like a there's a track where the
fundamental technology will continue to
become, you know, more secure, but then
there's like this trust tier where, you
know, it's really about making sure that
the AI is doing what it's supposed to be
doing. So, you know, observability,
telemetry eval
um, and you know, believe it or not, not
every company has exactly the same
sensibilities about how much risk
they're willing to take.
>> I've heard that. Yeah. So, you know,
there's also like configurations of this
and one of the things we learned very
early on, you know, uh you could say
we've been very deliberate about um you
know, safety and responsibility. One of
the things that we discovered very early
on is uh some companies would take our
filtering and our settings uh you know
of kind of like do you want it to be
creative or do you want it to be you
know definitive or or you know
authoritative and so many people would
actually set it to creative
um way more than we thought. And so, you
know, for us, it's about surfacing a
platform that you can configure your own
filters and add your own governance to
whatever like your brand, you know, how
you want to take on risk. And that's way
more important than us coming up with
some singular vision of like how do you
do risk management and we operate in so
many constituencies in in in Europe,
AMIA, JPAC in um the Americas and there
are subtle differences in all of those.
So we also have we're building you know
aenta capabilities being able to deploy
in um you know infrastructure that's
connected or sometimes disconnected. You
know one of the projects that my team is
working on right now in the CTO group is
how do you give signals of intent of
what of what's happening but it can
cross trust boundaries that are actually
airgapped physically separated because
you can't share the data itself and
obviously like AI hasn't figured out a
way to like come out of the machine walk
over and like walk into the other
machine and figure you know
>> not yet. Yeah.
>> Yeah. not yet. Um, but there are ways
there are emerging techniques to
understand the intent of a workflow or
kind of early telemetry and then ways to
like bridge the gap. Uh, and so that's
also really really exciting in terms of
security is being able to bring more AI
and more capabilities of agents to
scenarios that typically would have been
closed off to AI, which is smaller
compute shapes, uh, you know, uh,
disconnected infrastructure. Uh, that's
really a frontier that I'm excited
about.
>> Yeah. So we're sort of talking about
this complex agentic world. Obviously
that's going to involve consuming a lot
of cloud services I think is a safe
assumption.
>> That'd be great.
>> But we also don't know how fast it's
coming, how soon it's getting here, how
quickly we're going to solve all of
these problems that that you know you
identify that we're actively working on.
At the same time, we're in the middle of
this unprecedented infrastructure
buildout. You know, I have Meta has said
they're going to spend 600 billion
dollars, you know, in the next few
years. We're getting 500 billion from
Stargate.
There are all of these sort of
uncertainties about how fast all of the
stuff we're describing will get built. I
guess do you worry that we're
overbuilding as a kind of society and
that there's going to be some harsh
correction that that gets in the middle
of this? I mean to be able to answer
that as you know as like society build I
would have to have a lot more data on
the de on the demand side from other
firms. I'd have to I'd have to see
demand signals from other firms to know
um I can at least tell you from the
Google perspective uh one I think AI has
definitely redefined uh and kind of
restarted the cloud market itself and
and infrastructure being a large part of
that. So we're in an entirely new game
today when it comes to cloud and
infrastructure. Um you know second thing
that is important about the scaled
infrastructure moment is that uh
there is so much demand. There is so
much demand Russell um and I think part
of that is that uh we're in a place now
where the um the kind of the frontiers
are being built and so you have multiple
frontier model providers. Um and as we
transition into inference, there's also
a recognition, you know, that we need to
make sure that compute is uh readily
available for inference. And so we're
kind of building we're kind of building
across segments right now. So like
there's a segment of like the large AI
labs and they need uh you know
availability to massive amounts of
infrastructure uh for training and to
and this continuous innovation
development. But there's also another
track which is as more of these become
real um inference becomes more and more
important and that's that's been a big
driver at least for us on you know our
tensor processing units and going from
really a training mindset in the past in
the architecture to now uh with Ironwood
which I'm happy to report is in the
hands of our first set of trusted
testers through GKE um you know Ironwood
is was built for a world where yes
training is going to be there but
inference is going to start to take, you
know, the preponderance of of workloads
over time and uh so, you know, 10x
performance improvement year-over-year,
TW uh 2x improvement in um efficiency,
power efficiency year-over-year. So,
those are the things that we're
interested in is, you know, we've done
infrastructure at scale a bit at Google.
