May 22, 2026 · 52m · more-or-less
Google I/O Just Killed SEO? Agentic Search, Universal Cart, and the New Web · More or Less Podcast
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In this episode of the 'More or Less' podcast, the hosts analyze major tech developments, including Google I/O's agentic search features, the economics of AI infrastructure, and public AI sentiment. They also evaluate public market readiness and investment valuations for tech giants like OpenAI, Anthropic, and SpaceX.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. The hosts hold 100% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
The hosts as informed peer 6.1 Guest teaching 3.8 Guest disagreement 3.3 The hosts pushing back 3.9
speaking balance: gold is the hosts, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 12:21 Dave bluntly shuts down Brit's praise of Google I/O
Dave dismisses Brit's breakdown by interrupting that she has lost him, the messaging was incoherent, and Google's models are decisively inferior across every benchmark.
Hardest push from the hosts ▶ 44:26 Jessica refuses Dave's claim that White House review is fake newsJessica challenges Dave's skepticism by demanding why the National Cyber Director held a direct briefing with OpenAI and Anthropic if no model review policy was being pursued.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 7:15 Dave breaks down arcade tokenomics vs. on-prem console computeDave educates the co-hosts on Dell World insights, framing the central enterprise dilemma of feeding tokens to AI labs versus financing upfront on-prem compute.
The host holds their own ▶ 44:39 Jessica cites leaked regulatory drafts and specific administration briefingsJessica leverages journalistic scoops from The Information to dismantle Dave's skepticism, detailing leaked draft policies and agency meetings.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | The hosts as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | The hosts pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Host Intros and Brit's Glowing Fish Tank Saga | 3 | 2 | 1 | 1 | The hosts open with light banter about missing co-host Sam and recent tech headlines before diving into Brit's humorous domestic mishap with glowing aquarium fish. The dynamic is playful and supportive, with lighthearted ribbing over fish tank maintenance rules. | |
| Dave's Dell World Keynote and Enterprise Tokenomics | 6 | 6 | 3 | 4 | Dave reports on his keynote at Dell World, educating the panel on enterprise tokenomics and the physical infrastructure powering xAI clusters. Sam and Dave push back constructively against each other regarding centralized cloud control versus edge matrix multiplication. | |
| Google I/O Analysis: Agentic Search, Universal Cart, and UX Challenges | 7 | 4 | 6 | 5 | Brit presents a defense of Google I/O announcements, but Dave immediately cuts in dismissively, arguing that Google's messaging was confusing and its models lag benchmarks. Jessica intervenes to provide measured industry analysis on the death of traditional SEO and share her own frustrating UX friction with workspace AI tools. | |
| The Impending AI IPO Wave: OpenAI, Anthropic, and Valuation Dynamics | 7 | 4 | 4 | 5 | Jessica outlines the accelerated IPO schedules for OpenAI and Anthropic, prompting Sam to cynically argue that market valuation is purely momentum-driven rather than tied to fundamentals. Dave pushes back with platform economics, noting that Anthropic is capturing revenue without creating downstream developer margin. | |
| Public Sentiment on AI, Retail Access, and Financial Hedging | 5 | 3 | 4 | 5 | Dave laments widespread public resentment toward AI and argues retail investors are shut out of wealth generation, but Jessica challenges him to propose concrete solutions rather than venting. Sam reframes retail investment in AI as an emotional hedge against job loss. | |
| Multi-Agent Operations, AI Token Burn, and Beyond LLMs | 7 | 5 | 2 | 2 | Dave and Sam compare experiences coding with AI agents, with Dave detailing how enterprise pipelines run up massive bills by running dozens of agents simultaneously in continuous integration. The tone is highly technical and collaborative. | |
| Investment Portfolio Debate: Anthropic vs. SpaceX | 7 | 3 | 3 | 4 | Jessica explains why she would rather invest in Anthropic over SpaceX, questioning whether orbital economics outside defense justify SpaceX's next valuation doubling. The group debates meme valuations and whether consumer interfaces remain Google's moat. | |
| White House AI Model Review and Government Policy | 8 | 6 | 6 | 8 | When Dave repeatedly brushes off reports of White House AI model reviews as fake news and impossible, Jessica directly pushes back using her reporting contacts and specific details of administration briefings with AI lab leaders. She forces him to retreat from flat denial to debating policy nuances. | |
| Podcast Business Model, Newsletter Sponsorships, and Marketing | 6 | 3 | 2 | 3 | Sam showcases a real-time web dashboard displaying AI token prices formatted like gas station signs. Dave and Sam discuss the fivefold pricing premium charged by Anthropic and OpenAI relative to commodity alternatives. | |
| Developer CLI Tools, App Promotion, and the Future of Labor | 5 | 2 | 2 | 2 | The episode wraps up with Dave announcing a music setlist CLI tool and claiming CLIs outperform MCPs, followed by brief family project promotions and banter on humanoid robots replacing blue-collar jobs. |
Statements from this episode (33)
Lessin: SpaceX has filed its S-1, targeting June 12 IPO
“Well, and also we have SpaceX IPO S one is out confirming numbers previously reported by the information. June 12th, guys, is the rough date for liftoff.”
Lessin: OpenAI is preparing to confidentially file for an IPO soon
“Breaking news from the information and other outlets is that OpenAI confidentially filing soon.”
Lessin: Anthropic Is Closing Another Financing Round
“We're going to circle back to this because we have a lot, and I just think Anthropic must, which is, by the way, closing another round as we speak, must be in the mix, but everyone is feeling good.”
