Two of the biggest events in tech, Google I/O 2025 and Microsoft Build 2025 are underway this week. If you’re curious about where AI Search, online discovery, and agentic AI are headed, check out our conference recaps for the latest announcements and key highlights.

• Google I/O: May 20-21 in Mountain View, California; followed by Google Marketing Live on May 21. Tune in →
• Microsoft Build: May 19-22 in Seattle, Washington. Tune in →

Recap of Key Announcements

Google I/O 2025: Day 1 Highlights

Google unveiled a sweeping transformation of its core products, led by AI-powered reimaging of Search and the debut of its most advanced assistant yet.

Search & Gemini AI

• AI Mode in Search (now rolling out in the US): Powered by Gemini 2.5, AI Mode provides more complex analysis, data visualization capabilities, and multimodal answers (text, images). A dedicated AI Mode tab will appear in Google Search and the app. What’s next? Personal context integration (Summer 2025).
• Deep Search: A new feature that compiles comprehensive, cited reports on complex topics, enhancing the depth of search results.
• Gemini 2.5 Pro & Flash: Upgraded AI models with improved reasoning and multimodal capabilities, including "Deep Think" for complex problem-solving.

Shopping & Agentic AI

• Project Astra: Added new capabilities to Gemini Live including computer control capabilities, enhanced memory features, and integrated native audio improvements. Project Astra serves as Google’s research prototype and vision for a universal AI assistant.
• Project Mariner: Added multitasking (up to 10 simultaneous tasks), introduced “teach and repeat” feature, and will be releasing “computer use” capabilities (allowing the AI to control tools or apps) via Gemini API this summer.
• Agentic search & shopping features: Google is infusing agentic AI capabilities (from Project Mariner) into Search. Users will now be able to do “virtual try-ons”, price tracking and agentic check-out (a feature that monitors prices and automatically purchases an item for you via Google Pay with your oversight).
• Agent Mode: A feature within Gemini that can handle long-running and complex tasks like booking reservations or managing schedules, combining features similar to OpenAI's Operator with Deep Research.

Subscriptions & Developer Tools

New offerings and subscription plans such as Google AI Ultra ($250/month) were announced, targeting power users and enterprises.

• Deep Think: A new experimental mode is coming to Gemini 2.5 Pro. It is an enhanced reasoning mode for tackling highly complex problems in math or code.
• Developer Tools: Introduced new tools such as Jules (a coding assistant), Deep Research, Gemini 2.5 for developers, among others.

By the Numbers: User Engagement Stats

• AI Overviews: 1.5 billion monthly active users across 200+ countries
• AI Overviews driving 10% query growth in major markets (US + India)
• Gemini app: 400 million monthly active users
• 5x growth in developer adoption since last I/O

Microsoft Build 2025: Day 1 & 2 Highlights

Microsoft displayed its push to embed AI everywhere, empowering developers with smarter coding tools and enabling any website to offer conversational search while ensuring robust security, governance, and seamless integration across cloud and device.

Entering the era of AI agents

AI agents have quickly moved from a concept to critical tools, transforming how developers build software and how companies automate workflows.

• Over 15 million developers are using GitHub Copilot’s agent mode and code review features to streamline coding, deployment, and troubleshooting.
• More than 230,000 organizations, including 90% of Fortune 500, have built AI agents and automations with Microsoft 365 Copilot and Copilot Studio.

Reimagining the software development lifecycle

• Github Copilot coding agent: Now an asynchronous “peer” programmer with prompt management, lightweight evaluations, enterprise controls, and an open-source Copilot Chat extension for VS code.
• Windows AI Foundry: Unified vision-and-language model APIs for running open-source or proprietary LLMs locally or in the cloud.
• Azure AI Foundry Models: Hosts x AI’s Grok 3 and over 1,900 partner and Microsoft-hosted models, featuring a Model Leaderboard and Model Router for real-time performance ranking and optimal model selection.

Making AI agents more capable and secure

• Azure AI Foundry Agent Service (GA): Orchestrates specialized agents using Semantic Kernel, AutoGen, agent-to-agent (A2A), and Model Context Protocol support.
• Observability & Governance: New dashboards provide built-in metrics for performance, quality, cost, and safety.
  • Entra Agent ID (preview) assigns unique identities to agents and integrates with Purview for data security and compliance.
• Microsoft 365 Copilot Tuning & Multi-agent Orchestration: Low-code training of domain-specific agents on company data and chaining multiple agents in Copilot Studio for complex, end-to-end workflows.

Supporting the Open Agentic Web

• Model Context Protocol (MCP): Native support across GitHub, Copilot Studio, Dynamics 365, Azure AI Foundry, Semantic Kernel, and Windows 11. Plus, a new Steering Committee, updated authorization spec, and server registry.
• NLWeb Open Project: “HTML for the agentic web” that makes any websites content conversationally searchable with the model of your choice. Each NLWeb endpoint serves as an MCP server for AI agent discovery and interaction.

Why this matters

The way customers discover, evaluate, and buy is changing fast. With AI Overviews and Copilots now leading the journey, brand visibility is no longer about rankings, it’s about presence in AI-generated answers.

Our vision & role

At Scrunch AI, we’re helping brands and agencies adapt to this new reality. From monitoring AI search visibility, to optimizing for agentic search, to future-proofing your website for AI-native protocols like MCP, A2A and NLWeb, we make sure you show up where it matters most: inside the answers.

Curious how your brand shows up in AI Search today? Book a meeting with our team or explore our Agency Partner Program to lead the shift.