And one of the things that we know is
that to, you know, build correctly and
build the right way is um constantly
looking for optimizations. So it may
gather a lot of headlines about, you
know, all the all the, you know, money
that's being spent and all the
infrastructure that's being proposed by
a bunch of these players, but underneath
the hood, we're busy making sure that
our TPUs, you know, we we have over
a,000x performance improvement since the
first generation of TPUs. We're now on
our seventh generation of TPUs, you
know, and efficiency. When you get a
year-over-year efficiency of 2x, I mean,
this is these are significant
engineering accomplishments. But we're
also down in the networking layer. You
know, we're also down in, you know, how
our subc cables route traffic and do
that in a highly performant way. And so
by, you know, our focus is optimizations
at every layer of the stack and those
benefits accreing to our customers. Uh,
and I'm not worried about demand um from
my chair right now.
>> Yeah. Although I want to unpack some of
what you said because you it does sound
like you see us turning a corner from
you know how do we get enough compute to
train these models
to how do we get enough compute to run
these models right that that that is a
fundamental turn and also that that
comes with if you're going to again try
to optimize at every level
>> you want different hardware
>> that is you you know if you're
optimizing for inference that goes down
to the chip level and and
>> these are choices that we're sort of
having to make
>> as we build out two years from now. You
know, looking at the world two years
from now, what are the compute needs
going to be? You do have to choose
between are we going to build out for
training or are we going to build out
for infrastructure?
>> Yeah. Well, and this is something again,
you know, uh you know, Google cloud part
of Google, part of Alphabet. you know,
one of the things that we've learned
over time in uh serving ML at uh web
scale is how to serve ML at webcale. Uh
you know, so this is not a new concept
for us and uh you know, probably the
thing that is most interesting for all
of you is that you know, we have as much
demand for ourselves and for the web.
And so from a like stability of demand
and stability of supply chain and
stability of research and development,
you know, Google cloud was built on
startups. 15 years ago or you know, 12
years ago roughly when I started at
Google cloud, you know, our largest
customers were startups and it was their
ability to scale rapidly kind of the
success disaster, you know, like when
Nano Banana hit, you know, our QPS
estimate was about two orders of
magnitude lower than what it ended up
being. And did it fall over? It
absolutely did not. Why? Because at
Google, we have been building, you know,
scaled infrastructure systems that are
highly reliable, you know, for decades.
And so when you hit the success disaster
with us, we understand like how to
dynamically, you know, drain shard jobs
across, you know, pools. We understand
how to do this inherently in our DNA.
whereas I think a lot of our competitors
are learning on the fly and have some
aspirations and infrastructure that uh
you know maybe exceed their track
record. Um so I'm feeling pretty bullish
about us.
>> Yeah. Yeah. Well, we're almost out of
time, but I did want to backstage when
we were talking, you had, you know,
there is so much uncertainty around just
the pace of progress has been so fast,
but you had this interesting analogy
between the moment we're at with AI and
the growth of cloud services themselves
where, you know, well, yeah, how did you
put it?
>> Yeah. was uh we tend to evaluate whether
something is good or not based on like
it's far in the future you know best
case scenario which in AI may be like
you know fully autonomous ambient AI
assistant that understands you from a
personal level also understands you at
work and can provide like very proactive
recommendations can run like in parallel
across a whole bunch of work tasks that
you've given it's super complex stuff
and then we go like what's available
today and we get really sad about the
state of things but if you go back to
like cloud. You know, at one point it
was just like I need an API. I need to
like store something outside of my data
center or I need a little bursty compute
for these jobs that have exceeded my
own, you know, envelope. And then over
time it rapidly became, you know, the
foundation for scaled data, scaled
analytics, you know, sovereign uh
compute, all these shapes, all of these
features, all these things emerged. And
we're going to see the exact same thing
in AI. We're in such early days uh in
how AI is going to like evolve and
manifest itself and uh so is a I I like
see the thing repeating and that's why
I'm so excited as you can probably tell
uh about the future and where we're
headed.
>> Well, great note to end on. Thank you so
much for coming down. This was such a
fascinating talk.
>> Thanks Russell.
>> All right. Cheers.
>> Thanks.
Loading video analysis...