Google Says It Did Not Kill Its Golden Ad Goose - DTNS 5384

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2:49This is the Daily Tech News for Thursday, October 29th, 2026. We tell you what you need to know, give you important context, and try to help each other understand.

3:00Sarah Lane: Today, Google tries to explain why it's slowing ad revenue is not a concern. And it totally didn't shoot itself in the foot with its AI mode strategy. No, it's totally fine. We would never do such a thing. No, not at all. I'm Tom Merritt. And I'm Sarah Lane. Let's start with what you need to know with that big story. Yeah, so Alphabet, the parent company of Google, announced earnings on Wednesday. And while its overall revenue was up 25 % on the year, the cash cow search advertising continued to slow. It didn't decline. That would have been a disaster. But search revenue grew 12 % in Q3. That's down from 17 % last quarter and 19 % in Q1.

3:41If numbers make your head blur, that's bad. Google wants search revenue to be growing faster, not slower. Google chief business officer Philip Schindler said it was because of lower monetization we were seeing in AI mode. Now, you might think, oh, people are using AI mode and therefore not searching as much, so they're not seeing as many ads. Mm-mm. He said, as a result, we're announcing the expansion of ads in AI mode into international markets alongside multi-turn ads and AI mode in the US. Multi-turn ads refer to ads that update as you continue a conversation with a chatbot instead of you just having an ad on the first query and then nothing after that.

4:27So he thinks the answer is we just weren't running enough ads in enough places. I don't know. Maybe he's right. Google claims click-through rates for sponsored product listings in AI mode are comparable to those of more traditional organic listings. So when they're there, people do tend to click on them as often as they did before. CEO Sundar Pichai also said that search queries grew at their fastest rate in five years and that AI mode was causing people to enter queries that were on average three times longer than in traditional search.

4:58Sarah Lane: Yeah, because they're talking to a person. I don't know if that's good. Or they feel that way. Yeah. Does that make it better somehow? I don't know. Anyway, I guess if they're doing more search queries, that's good because then you have more opportunities to serve ads. Meanwhile, Google Cloud continues to grow more than doubling sales from a year ago. Google clearly sees it as part of its future. Alphabet included Google Cloud Executive Chief Executive Officer Thomas Kurian on the earnings call. That call normally just has the CEO, the CBO, and the CFO. So including the cloud guy is kind of giving cloud much more prominence.

5:34The trouble is Google is hitting a wall on adding new cloud customers as it doesn't have enough capacity. But cloud aside, let's clear the clouds, blue skies. It's all about search for Google, Sarah. What do you think? If you were in the Google seat, would you think this would solve their ills?

5:52Sarah Lane: Gosh, I'm not sure. I am an avid Gemini user. I use it all the time. It's not the only AI mode that I use. I'm using Codex pretty regularly for just totally different things. But Gemini, I use a lot. And I do find that, yeah, it is a conversational experience. Whether or not you think you're talking to a person because you're not actually talking to a person. It is a, you know, I'll say something like instead of instead of I would, you know, in yesteryear, I would say limes, lemons, what's best for pasta with chicken? Yeah, right. That's a good search term. That would be my search term. Right.

6:41Sarah Lane: And now I'd be like, so here's what I have in my fridge. And I'm just looking for something that's like sweet, but not too salty, blah, blah, blah. And so, you know, for recipes, which is just one example of what you can use this for, it works really well. Now, is there an ad experience involved? If there is, I haven't noticed it. I definitely haven't been clicking on any ads. So, yes, Google definitely has an opportunity here. And somebody is calling me. It's a spam call.

7:18Sarah Lane: and yeah, I don't exactly know what that looks like. When AI mode first came on the scene, right, where it's like just straight up, you know, google.com, you have your search options. You want to go news, you want to go maps, you want to, you know, do photos and then there's AI mode and people were like, yeah, AI mode. I use it all the time. It works great but the ad experience is definitely lacking And so I think whether Google shot itself in the foot by not thinking about that ahead of time, I don't know what my answer would be there. But I do think, and I also don't want it to be riddled with ads because who does?

8:00Sarah Lane: But we're so used to that in other Google atmospheres. Yeah, I think the perception that you don't see the ads is kind of good. That's what Google wants. They want people to think, oh, well, I never see ads because if they remember seeing them, then it's sticking out, right? It's a bad situation. So I think what they would like is you to just occasionally click on a link and maybe you don't even realize it's an ad because it's incredibly helpful. uh i don't all i also don't think i see ads uh but i've just read alphabet tell me they've been they've been seeing as much click through on the ads in in gemini's ai mode as they are in search so i'm pretty clear that they're there uh and i'm trying to make them come up right now and if you're not on the main page the all page i don't i don't see the ads yet either so So I am curious.