Morin: Dell was primary builder of xAI's Colossus superclusters
“Dell actually was the primary builder of the Colossus super clusters for XAI.”
Dave Morin: Dell created desktop capable of running 1T parameter models
“They've also got a Desktop that can do a one trillion parameter model, which is pretty amazing. We had it on stage with us.”
Sam Lessin: Enterprises will only centralize AI if models are superior
“The only reason that companies will do the centralized thing long term is if the models are sufficiently better that they have to. I think?”
Google announces over 900M active Gemini users
“I think they said they have over nine hundred million active users using Gemini.”
Dave Morin: Google's new AI model is worse than top competitors
“The most reason, the model's not even competitive. What's not competitive about it? It's not competitive. Like, it's just less good than every conceivable benchmark. It's less good than five, five and, ah, four, seven. Like, meaningful. Like, you wouldn't use …”
Lessin: Agentic Google Search is the nail in SEO's coffin
“What does everyone think about the Google search going agentic? Like, this is the nail in the coffin of SEO.”
Dave Morin: AI's biggest hurdle is unusable UX for non-technical users
“The user experience is light years away from being easy enough for anybody that doesn't understand at a deeply technical level what's going on. And I think that's why you see only single digit millions people using things like cloud code and codex and, you kno…”
Sam Lessin: Anthropic is currently the top winning AI company
“The number one winning company right now in AI, I think, is Anthropic. And they're actually shockingly focused, right? Like, it's cloud code. Very pure play.”
Brit Morin: Google will eventually converge to build the best AI interface
“I think the fact that they have five products with more than three billion users that they can start implementing AI into, and even if it takes them longer to string it all together and unify the UI and the user experience across these things, they have the pe…”
Lessin: OpenAI and Anthropic will soon seek trillion-dollar valuations
“So you have these two AI companies that in really short order are going to be trying to convince public investors they're worth more than a trillion dollars, and they're going to have extraordinary revenue growth to back that up.”
Sam Lessin: Post-IPO public float for frontier AI labs will stay low
“I think the reality is, is like the cynical, but realistic world is these things go public at huge number. I think people will sell less than they, than people think they will, because it's kind of like you're on the train. Getting off the train is a pretty dr…”
Morin: Anthropic faces platform problem as downstream companies lack revenue
“And it's just the truth. Like Anthropic is making all of the money and none of the companies being built on top of it are making revenue that exceeds their revenue. And so you've got a really serious platform problem.”
Lessin: Retail investors will hate-invest in Anthropic as job-displacement hedge
“What people are going to view is like, I might be out of a job, so I better own an anthropic stock, right? Like it's going to be the, and they're going to hate it, but they're going to do it. Cause it's like, that's their hedge. So it is a hate invest, but the…”
Sam Lessin: Sam Altman deliberately stoked AI fear to maximize funding
“The AI hatred narrative is partially just what it is. It's also, let's be honest, it's because Sam Altman in particular, but everyone leaned into it as marketing. This is so scary. This is so powerful. This is going to be like, it was a very explicit strategy …”
Dave Morin: AI revenue misses over next 18 months will spur backlash
“And what I guess I'm saying is if anything goes wrong in the revenue execution path over the next 18 months and the retail is left holding the bag, it's going to be double hate. And that's very bad.”
Jessica Lessin: Andrej Karpathy has officially joined Anthropic
“Did you guys see Karpathy went to Anthropic?”
Jessica Lessin prefers owning Anthropic over SpaceX at a $1T valuation
“I do think I'd rather own Anthropic at a trillion than SpaceX at a trillion.”
Sam Lessin: $1T is Anthropic's top valuation, SpaceX's absolute bottom
“Well, to be clear, a trillion is the top of the current Anthropik price and the by far bottom of the current SpaceX price.”
Jessica Lessin predicts more AI companies in five years, not fewer
“Five years from now, when we're talking about AI, I think we're talking about more companies, not fewer.”
Sam Lessin: The next cult war pits Dario Amodei against Elon Musk
“I think the next cult war will be Dario versus Elon.”
Jessica Lessin: Anthropic has line of sight to $100B in revenue
“Anthropic will, they have line of sight to a hundred billion in revenue, like, no question, kind of. Like, I don't, I mean, they're not gonna, like, hit that this year or whatever, but, like, that's not a crazy thing for them, and their growth is accelerating,…”
Lessin: White House briefed AI companies on pre-release model reviews
“Well, anyway, it's gotten to the point where they held a briefing for the companies yesterday. So that, that is saying, talking about plans to pre-review, which obviously would be a sea change for this administration.”
Lessin: The Information received four conflicting leaked drafts of AI policy
“In recent weeks, there have been like four different drafts of this thing that we've been leaked, and they're all different, and they're all from different factions.”
Lessin: OpenAI won Elon Musk lawsuit because jury ruled he filed late
“We should mention, everyone knows, that OpenAI won a decisive victory in their Elon Musk trial. That came down to the jury deciding Elon was too late to file this lawsuit.”
Lessin: Anthropic and OpenAI Tokens Cost Five Times More Than Google's
“Wildly expensive, right? Like compared to- Five X. Five X Google.”
Brit Morin: Mainstream consumers will choose Google over pricier AI rivals
“The normal Americans are going to go with the Google prices of this gas chart.”
Lessin: A Product Built With One Prompt Is Not a Real Business
“It's not a business if it takes one prompt.”