{"slug": "the-future-of-search-ai-what-i-learned-from-googles-latest-earnings-call", "title": "The Future Of Search & AI: What I Learned From Google’s Latest Earnings Call", "summary": "Google's revenue rose 24% year-over-year in its latest quarter, but the company reported its first negative free cash flow since its IPO 20 years ago after spending $6 billion on physical assets, with 60% going to servers and 40% to data centers, according to Alphabet's earnings release. CEO Sundar Pichai emphasized a shift toward agentic search, with Google rolling out Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite as the primary model for AI Overviews and planning to integrate apps like Instacart and Canva directly into search results.", "body_md": "Google shared some interesting information about the future of Search and AI in its most recent earnings call. While many are focusing on the [first negative cash flow](https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-q2-earnings-show-5-85-billion-negative-free-cash-flow/583259/) since its IPO 20 years ago, I think Google is well on track for massive improvements.\n\n[Google’s revenue is up 24% year-over-year](https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-search-revenue-growth-eases-after-a-year-of-acceleration/583181/). The reason it is cash flow negative is because it spent $6 billion this quarter on physical assets. Specifically, 60% went to servers and 40% to data centers. This is the foundation for AGI, which ultimately is the goal they are building towards. Also, there is more demand for Google’s AI chips, models, and computing power than they can currently meet.\n\nDid you know Google is not actually primarily a search engine? If you don’t believe me, try doing a [search for [search engines]](https://www.google.com/search?q=search+engines&oq=search+engines&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOTIOCAEQABgKGAsYsQMYgAQyBggCEEUYQDILCAMQABgKGAsYgAQyCwgEEAAYChgLGIAEMgsIBRAAGAoYCxiABDILCAYQABgKGAsYgAQyCwgHEAAYChgLGIAEMgsICBAAGAoYCxiABDILCAkQABgKGAsYgATSAQgyMTExajBqNKgCALACAQ&sourceid=chrome&source=chrome.ob&ie=UTF-8). You may see Bing and DuckDuckGo in there, but you likely will not see the homepage for Google.com. I’ll share more at the end of this article about what Google’s ultimate goal is – to create Artificial General Intelligence.\n\nIf you missed it, here are my [full notes from the earnings call](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1LgbcGXH_SScpNxWi7aAujNxI0FWO41rj44VMsO3ZpX4/edit?tab=t.0). And here is the [PDF Google published](https://s206.q4cdn.com/479360582/files/doc_financials/2026/q2/2026q2-alphabet-earnings-release.pdf) with all of the official statistics.\n\n**Watch the video with my thoughts on what we can learn from this latest earnings call:**\n\nHere are a few things that stood out to me from the earnings call and from recent Google communications.\n\n## Gemini Flash-Lite: The New Engine Of AI Overviews\n\nWhile we wait for [Gemini 3.5 Pro](https://www.searchenginejournal.com/gemini-3-5-pro-delayed-over-coding-bloomberg-reports/582660/), Google released Gemini 3.6 Flash and 3.5 Flash-Lite. It turns out [3.5 Flash-Lite is now the primary model routing search queries for AI Overviews](https://x.com/rajanpatel/status/2080076095370731875?s=20). Google is seeing significant improvements in understanding user intent for conversational questions. For site owners, this likely means AI Overviews will become even better at answering queries directly, potentially reducing traditional search traffic.\n\n## The Rise Of Agentic Search\n\nGoogle’s CEO Sundar Pichai keeps using the word “agentic” in connection with Search. [Search is shifting from an information engine to an agent manager](https://www.searchenginejournal.com/what-i-learned-about-the-future-of-search-and-ai-from-sundar-pichais-latest-interview/571376/#:~:text=Search%20will%20be%20an%20agent%20manager). They announced we will soon see [connections to apps like Instacart and Canva directly within the search interface](https://blog.google/products-and-platforms/products/search/connected-apps/). Instead of finding a recipe, the agent will find the ingredients and add them to your cart and order them for you from Instacart. This represents a fundamental shift in how people use the web.\n\nI have recommended that businesses start playing with [creating tools that can be used by agents via WebMCP](https://www.mariehaynes.com/the-agentic-web/#:~:text=WebMCP%20lets%20agents%20interact%20with%20the%20tools%20and%20functionality%20on%20your%20website.). However, with Google’s recent push to use apps from within AI Mode, I’m wondering now if this is how this part of the web will evolve?\n\nEither way, what will make a website valuable in the near future is whether it helps people, or people’s agents accomplish something. We should all be working on making our websites actionable. (With that in mind, I have a bunch of tools I will one day publish that you can use alongside my website.)