Google Chief Scientist Jeff Dean said Flash’s low latency and cost are why Google can run Search AI at scale. Retrieval is a design choice, not a limitation, he added.
In an interview on the Latent Space podcast, Dean explained why Flash became the production tier for Search. He also laid out why the pipeline that narrows the web to a handful of documents will likely persist.
Google started rolling out Gemini 3 Flash as the default for AI Mode in December. Dean’s interview explains the rationale behind that decision.

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