Google VP of Product on The Future of Search and AI Mode | Robby Stein | E287

As a founder, as a leader, everyone needs to think, what's gonna be the most important thing that if we get it right, this is potentially a five or ten year opportunity of growth, of value, of helpfulness that we can give people. Our journey with AI mode was like starting with AI overviews, building more sophisticated models, and letting you ask these more harder questions. And the first versions, nothing starts great. I would ask it, like, one or two questions that were really hard and it just nailed it. It's kinda like when you you hit a golf ball and you just hit a perfect golf shot. It all comes together. And then you don't do that again for a while, but you're kinda like, I know what is is possible to have a system that can get stuff done, book restaurant reservations for you, but it knows your tastes well. Search can be really useful for you specifically in a way that really just didn't exist many years ago. Hey. This is Carlos, CEO at Product School and your host on the product podcast. Today's guest is Robbie Stein, VP of Product at Google Search. Google Search is arguably the most significant product of the twenty first century, serving billions of users and holding over 90% of the global market share. As Alphabet surpassed 400,000,000,000 in annual revenue in 2025, search remains its engine, accounting for over 50% of that number. Robbie is currently steering the most significant shift in search history, the transition to AI. He oversees a massive portfolio including AI overviews, Google Lens and the new AI mode which has already scaled to 75,000,000 daily active users. Before returning to Google, Robbie was the head of consumer product at Instagram where he led the teams that built stories and reels. In our conversation, we skip the high level fluff and get into the weeds of how you build like a start up, even inside a giant company, and the specific metrics that actually matter. Why flat retention in your early cohorts is the only real sign of product market fit and the untold story of how colossal disasters with Instagram reels and close friends were the necessary steps to eventual global success. This is a masterclass in building products at the largest scale on Earth. Let's get into it. Welcome to the product podcast, Robbie. Thanks for having me. Okay. So you are a Google boomerang. Right? That's what they say. Yeah. Well, currently, he's the VP of product for Google Search. I'd love to learn a little bit more about kind of what happened between your previous run at Google and your current one. Yeah. Well, yeah, I started in Google in 2007 as an inspirational, program and worked on Gmail and ads. And then I left and, you know, I've always dreamed of founding a company. I wanted to try that, and, you know, I was kind of obsessed with the various …