\n\n## Introducing Codemender And Cyber Security Models\n\nOne of the most interesting updates is Gemini 3.5 Flash Cyber in a tool called [CodeMender](https://cloud.google.com/security/codemender). This system stays active to find and patch code vulnerabilities in real time. As software develops and AI models become more powerful, security must be automated. While currently limited to enterprise users, I expect these capabilities will eventually become standard for web safety.\n\nI actually think it’s possible that Google has not pushed out a version of Gemini that’s as powerful as Anthropic’s Fable or OpenAI’s GPT-5.6 because they are working on improving Gemini 3.5 Flash Cyber. Safety is so important. We saw that the [U.S. government shut down access to Fable over safety concerns](https://www.anthropic.com/news/fable-mythos-access). Perhaps 3.5 Flash Cyber will be what’s needed to make the upcoming more powerful models of Gemini safe enough for widespread public use.\n\n## The Future Of Commerce Online\n\nGoogle mentioned a few times in the earnings call the ability to “[buy with Google Pay](https://support.google.com/googlepay/answer/7644068?hl=en)” and especially how people will be able to do this from watching YouTube in their living room. I am keeping an eye out for more sites using the [Universal Commerce Protocol](https://developers.google.com/merchant/ucp). So far I’ve only seen it on Wayfair and a few Walmart products in the SERPs. I have a few clients who are on Google’s waiting list for this feature.\n\nSoon, we will see more activity where Agents will not only shop for us, but check out and pay as well!\n\n## The Path To Artificial Super Intelligence (ASI)\n\nGoogle recently published a paper outlining the [roadmap from AGI to ASI](https://arxiv.org/pdf/2606.12683). AGI is intelligence on par with a human, but ASI is a system that recursively improves itself until it surpasses the collective intelligence of humanity. Google is told us in the earnings call that their top priority in allocating its massive compute resources is to ensure they are at the forefront of this development.\n\nWhen asked how Google decides how to allocate compute, he said, this:\n\n“On allocation, the baseline with which we start is what it takes to continue AGI development at the frontier.”\n\nI’ll have a video out soon with more on Google’s drive to build AGI and ASI.\n\n## Closing Thoughts\n\nHere is what I found to be the most interesting piece of news from the earnings call: Google’s revenue from network ads (aka Adsense on websites) fell by 1% compared to Q2 2025, but revenue in Cloud (selling AI infrastructure and models) was up 87%. I find this to be a staggering stat.\n\nGoogle is marching on. We are in the midst of a significant transformation from Google being a place to find information to instead, be a place to help you get things done.\n\nDo you recall Google’s mission statement? The first part is to organize the world’s information. We’ve been helping Google do this for many years now. The second part is, to make it universally accessible and useful. This is the agentic search era that we are entering now.\n\n**More Resources:**\n\n[Pichai Says Google Needs Gemini 4 To Compete At The Frontier](https://www.searchenginejournal.com/pichai-says-google-needs-gemini-4-to-compete-at-the-frontier/583214/)[Google’s Q2: Precise Revenue Figures, Click Claims You Can’t Check](https://www.searchenginejournal.com/googles-q2-precise-revenue-figures-click-claims-you-cant-check/583280/)[Google Tells Developers To Build For AI Agents, Not Just Humans](https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-tells-developers-to-build-for-ai-agents-not-just-humans/573587/)\n\n*Read Marie’s newsletter, AI News You Can Use. Subscribe now.*\n\n*Featured Image: Danielala/Shutterstock*\n\n[SEO](https://www.searchenginejournal.com/category/seo/)", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/the-future-of-search-ai-what-i-learned-from-googles-latest-earnings-call", "canonical_source": "https://www.searchenginejournal.com/the-future-of-search-ai-what-i-learned-from-googles-latest-earnings-call/583662/", "published_at": "2026-07-28 19:00:06+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-07-28 19:03:37.941453+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["artificial-intelligence", "large-language-models", "ai-agents", "ai-infrastructure", "ai-products"], "entities": ["Google", "Alphabet", "Sundar Pichai", "Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite", "AI Overviews", "Instacart", "Canva", "WebMCP"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/the-future-of-search-ai-what-i-learned-from-googles-latest-earnings-call", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/the-future-of-search-ai-what-i-learned-from-googles-latest-earnings-call.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/the-future-of-search-ai-what-i-learned-from-googles-latest-earnings-call.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/the-future-of-search-ai-what-i-learned-from-googles-latest-earnings-call.jsonld"}}