9:01Again, our perception as users is never representative of what the company is doing. So I'm not going to say, well, they don't have enough ads on the main page. What they're saying is we need to have ads when you continue the conversation. And maybe that's why I'm not seeing them when I click over to AI mode because they're thinking, oh, that's continuing the conversation. if that's the case and they add to that conversation theoretically they could end up making more money and having more revenue because because you're more engaged right well and that's

9:33Sarah Lane: you know the company's saying wow people people are spending so much more time you know uh furthering their their initial search query using ai mode that does not surprise me of course because again it's a conversation rather than just sort of like here here is some text give me answers and maybe there's a sponsored result at the top that I click on um you actually the engagement not for everybody but certainly for me um my experience has been oh yeah I'm engaging quite a bit longer like I'm like well I am my the only pair in my fridge is like kind of getting yucky you know maybe I like go with an apple instead.

10:15Sarah Lane: I mean, I'm, I'm really going on and on now. Again, I'm using recipes as an example, and maybe that's sort of a weird, uh, example to talk about ads for, but what am I going to be served? What am I going to be served? That seems like a perfect place for ads. If you're like, what do I make with this? You want recipe sites are going to want their ads to show up there. Uh, people, grocery stores are going to want their ads to show up there. uh delivery like instacart doordash etc they're going to want their ads to short there so i would think that's the place where you would see a lot of sponsored ads it gets complicated though because you can bypass the recipes altogether because google has already scraped all that stuff yeah but it doesn't it doesn't mean that i i don't think that people who make good recipes should stop their jobs that's not what i'm saying at all but um it it i think the ai mode it makes serving ads in the appropriate place just it's a new it's it's the new normal but again what we're talking about right now is i don't think ads work in ai mode that's not what google's saying google's saying they work people click on them just as often as they did in search so unless they're lying which i don't know maybe you think they are out there i don't but i don't So I think they're saying they're not lying.

11:38Yeah, I don't think they're lying. I think what they're saying is we're just not serving enough of them because you keep talking to the chat instead of clicking on an ad. Sometimes in a case where if we had an ad showing up later on, you would click on it and go away. So I if I'm taking them at their word, they're not they're saying, oh, no, ads work in AI mode. They work differently, but they work. We just need to be putting them in more places. I will say the stock market didn't agree as Google stock tanks. Now, you can think what you want about the stock market, too. But investors looked at that and said, yeah, no, if you're saying search revenue is slowing down, I'm saying I'm selling my Alphabet stock.

12:20Right.

12:21Sarah Lane: I mean, Google has many cash cows, but there's really only one actual cash cow. For now. Yeah. Yeah, and again, that's why they brought the Google Cloud guy onto the earnings call to be like, we have a cash calf. He'll grow up someday. It's a little guy. Yeah, he's cute. It's going to be great. Or you're going to keep feeding him. He's going to get big someday. Yeah, big and spotted. You know, maybe some horns. Well, we would like to be a cash cow. DTNS is a humble show, but made possible by all of you listening and watching us right now. Thanks to D. Laser, Brad with two Ds, Kevin Morgan, and Chris.

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15:35There's more we need to know today. Let's get to the briefs.

15:39Sarah Lane: Nintendo says it underestimated worldwide demand for its Zelda 40th anniversary products. Don't know why I would have done that, but okay. and is working on restocks, apologizing for the shortages, and saying that more limited edition switch to consoles, pro controllers, carrying cases, and screen protectors are planned, but did not offer dates or quantities just yet. Console pre-orders sold out within mere seconds, with resale prices reaching$600 to$800, depending on where you're sniffing around. just to compare a little bit the switch to exclusive ocarina of time remake launches november 5th for about 60 i think that solves the mystery for me the consoles are out now october 29th i first of all nintendo doesn't not want to sell you a console like it's not like they were like well we just didn't think anybody would want them uh they they just estimated wrong they were like we think it'll be this much and it was more than we thought it's not like they didn't think it was popular.

