google io 2026 ai recap: How Google Collapsed AI Costs and Bet the Company on Agents

Gemini 3.5 Flash is engineered for high-volume, real-time tasks with near-zero latency and extremely low costs, perfect for basic customer routing. Gemini 3.5 Pro, launching in June, is designed for complex, deep-reasoning tasks like analyzing intricate legal contracts and financial data.

Google sunsetted Project Mariner to formally signal the end of passive, rule-based chatbot architectures. They are reallocating all resources toward their new proactive agent ecosystem, including Managed Agents and Project Astra, which focus on autonomous task execution rather than just answering questions.

Managed Agents are designed to handle repetitive, structured workflows continuously without fatigue. While they do not replace high-level strategic thinking, they execute tasks like inventory checks and basic data entry autonomously. Operations managers supervise them using dedicated dashboards, tracking resolution rates and cost savings just like human KPIs.

Android XR glasses bring ambient computing to industrial and hands-on work environments. They allow factory workers, logistics personnel, and mechanics to view AI-generated digital manuals overlaid onto physical machinery in real-time, drastically reducing training time and eliminating the need for handheld tablets.

These updates transform Workspace from a drafting assistant into a full content-generation engine. Veo 3.1 allows marketing teams to generate commercial-grade video assets in minutes, while Vids instantly turns static text documents into fully narrated video presentations, significantly cutting down content production costs.

SMEs should immediately audit their daily operations to identify routine, manual tasks that act as human API connections—like data entry, basic quoting, and scheduling. By shifting their budget toward deploying autonomous agents for these specific tasks, small businesses can drastically reduce overhead and scale faster.