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Is Google The New Internet?

That sounds like a ridiculous question… until you see what Google just announced at I/O 2026 and realize the company is no longer trying to prove that AI works… it’s trying to make AI unavoidable.

That’s the real story here (and it deserves your attention). For years, Google helped us navigate the web. You searched… it pointed you somewhere else (often, it was multiple interesting options). The relationship was relatively simple. Google organized information at a scale no human could manage and monetized our attention along the way. But the underlying structure of the web still depended on movement. You searched… clicked… visited websites… compared sources… bounced between creators, publishers, retailers and platforms… there was friction but there was also discovery.

That model is changing… dramatically.

Google is now trying to turn AI into the operating layer of everyday life. Not just summaries… not just a chatbot… but an overt move towards agents. And that matters because a chatbot answers questions… an agent acts on your behalf. It searches for you… shops for you… summarizes for you… builds for you… coordinates for you. Increasingly… it interprets intent and executes tasks for you.

That’s a very different relationship with our technology.

And Google may be uniquely positioned to pull it off because it already has more surface area than almost any company in the world. You know the stack… search… email… docs… sheets.. decks… web browser… mobile operating system… YouTube… maps… shopping… cloud… developer tools.. I can go on and on… They even announced AI glasses to sit directly between you and the physical world. Claude and ChatGPT may currently have more cultural heat, but Google has something much more powerful: distribution. If Gemini becomes deeply embedded across all of these areas, AI adoption stops feeling like a choice and starts becoming part of the invisible plumbing of modern life.

It’s easy to see how a lot of these products will genuinely be more useful than they are today.

AI that helps summarize information, manage tasks, organize workflows, write code, edit video, navigate cities, translate conversations, make reservations, buy stuff, respond to emails/book meetings… a general reduction of friction in our daily lives is not theoretical anymore. Google’s vision is compelling precisely because it’s convenient. Most people do not want more complexity in their lives. They want things to work. We also know that convenience is often the Trojan horse of dependency. Search used to send you somewhere. Increasingly, AI summaries keep you tied inside the Google system (but you get what you want… right?). The company that organized the web is now positioning itself to operate the web on your behalf.

The economic and cultural implications get much bigger than what may just look like a major product update.

What happens to publishers when fewer people click through? What happens to retailers when AI shops on your behalf? What happens to creators when summaries replace discovery? What happens to the open web when the interface layer becomes the destination itself? And maybe the biggest question of all… What happens when AI stops being something you occasionally open and becomes something you constantly look through? It’s weird to think that the screen stops being something you look at and starts becoming something that mediates reality itself back to you. Helpful? Potentially. Useful? Absolutely. Neutral? That’s much harder to answer.

Google I/O was last week and it already feels like old news… in a world where most people probably didn’t even give the headline summaries of the event a second look.

To me, it was an exciting (and scary) preview of a world where Google no longer needs to be the intermediary between you and the Internet (and making hoards of cash as the traffic cop in between)… because Google increasingly wants to become the environment where the interaction itself happens. Google is quickly becoming the layer that sits between you and almost everything you are connected to, so your data is more than their advertising revenue… your data (and usage) now makes you intrinsically (and financially) connected to Google.

Not just as a user of the Internet… but as a participant inside Google’s version of it.

This is what Elias Makos and I discussed on CJAD 800 AM.

Mitch Joel · Is Google The New Internet? – The Elias Makos Show – CJAD 800

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Mitch Joel

Mitch Joel lives at the intersection of technology, business transformation and consumer culture. He is the Executive Director of Next Era Institute, a strategic intelligence platform helping leaders understand the forces reshaping business, technology, culture and society. The Institute identifies which shifts matter, explores their wider significance and translates them into strategic direction and momentum. Mitch is also a globally recognized keynote speaker. He has delivered thousands of presentations across both B2B and B2C industries to organizations including Google, Walmart, LEGO, Shopify, Microsoft, Procter & Gamble and Unilever. Strategy Magazine has called him “one of North America’s leading visionaries.” Mitch built his career by working directly inside the waves of change that reshaped modern business. He founded and built a digital marketing agency that worked with some of the world’s largest brands and was later acquired by WPP, where he served as President of a firm operating in 25 countries with almost 3,000 employees. Mitch is the bestselling author of Six Pixels of Separation and CTRL ALT Delete, and the host of Thinking With Mitch Joel, one of the longest-running business podcasts in the world. His writing and commentary appear in outlets including Harvard Business Review, Fast Company and Inc. Magazine. He is a member of Dr. Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches and was named to the Thinkers50 Radar. Mitch also hosts Groove – The No Treble Podcast, documenting the oral history of electric bass players. Mitch is also Co-Founder of ThinkersOne, a platform that enables companies to bring personalized thought leadership from world-class experts into meetings, events and off-sites in focused 15-minute bursts.