16:42I think they knew everybody was excited for the Ocarina of Time remake, more so than a typical remake. Remakes usually aren't as popular as the original. Maybe in this case, that's not true. So I think they thought everybody'd buy the game, but they didn't think as many people would want to buy a whole new console. They're like, we got a lot of people with consoles out there. We've actually had a hard time selling consoles. So we'll probably sell some consoles that are special to this, but none of it turns out. No, Zelda fans, they're like, Give me that console.

17:12Sarah Lane: I mean, it's either Zelda or Mario Brothers. I mean, people are going to want, people will want this. 40th anniversary, big deal for a lot of people. I'm sure Nintendo sort of, you gain and you lose on a situation like this. You gain because now it's like, ooh, this is like this hot ticket item. Oh my gosh, I need it. You know, second market, where do I get one? Yeah. but also the company doesn't sell stuff that they could have sold in the first place and it's easy for us armchair quarterbacks to be like what you didn't think ocarina of time would be popular because we're dealing in a binary would it be popular or not popular it's really easy to predict that especially when you're not the one who had to go call the factory and tell them exactly how many to make and hope that you're not making too many and you get stuck with a bunch on the shelf that you have to sell for a discount or a loss right so you know what i mean like it's not like they didn't think it would be popular they're just like we thought it would be this popular and it was even more popular which is a good problem for them i suppose yeah the timing of it is interesting too it's like if you if you over order and then you have stuff that's sitting on a shelf that doesn't look good because it makes it seem like your product isn't you know worthy of people's money and if you under underdo it and then it sells out you know iphone duo type thing you know kind of reminds me of this yeah it's it's that's great but how long until people stop caring you know because then you can do a second order but it's not going to sell like the way the first order did yeah yeah exactly so uh i i think nintendo's happy that it's as popular as it is uh and that they sold out uh and they're nice that people care they could make a bunch How about Zelda?

19:00As fast as possible.

19:01Sarah Lane: 40 years young. And don't forget Link. Link too. I'm sorry, Link. I always forget about you. We could go on and on. Link's the real hero, but okay. Oh, spicy take. All right. Speaking of spies, get it? No. The New York Times reports that U.S. intelligence agencies suspect that Alice Huang, aka Huang Le of Singapore-based data center operator Megaspeed, may be an informant for the People's Republic of China. Alice Huang has been photographed at public events with NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang, no relation, and the U.S. believes that maybe she's a little too close to him. The U.S. also reportedly suspects that between June 2024 and February 2026, Megaspeed, the company that Alice Wong works for, bought at least$4.8 billion worth of NVIDIA-powered hardware for the purpose of secretly giving it to mainland Chinese companies that were barred from buying it otherwise.

20:02Representatives of the U.S. Commerce Department visited Megaspeed's Malaysia data center, found the equipment still in boxes. They're either like, you either just got it or you're about to ship it out. Which is it? An NVIDIA spokesperson told Tom's Hardware, mega speed has been no different than many other regional cloud customers jensen's interactions with ms wong are not unusual or unexpected meetings with customers are part of a ceo's job jensen talks with thousands of customer executives every year our regional cloud customers receive ordinary business information not sensitive nvidia trade secrets and zero information relevant to national security.

20:46To which I say, that is a lot of words to say there's nothing to this, but okay.

20:52Sarah Lane: Maybe there isn't. I don't know. I mean, this is one of those stories, it's a little bit of a head scratcher, like, are they too close? Is she a spy? Has there been information involving NVIDIA trade secrets that's been shared for whatever reason if you want to go you know conspiracy theory some people are going to say oh yeah this is clearly clearly you know out of bounds uh like illegally i don't know i i'm not just saying the longer a denial is the the flimsier it seems usually yeah you know it's when someone's lying to you with lots of details and you're like i didn't need those details If NVIDIA had said Jensen Huang has no more unusual relationship with Ms.

21:46Huang than any other regional customer, and she has received no sensitive information, period. Like, that would be, I'd be like, oh, okay, there's nothing here. Like, they didn't feel like they had to say a lot. Maybe they're just being ultra careful here, right? Maybe. Maybe. Because they don't want to ruin a customer relationship, right, if there isn't anything there going on. But, yeah, apparently the U.S. intelligence agencies do think there's something going on. And I think what NVIDIA is at pains to explain is that even if she is a spy, we don't think she's spying on us. But then everybody who gets spied on always wants to think that.

22:24So I don't know.

