Perspectives on AI & Business Growth

When James Lee, Industry Head at Google Australia, took the stage, moderator Frank McMahon had already run a conversational query through Google's AI search in front of an intrigued room of senior business executives. The way Australians search has changed, and with it the way they reach businesses has never been easier or more curated.

A former Victorian Young Australian of the Year, Lee framed the shift in three stages. "Google search was born to essentially find information," he said. "It then became about intelligence, giving you an answer. The next stage will be about taking action on your behalf."

The evidence is in the queries. Where users once typed "restaurant near me," they now write long, specific requests, in volumes that surprise even Google. "Today fifteen per cent of all searches are new, never been seen before in 25 years," Lee noted. On the company's most recent earnings call, Google disclosed that search had been used more in the past quarter alone than at any point in its history.

The search box itself has changed. Two weeks ago, Lee said, Google announced its biggest ever change, now rolling out globally. "It is beyond text. Now you can speak it, you can just turn it into a camera." Search will also draw on personal context, from Gmail to Maps, where users permit it. "You do not need to tell it anything, because it knows." The destination, he said, is action: a shopping cart inside search that can watch a price and complete a purchase on the user's behalf. "Our aim is to connect businesses with customers."

For an audience of developers and investors, Lee drew the line straight to the built environment. "To power this requires infrastructure, requires chips, requires compute," he said, "and in the AI battleground the winners will be those who have the compute capacity. As a result, demand for data centres is through the roof."

The numbers were striking. Google now handles five trillion searches a year, roughly 9.5 million every minute. Alphabet recently raised US$85 billion, a reversal for a company more used to buying back stock, even while holding US$127 billion in cash. Capital expenditure of US$91 billion last year is flagged to roughly double, to US$180 billion in FY27. The reason is demand it cannot yet meet. "We have a back order of enterprise clients who have already signed up, and we do not have the capacity today to fulfil that demand."

What does it mean for the room? Customers now arrive already qualified. "They are far more informed than before. They know what they want." Asked by Lamborghini and Bentley how brands should respond, Lee was emphatic. "Brand has never been more important. You should be investing more in your brand as a differentiator to your competitors."

And on the limits of the technology, he was candid. "It still takes human intellect to make the insight," he said. "The ability to communicate in a way that is succinct, and to tell a story, has not been nailed yet by the technology."