GLOBAL
technology · severity 9
Google's Massive AI Expansion at I/O 2026
Google announced a sweeping overhaul of its AI offerings at its I/O developer conference, including new Gemini models (3.5 Flash, Omni), revamped search functionality with agentic capabilities, new Android XR smart glasses partnerships, and AI-powered development tools. The company reported processing 3.2 quadrillion tokens per month and growing Gemini to 900M+ monthly active users.
Sources
- Google overhauls its search box, letting users ask longer queries, upload photos and videos, and use Gemini 3.5 Flash-powered agents to automate searches (New York Times)
- Google rolls out Gemini 3.5 Flash, its "strongest agentic and coding model yet", for tackling long-horizon agentic tasks, in the Gemini app and Search's AI Mode (The Keyword)
- Google launches the Gemini Omni multimodal model, saying it can "create anything from any input", starting with video generation, for Google AI subscribers (Carl Franzen/VentureBeat)
- Google announces Gemini Spark, a "24/7 personal AI agent" that is powered by Gemini 3.5 and supports integrations with Google Workspace apps, including Gmail (Mariella Moon/Engadget)
- Google restructures its AI plans, introducing a $100/month AI Ultra plan for developers and cutting the top-tier Ultra subscription from $250 to $200/month (Lance Whitney/ZDNET)
- Google says Gemini's MAUs grew to 900M+ across 230 countries, up from 400M at I/O 2025, and launches Neural Expressive, a new design language for Gemini (Josh Woodward/The Keyword)
- Google introduces Antigravity 2.0, featuring an updated desktop app that lets users orchestrate multiple agents, alongside an Antigravity CLI tool and SDK (Ivan Mehta/TechCrunch)
- Google says it is expanding access to CodeMender, an "AI agent for code security" it debuted in October, by inviting select groups of experts to test the API (Hayden Field/The Verge)
- Google teases Android Halo, which makes an AI agent's status visible via "subtle communication" at the top of the phone screen, coming later this year (Damien Wilde/9to5Google)
- Hands-on with Google and Samsung's Android XR smart glasses from Warby Parker and Gentle Monster, and with XReal's Project Aura, all set to arrive this fall (Wired)
- Google unveils Universal Cart, a shopping assistant that works "across merchants", built on the Universal Commerce Protocol, rolling out in the US today (Aisha Malik/TechCrunch)
- Sundar Pichai says Google is now processing 3.2 quadrillion tokens per month, up from 480T tokens per month a year ago and 9.7T tokens per month two years ago (Ina Fried/Axios)
- Hands-On With All of Google’s New Upcoming Android XR Smart Glasses
- Google Search Goes Agentic—and Doesn’t Need You Anymore
- Google’s Response to OpenClaw’s 24/7 AI Agent
- Google Makes It Easy to Deepfake Yourself
- Gemini 3.5: frontier intelligence with action