Attending Google Cloud Next ‘26 this year amidst the growing angst, frustration, and blowback for AI adoption is a serious case of culture-shock.
Not only that, but it takes place in Vegas, paragon for excess, indulgence, and gilded living - quite a contrast when this sector and the broader economy right now in April 2026 is in turmoil while people are told by many tech enthusiasts their jobs are likely to be fully replaced by AI.
Working with AI every day will pretty quickly eliminate that fear even if it is a mind-boggling experience to see all that AI can be capable of as well.
I worry about where the tech sector is headed if it's unaware of the ivory clouds SaaS + PaaS platforms are resting upon — the enshittification of cloud services is well underway.
"Your margin is my opportunity," is going to be a rocky ride for many of these cloud providers when people begin to be able to vibe-code personal solutions for anything + everything as models improve.
It’s part of why some are bullish on Apple even though they couldn't "solve" AI - a lot more of this compute will be pivoting quickly to personal devices and individual bespoke “time-of-need,” discrete AI-slop software solves a lot of the perennial paper-cuts these major cloud & platform providers have never prioritized.
Will be interesting to see how Google + it’s platform partners address these building headwinds during the conference.