22:25Sarah Lane: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Also, Jensen talking with thousands of customer executives every year. That sounds impossible. Well, I'm sure he talked, you know, as in like, oh, hi, nice to meet you. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, over the course of a year. Think about that. That's really hard to do. If he's doing meetings with like 20 people, that's 50 meetings. meetings i bet he has 50 meetings with 20 executives at a time and then goes around shakes hands says a couple words to him sure yeah and he's gonna have photos taken with those executives because those executives want to be in the photo that gets circulated because they're like oh look our company person is with jensen huang the superstar that's amazing yeah so yeah why yeah but i i back to your original point why did they have to say thousands that's a lot come on also So if it's that many, maybe you don't know who the spies are.

23:25How could you keep track?

23:27Sarah Lane: How could you possibly keep track? Yeah. Well, we like to keep track of products here on this show. And if you want product reviews from people who are putting gadgets and services and platforms to the test, your new favorite show besides DTNS, of course, is Live With It. This week, we're glamping. Specifically, Bodie Grimm puts a mattress in his Tesla and lives to tell the tale. This is a good one. This is a good one. We're on YouTube at youtube.com slash at Live With It Show. And big thanks to everybody who's keeping us trying out new things. Thanks to our patrons. Patreon.com slash Live With It if you want to join the group.

24:10Being a serious business owner takes hard work, patience, and a drive to keep moving forward. So it's important to find a serious business card that goes the extra mile. With the VentureX Business Card from Capital One, you earn unlimited double miles on every purchase. And with big purchasing power, you can spend more and earn more. This is your sign to take your business to the next level. The Capital One VentureX Business Card. What's in your wallet? Terms apply. See CapitalOne.com for details. When you're running a growing business, the right systems can unlock your full sales potential and make fulfilling every order effortless.

24:43Switch to ShipStation before peak season so you're prepped and ready before the rush hits. ShipStation connects Shopify, Amazon, TikTok Shop, and over 200 more marketplaces with one platform that does it all. You can manage orders, sync inventory, track returns, all automatically. Everything your operation needs, all in one place. Upgrade your shipping operations to stress-proof your biggest sales days and capture every bit of potential revenue. Go to ShipStation.com and use code AUDIO and get 30 days free. All right, let's take a look at the quick headlines that will infect your brain with intelligence.

25:15Sarah Lane: Speaking of infections, an attacker posted a database containing personal information and employee group chat membership for more than 40 ,000 employees of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. The attacker says they accessed the data from an Okta single sign-on system used by the DHS. Okta says it has no evidence its systems have been compromised. Yeah, which makes me think he was able to fish an Okta token out of somebody somehow. And that's how they got in. DoorDash announced Thursday that it has agreed to acquire Instacart, which would bring two major on-demand delivery companies together.

25:54DoorDash does a lot of point-of-sale stuff as well as delivering restaurant meals. Instacart does the grocery delivery and had been partnered with Uber. I suspect that partnership is going to be put on ice. DoorDash says it intends to keep Instacart as a separate app and brand once they are merged. However, closing is not expected to happen until late 2027, so late next year at the earliest.

26:17Sarah Lane: Kind of reminds me of Uber and Postmates. Oh, yeah. Where Postmates was gobbled up by Uber, but they were different for a while. And they kind of merged eventually. Google Chrome browser users in the U.S. can now use what Google personal intelligence knows from Gmail to Autofill Form. So beyond just your standard personal information, it could pull your membership ID, your flight confirmation number, tracking information for a package you're expecting and stuff like that. This is actually useful. Google already has this info and you have to authorize personal intelligence to turn it on. So it's under your control.

26:55And if I can just be like, what's that confirmation number? What's my Delta frequent flyer number? And it's like here, we just put it in for you. That's pretty great.

27:03Sarah Lane: And then they'll serve you ads. And that's even better. Sony announced the Prism Collection. That's P-R-I-S-M, like the thing that separates the light into a rainbow. Prism Collection of transparent DualSense PS5 controllers. They come in orange, green, and gray. Gray looks kind of black, but it is transparent. They'll cost you$85 a piece. You can also get matching console covers. They won't let you see into your PS5, But they're, you know, translucent covers that match your controller if you want it to. And those will cost you$75 each. Very 90s. 90s is alive. Turn your PS5 into Portland. It's very back.

