In I/O 2025, Google has shown nothing. Instead, we reread the company's familiarity with its own AI strength. For the majority of two hours, Google spent playing products like and generating AI apps, and a new $250 a month for $250.
During my keynote on Tuesday, I thought a lot about the idea of my first visit to Mountain View in 2018. I/O 2018 is different. Between Android, it's even a Google, just like a company that people want for the technology they want. In fact, later that year, my colleague Cherlynn Low wrote a titled “Stories.” “Companies don’t usually make really useful features, but in 2018, Google proved that its software can change your life,” she wrote at the time.
Google I/O 2025 announcements are even close to night view, Google Photos, or, if you're more generous with your company, call Filter or Duplex? The only fact that comes to mind is that Google is Google Meet. This is a feature that many people will find useful, and Google spent about a minute talking about it.
I'm sure some people are happy to use Jules for Vibe Code or VEO 3 to generate video clips, but are there any of these products that are real transformations? Some “AI filmmakers” may debate, but when you can only get one computer to make you a stupid 30-second clip, you thought your life would be better last time.
In contrast, considering the influence of night view. With a feature, Google revolutionizes the phone with display software that can overcome the physical limits of tiny camera hardware. More importantly, night vision is a response to the real problems people encounter in the real world. It has stimulated companies like Samsung and Apple to catch up, and now any smartphone worth buying has serious low-light features. Night vision has changed the industry.
You have to pay $250 a month to use Veo 3 and other boundary models from Google, which tell you as much as you can about everything you need to know about what the company thinks these tools: They aren't for you and I. I/O is an activity for developers, but the past few I/O meetings have felt like Google flex flex nof flex flex nof int flex flex nof not unt us for an us uscles nos uscles with shos sose sose sose nos for shys sose sose nose sose sose nose sose nose sose sose sose sose. In the past, the company had a trick to resonate with the wider public.
By 2018, machine learning was at the forefront of nearly everything Google did and was more important than any other big tech company of the time, and Google was on the verge of bleeding from this revolution. However, from now until now, in 2018, it seems that most of Google's AI may be a service that targets tools and features that are actually useful to people. Since then, for Google, AI has gone from a means to its end point, and we will all be worse for it.
Even less suspicious features, such as AI mode, provide suspicious usefulness. Google, and has been offering it to more and more people since then. The problem with the AI model is that it aims to solve problems that companies create themselves. We all know that the quality of Google search results has dropped dramatically over the past few years. Instead of solving the problem that SEO Farms is harder to solve, Google makes the AI model represent the future of its search engines.
The problem is that chatbots are not a replacement for a suitable search engine. I often use it to study things that interests me. But, while it is a detailed and clear answer to the question, chatgpt can and often get the question wrong. We are all familiar with the AI overview of the errors that Google produces when deleting the feature. AI overviews may no longer be news, but they are still prone to embarrassing mistakes. Just take a look at the screenshots my colleague Kris Holt recently sent me.
I don't think this is an I/O 2025 accident, ending with a display cabinet, and the platform sees the company revisiting the concept of failure. Let’s not forget that Android has billions of people interacting with billions of people every day, and it has been downgraded to a pre-stream live broadcast the week before. Currently, Google feels this is a company that is eager to repeat mistakes. Rather than trying to meet the people they need, Google created products that few people asked for. I don't know you, but that doesn't make me excited about the future of the company.
