A software presentation this week at Google I/O
2026 aimed at software engineers reaches further into the advertising and the marketing funnels than any other product announced at the conference.
Adam Bender, principal software engineer at
Google, hosted the livestream event — “Software engineering at the tipping point.”
The event was intended for developers, but the context and the content have major implications and
consequences for marketers.
“Software ecology” is the “holistic study of the socio-technical ecosystem that produced software,” Bender said.
These ecosystems are
complex, Bender said — with the capability to make decisions, do things and grow and change over time.
He added that Google has a very complex ecosystem, and that engineers are always in the
room when major decisions are made.
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The engineering group is led by something he called “shared fate,” which he described as the most important principal that guides developers at
Google.
This begins Google’s shared repository of code and allows engineers to secure a security patch in one file and know that within a week, every application in the company would
have been patched.
Ten lines of code in the correct position can patch ten billion lines of an application and systems software. Bender warned that “shared fate” may make less
sense in some shared environments and may lead to a cascading failure.
Bender explained what an AI first-developer ecosystem looks like as Google’s developers attempt to smoothly run its
current platforms — everything from media bidding and buying to ad serving and searches — while building ones based on AI.
Every Google platform that brands use — from media
measurement and campaign tools to search and AI products — is developed with software built by its engineering organization.
More code requires more time to compile a platform with more
energy and faster speeds required, especially as agentic agents do more work.
Bender refers to this as the “10x moment.” He repeatedly pointed to multipliers of 10x,
100x, and beyond — describing the coming changes related to AI as something measured “in orders of magnitude” that will echo through this ecosystem he described.
“Suddenly the
measure of 10x growth is not just a thought exercise,” he said. “It’s a code-red moment for you and your company. You’ll have to figure this out. If not today, certainly within
the next 12 months.”
He said this has consequences when talking about compiling binary files, a non-text file, and scale has impact. For example, 10x more network traffic to websites,
publishers, or across the company’s infrastructure. Agents will put pressure on this very human process.
Bender said that basically, he wants software engineers and those who build
products that brands use — both advertisers and marketers — to understand the magnitude of how AI and agentic agents will change business. This includes advertising, which represents the
majority of Google’s business.
