Gemini Intelligence: Your Consumer Behavior Personal Trainer
Yes. I’m your “green bubble” friend.
For anyone who knows me, it’s no secret that I don’t own an iPhone. I’m all in on Google Pixel devices, and it would take a monumental shift for me to switch back. (My last iPhone was the 3s, so it’s been a very long time since I owned one.)
It’s also no surprise that I pay close attention to Google’s Android developments. To be fair, I am a Xoogler, but as a Pixel owner, I deliberately position myself at the front of the line for any new updates Google launches. I love testing them out the second they drop. Getting Google’s product updates before everyone else is definitely the best consolation prize for being in the Android minority!
This week, Google hosted their Android Show ahead of this upcoming week’s Google I/O (more on the latter next week). As a company, Google makes so many product announcements that they have to host a separate show just for Android.
Pretty crazy, if you ask me.
But even crazier was listening to how deeply they are embedding Gemini into the Android ecosystem. They announced Gemini Intelligence, headlining it as a “smarter, more proactive Android” coming to Pixel and Samsung users this summer.
There was one specific line in their announcement that I absolutely loved: “As Android transitions from an operating system into an intelligence system, your devices are becoming even more helpful with upgrades that will save you time.”
Read that key phrase again: “Transitions from an operating system into an intelligence system…”
I never intended for this year’s Substack to focus so heavily on agents, but here we are. Every week brings fresh news, and this latest announcement pushes us even further over the edge of a massive behavioral shift. We are moving rapidly away from traditional search bars and manual form-fills, and accelerating toward deeply agentic experiences.
Google is quietly rewiring consumer behavior. They aren’t just building smarter technology; they are actively training millions of users to outsource their cognitive load to an AI agent:
Go do this for me.
Fill out this form for me.
Book this reservation for me.
And they are training us to do it all on our mobile devices: our constant companions.
With Gemini Intelligence, Google claims we will soon be able to:
Automate logistics, like ordering an Uber or booking fitness appointments.
Build grocery lists directly from a notes app.
Use multimodal capabilities to curate a travel itinerary based on a single photo of a location.
Book appointments or reserve parking spots using smart browsing in Chrome.
Automatically complete forms by tapping into Google’s Personal Intelligence to pull data from connected apps.
I’m pretty excited about this.
But, it’s not lost on me that this is launching to a very small subsegment of the population in the United States. iPhone holds a 63% share of users in the United States. Less than half of mobile operating systems in the United States use the Android operating system, and only a subsegment of them are Pixel or Samsung users.
However, this makes it the perfect testing ground for the classic “launch and iterate” ethos I learned during my time at Google. They don’t wait for perfection. They launch a product in its imperfect state, collect real-world feedback, and iterate relentlessly.
The same will be true for Gemini Intelligence. They will launch it in a few weeks, track utilization, and iterate. This cycle will help Google map out exact consumer behaviors and pinpoint where people are most eager to adopt agentic experiences on mobile.
Crucially, this will also dictate how other companies roll out their own agentic experiences. Most notably, I expect a fast follow from Apple. True product differentiation barely exists in conversational AI right now; when one tech giant moves, the others mirror them quickly. Apple has already partnered with Google to deliver Apple Intelligence, meaning Google could easily power Gemini Intelligence on iOS devices later this year.
Healthcare organizations need to monitor this behavioral shift closely. As consumers grow accustomed to delegating tasks to their mobile AI, we have to track how soon they will expect to do the exact same thing for their healthcare needs.
I feel like I write this every week, but it bears repeating: Google’s updates dictate consumer expectations. Marketing teams must stay hyper-aware of these shifts because patient expectations are accelerating faster than ever.
When consumers get used to seamless, one-click agentic experiences for retail, travel, or restaurant bookings, their patience for friction will vanish. They will expect that exact same autonomy when navigating their healthcare.
While the industry is currently scrambling to figure out how to optimize for AI Overviews and show up in conversational AI results, Google is forcing us to swerve yet again. We need to shift our focus toward becoming Agent Ready.
Never has it been more vital to understand how machines and agents access information on our owned properties. If Google is doubling down on agents executing tasks on behalf of users, organizations must prepare their digital footprints for visitors who aren’t human. Tomorrow’s consumer will browse less, and agents will execute more.
If you want to prepare your organization for a world run by agents, you need to execute on three fronts:
Map the New Consumer Behavior: Study how users are shifting from proactive searching to agent delegation. What triggers them to hand a task over to an AI? (This is where your Experiences of the Future workshop can be a game-changer!)
Feed the Machines First: Re-architect your digital experiences to prioritize machine readability over human readability. Remember, 50% or more of your website traffic today is already driven by machines, and that number is only going up. Structure your data cleanly.
Optimize High-Friction Touchpoints: Ensure your “Find a Provider” directories and scheduling forms aren’t just user-friendly, but agent-friendly. If an AI agent can’t seamlessly navigate your booking workflow, you will lose that patient to a competitor with machine-readable forms.
Google is already making this agent-led consumer experience frictionless. It’s only a matter of time before it hits healthcare full force.
It’s tempting to say, “Healthcare consumers aren’t using these agents yet.” It sounds exactly like the pushback I used to get when advocating for mobile optimization: “Our consumers aren’t using mobile devices, so we can’t prioritize this.”
That excuse doesn’t work anymore. Current data shows that the fastest growing demographic for mobile AI usage is the 55-64 age bracket. And we know that people over age 55 consume 57% of healthcare services.
It has never been more important to follow these trends. Note what you can do today, and build strategies for what you need tomorrow. These changes are coming fast and furiously and consumers are changing behaviors (and building muscle memory) faster than ever. The best move you can make right now is to stay aware, start testing, and adapt your infrastructure. The sooner you embrace the fact that the machines and the agents are the first visitors to your properties, the better positioned you will be, and the more satisfied your future patients will be.