The Future Of Search & AI: What I Learned From Google’s Latest Earnings Call

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.

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. 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. Did 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. If 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. Watch the video with my thoughts on what we can learn from this latest earnings call: Here are a few things that stood out to me from the earnings call and from recent Google communications. Gemini Flash-Lite: The New Engine Of AI Overviews While 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. The Rise Of Agentic Search Google’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. I 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? Either 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. Introducing Codemender And Cyber Security Models One 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. I 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. The Future Of Commerce Online Google 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. Soon, we will see more activity where Agents will not only shop for us, but check out and pay as well The Path To Artificial Super Intelligence ASI Google 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. When asked how Google decides how to allocate compute, he said, this: “On allocation, the baseline with which we start is what it takes to continue AGI development at the frontier.” I’ll have a video out soon with more on Google’s drive to build AGI and ASI. Closing Thoughts Here 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. Google 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. Do 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. More Resources: 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/ Read Marie’s newsletter, AI News You Can Use. Subscribe now. Featured Image: Danielala/Shutterstock SEO https://www.searchenginejournal.com/category/seo/