Google Search used to be “type a few words, get 10 blue links.” In this episode of Limitless, VP of Product Robby Stein joins Josh and Ejaaz to unpack how AI is quietly blowing up that mental model, and turning search into a multimodal, conversational system that can see, listen, and even act on your behalf.

Robby explains why AI is “expansionary” rather than cannibalistic, how Gemini-powered models now issue their own Google searches and query live graphs behind the scenes, and why visual search via Lens is one of the fastest-growing ways people interact with the web. Along the way, he shares lessons from shipping Instagram Stories, digs into agents that can book your restaurant table or research the right safe for your documents, and talks candidly about ads, publisher traffic, and the responsibility that comes with sitting at the internet’s front door.

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TIMESTAMPS

0:00 Intro

0:56 AI-Driven Evolution of Search

3:26 From Blue Links to AI Overviews

7:58 Conversational Search as the New Mental Model

10:58 Agents, Reservations & Doing Things For You

14:15 Is AI Cannibalizing Search, or Growing It?

16:52 Hardware, Glasses & Where Search Lives

18:40 Under the Hood of Gemini-Powered Search

21:46 Instagram Stories, Product Taste & Don’t Flip the UX Table

26:15 Google’s Unique Edge vs. Other AIs

28:14 Monetization and Advertising in AI Search

30:25 Ad Principles and Experiments

32:56 Integration of Gemini and Search

36:04 How Gemini & Google Search Actually Work Together

39:58 Personalized Recommendations and Transparency

43:40 Future Vision of Search Across Devices

46:21 Closing Thoughts

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RESOURCES

Robby Stein

https://x.com/rmstein

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Not financial or tax advice. See our investment disclosures here:

https://www.bankless.com/disclosures⁠

How Multimodal AI Is Changing Search | Google’s VP of Product Robby Stein

Limitless: An AI Podcast