Google kicks off the software season this week with the Android Show: I/O Edition. In all its announcements there is one main message: Google is Gemini now, and Gemini is Google.
This isn’t news to anyone who has done a Google Search or tried to write a paper in Google Docs lately. The company has been on the AI journey for a while, ramping up in the last year. But I was also surprised at how deeply Google bet its future on Gemini.
Android 17 is the latest mobile OS likely to be released this summer, with new Samsung Galaxy phones and Google Pixel smartphones. But you may know better as a shell of Gemini Intelligence, an updated AI assistant that can learn and perform tasks without supervision. It’s a step that’s part of its plan to build the first AI smartphone — a dream that Google isn’t just chasing. OpenAI is reportedly working on a full AI agent phone, and Perplexity and Deutsche Telekom also have one.
Google also announced a new line of computers called Googlebooks. The new devices are built with Gemini at their core. Gemini is always stealthy, with a new feature called the magic pointer. A quick shake of your cursor and Gemini will pop up with AI contextual suggestions. When you hover over an email with event information, Gemini will ask if you want it to add the information to your calendar. A random swipe of your mouse will have Gemini asking you if you want it to create an AI slop composite image of the images on your screen. (How long will that be unbearably annoying?)
The continued investment in AI is not surprising. Google has never experimented when it comes to AI, for good reason. Its DeepMind research lab has years of machine learning and AI research under its belt, giving it an edge over other tech leaders like Microsoft and Meta. While I’m sure Google would have loved to be responsible for the “ChatGPT moment,” it was ready to meet that moment.
What’s surprising is the enthusiasm and omnipresence that unites Gemini. Google is now betting its entire future on AI. And that bet seems to be based on the basic assumption that we want all these AI-native devices and software. That was not true until now.
The integration of AI into software applications is often seen as an add-on, welcomed or not, and not a major selling point. People who want AI to help them with their online browsing or use agents at work with chatbots like Claude or ChatGPT. Fewer people buy new devices to access advanced AI features — CNET found by 2025 that 3 in 10 smartphone buyers don’t find mobile AI useful and don’t want to see more added. That’s what thousands of Android phone owners can do.
So is Google hoping this news will change our minds, or does it think it already has? I’m afraid it’s the latter.
This news is not good at all for those of us who are sick of seeing Gemini everywhere. I hope some will be helpful, and others may be disabled. (Though the constant presence of AI abbreviations in Google Search doesn’t give me much hope.) But all of this raises a big question: If AI is all Google is now, what happens to the people who don’t want it?
