Google is trying to pull off one of the trickiest balancing acts in tech: aggressively disrupting its own products with AI while protecting the businesses that generate tens of billions in profit.

Why it matters: Unlike OpenAI and Anthropic, Google enters the AI race with enormous scale, distribution and cash flow — but also a vast empire it has to defend.

Driving the news: As it has for the past two years , Google used this week's I/O developer conference to focus almost entirely on AI .

It's revamping its core search box to serve both traditional short queries, while seamlessly allowing it to expand for longer chatbot-style conversations.

YouTube, meanwhile, is getting a new "Ask YouTube" feature where people can ask a question and get both a text result — for making a recipe, say, or fixing a clogged pipe — as well as a link to the video.

The big picture: Public perception of the AI race often swings wildly based on whichever company most recently released a flashy model.

For a while OpenAI was seen…