May 20th at Google Marketing Live, I was very fortunate to be able to sit down for ~20 minutes with Nick Fox, SVP of Knowledge and Information at Google. Earlier in the day he had a fireside chat with Ben Smith, Editor-in-Chief Semafor. Later that afternoon after I had time to reflect on this conversation, I had a ~20min interview with Nick.

It’s not often you get to sit down with one of the top execs at a ~$5T company so I worked a lot of topics into a short time. As always, I try and approach this with you, the audience in mind. What would YOU ask? I had just completed a super tactical Agentic Commerce / UCP/Universal Checkout chat with Ashish, so for this one flipped into high-level strategic mode. In this interview we discuss:

How does Nick ‘frame’ AIO/AI Mode/Gemini
Will AI Mode/AIO and traditional search transition from traditional to AI Mode or will they merge, or ‘other’ down the road?
Google’s had ~5 previous attempts from the Froogle era to today for ‘transactions on Google’ - why is this the moment they are getting super serious about it?
Navigating the Innovator’s Dilemma
Finally, managing trust at the intersection of ‘Answer engines’ and ‘AI Ads’

Timestamps:
01:45 — Scot introduces Nick Fox, Google SVP of Knowledge & Information
02:31 — “Search in the AI Era” and Google’s AI strategy
03:21 — What this interview covers: AI Mode, Gemini, ads, and commerce
04:00 — Why Google believes transactions will work this time
04:33 — The innovator’s dilemma and defending Search
05:16 — Ads, trust, and AI-generated answers
05:52 — Interview begins live from Google Marketing Live
06:23 — How Gemini is “supercharging” Google’s advertising products
06:50 — Ads inside AI Mode and agentic commerce tools
07:11 — Universal Commerce Protocol + Universal Cart
07:26 — Nick Fox on 23 years at Google and the AI era
08:07 — Why Google sees tech shifts as growth accelerators, not disruptions
08:53 — Search vs AI Overviews vs AI Mode vs Gemini explained
09:12 — Google’s “two main products”: Search and Gemini
10:16 — Reinventing the Search box for the AI era
11:01 — Will AI Mode eventually become the default?
12:10 — Google’s philosophy: combining AI + the web
13:00 — Why Google believes users still want the web
13:03 — Gemini “Spark” and agentic capabilities
13:43 — AI agents running 24/7 in the background
14:14 — Using Spark to manage complex tasks like event planning
14:50 — The future of Gemini in the agentic era
14:59 — Google as an economic engine and ad marketplace
15:42 — The innovator’s dilemma and Search resilience
16:04 — “Lean into the technology shifts” philosophy
16:52 — Why Google didn’t see AI as a business-model threat
17:17 — Google’s ad model as a marketplace between users and marketers
18:18 — Why Google Shopping is different this time
19:02 — Why AI enables better shopping confidence and discovery
19:43 — AI helping users get further down the purchase journey
20:24 — Trust, ads, and AI-generated answers
21:04 — Google’s principles for ads in AI experiences
21:31 — “Ads are clearly labeled, separate, and relevant”
21:58 — Closing thoughts and wrap-up

👉 Connect with Nick: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nickthefox/
👉 Learn more about Google Marketing Live: https://www.googlemarketinglive.com/digital

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