27:45Sarah Lane: It's very back, you know? Flannel, grunge. Yeah. Console stuff. It's all back. Samsung disappointed investors. Why, you ask? Well, mostly because it delayed paying them money until after the first half of the year. But notable to the rest of us is that profit from chip operations missed estimates at a time when rivals like SK Hynix are beating expectations. I'm sorry. It's a bad look if you're in the chip business right now and you're not beating expectations, Samsung. That's worth some examination. It's like, what's going on there? I mean, I guess just competition. They sold a lot of chips. It's not like they didn't sell chips, but they just didn't execute, right?

28:30something something's up there uh microsoft on the other hand is raking it in it reported its 10th consecutive quarter of revenue growth this time up 18 year over year this always gets reported as their 10th straight record setting growth but every time you beat your previous record if you grew that's just that's called growth anyway this was powered by agents and infra that is the part of microsoft that includes azure azure itself had 48 growth so cloud is definitely propelling Microsoft. The other part of the business, devices and consumer, which includes Windows, fell 3%. So the growth of Microsoft is definitely cloud-based.

29:13In fact, Windows OEM and devices fell 22%. And those of you out there who's like, oh yeah, Xbox is part of that, I bet they dragged it down too. Xbox, relatively speaking, overperformed, declining only 2%.

29:27Sarah Lane: if you have been waiting for the open weights from mistral's lm4 model wait no longer the model nicknamed le chonk released its weights as promised chonky as they are along with new benchmarks that put it on par with codex gpt 6.1 tera there you go europe getting in that open weights game uh the information says that anthropics tighten defenses against distillation That distillation is a way to train your model by querying another person's more powerful model. Anthropics defenses have moved models from DeepSeek and Moonshot AI to distill their new models off of OpenAI's GPT-6 Astro. So now it's on OpenAI to try to tighten their defense.

30:09Sarah Lane: It's like a boomerang. We like to end every episode here on DTNS with shared perspectives. And today, Rob wanted to say thanks. Ah, well, Rob writes, Thank you for the deeper dive into the financials of the Anthropic IPO. Now, those of you who don't read our emails every day don't know that we're always getting people like, oh, financial stories, why do you talk about earnings, blah, blah, blah. So when we do, we try to do what we did today and tell you like, this is the part of the business that's doing well and might impact you as a consumer. Anyway, back to Rob's email. There are so many headlines declaring them as a failure because they lost so much money in Q1.

30:49Your explanation of the real loss and how most of it was debt that is likely repaid when the IPO occurs was super helpful. Financial people, I know it's not debt. Just let Rob get away with calling it debt because, you know, it's roughly in the same arena. Rob says, this is the reason DTNS is my most reliable news source. You always skip the clickbait and tell us what things really mean. Seriously, thank you. DTNS was the only outlet I saw that didn't go right to the clickbait headline slash takeaway. um well thank you rob i appreciate you you taking the time to write in and say that because that is something we try to do every single day on every single story absolutely um i i cannot tell you

31:29Sarah Lane: how many times tom's been like i don't know if you want to say it that way remember we're not trying to be sensational unless we need to be sensational so yeah i think i think with the jensen hwang story today i allowed us to kind of range into speculation because we don't know We don't have, there's nothing to know there. It could be sensational. We just don't know. We just don't know. Exactly. Well, if you're thinking about anything that we talked about today, you have an insight into a story we might talk about in the future, share it all with us. We want to hear from you. Feedback at DailyTechNewsShow.com.

32:05Big thanks to Rob for contributing to today's show. Thank you for being along for Daily Tech News Show. And don't forget, Haftober ends in three days, two days, October 31st. Get that 50 % off. Get your name on the show tomorrow. Become a patron. Patreon.com slash DTNS.

32:24Sarah Lane: The DTNS family of podcasts. Helping each other understand. Diamond Club hopes you have enjoyed this program.

32:43Being a serious business owner takes hard work, patience, and a drive to keep moving forward. So it's important to find a serious business card that goes the extra mile. With the VentureX Business Card from Capital One, you earn unlimited double miles on every purchase. And with big purchasing power, you can spend more and earn more. This is your sign to take your business to the next level. The Capital One VentureX Business Card. What's in your wallet? Terms apply. See CapitalOne.com for details.

33:11Sarah Lane: Still waiting in line? Again? That's time you'll never get back. Save time and money with stamps.com. Over 4 million businesses have skipped the line with stamps.com. Join them to save up to 90 % off carrier rates from your computer or phone right now. Print postage for certified mail, registered mail, and packages in seconds. Then schedule a pickup right from your home or office. For a limited time, go to stamps.com and use code podcast for a free welcome gift. Taxes and fees apply.