Google makes an agentic turn

Three years ago, the smartest critique of Google was that it had too many peacetime generals.

Capable people. Big budgets. No urgency. A culture where the audience that mattered was your manager and your peers, not the messy, warring market outside. The company optimized for not losing rather than for winning.

At I/O 2026, Google looked like a different company. Not because the models got better, though they did. Because the posture changed. Agent-first development platform. Agents in Search. An agentic shopping cart. A general-purpose agent meant to act across your apps. The pitch was not "we built a tool." It was "now anyone can be a builder."

Here is what I keep turning over.

Google did not win this by out-engineering the upstarts on raw capability. It is winning, where it is winning, on distribution. Three billion Android devices. Search. YouTube. Workspace. The agent does not have to be the best in the world if it is already sitting on the surface where the work happens.

For founders, that is the uncomfortable lesson of the moment. The incumbent that looked asleep was actually holding the one asset you cannot raise a Series B to buy: a place to stand. When the giant decides to fight, it does not need a better mousetrap. It needs to wake up.

The defense and dual-use world is full of the same setup. Slow, well-funded, internally focused organizations that own the distribution, the contracts, the relationships, and the trust. They have been peaceful for a long time.

What happens to your edge the day the sleeping incumbent in your category decides it is at war?

Enjoy the ride + Plan accordingly.

-Marc A. Ross

Founder @ Brigadoon

Brigadoon | Know what's next.

You can always reach me @ marc@brigadoon.live.

Know what's next.

I started Brigadoon in 2013 out of genuine frustration — too much time with the same people, thinking the same way.

The premise is simple: connect entrepreneurs, subject matter experts, and civic leaders who believe in the power of conversation and embrace curiosity.

I have sat through too many conferences with too many panels, too much posturing, and not enough actual thinking — learning nothing I couldn't have found in a good book.

My work has taken me across four continents, analyzing how power, commerce, and culture intersect in ways most people don't see coming. What I've learned — from boardrooms in New York City to art exhibits in Singapore, from national campaigns in the US and the UK to conversations with Chinese diplomats — is that the most useful intelligence flows between people who trust each other enough to think out loud.

Brigadoon is my attempt to build that room, deliberately and repeatedly.

Today, it runs on three things:

Intelligence — a daily newsletter and expert calls that connect what's happening beyond the headlines.

Connections — a curated network of founders, investors, journalists, doctors, designers, and civic leaders who think across disciplines.

Gatherings — a winter camp in Utah, a remote week in Scotland, salon dinners in between.

Small. Radical curiosity. No PowerPoint slides. An unknown ROI.

The kind of insights and conversations you'll still be turning over in your head six months later.

If that sounds like your kind of room, you're probably the kind of person we're looking for.

Know what's next.

Enjoy the ride + plan accordingly.

-Marc.

You can always reach me @ marc@brigadoon.live

What the London cabbies still have

The 60 Minutes broadcast from May 17 covered a topic I keep circling back to.

In London, Waymo is putting robotaxis on the road. The British startup Wayve, backed by Nvidia and Microsoft, is training its AI without first mapping the city. Waymo says its "driver" is now five times safer than a human and clocks two million miles per week across eleven US cities. Both want commercial ventures running in London by year-end.

The London black cab fleet has shrunk from 25,000 drivers a decade ago to 16,000. To get behind the wheel, candidates still pass The Knowledge exam, a 161-year-old test that requires memorizing 25,000 streets and 6,000 points of interest. University College London neuroscientists have documented that the posterior hippocampus physically enlarges over a cabbie's career. The brain rewires around their craft.

The human vs. machine topic is one I can't stop thinking about. The cabbies have brain-altering mastery and a shrinking platform. The technologists have scale, data, and capital, but cannot speak the language of regulators or the affected public when their cars drive through active police scenes.

Every industry I work with is somewhere on this curve. Heritage incumbents are losing distribution. Frontier challengers winning on metrics and losing on trust. Regulators, tourists, employees, and the public are sorting out which side they believe.

This is the question I am exploring. When the algorithm becomes measurably safer than the expert, the expert does not disappear. The role changes. The cabbies, the doctors, the lawyers, the financial advisors all live somewhere on the same curve.

When the technology surpasses the craft, what is the craft for?

Enjoy the ride + Plan accordingly.

-Marc A. Ross

Founder @ Brigadoon

Brigadoon | Know what's next.

2Bobs on Brigadoon

On the April 22 episode of 2Bobs, David C. Baker and Blair Enns opened the show with an unprompted few minutes about Brigadoon.

Both were with us at Sundance Mountain Resort earlier this year, and what they shared with their audience captures the event better than I usually do.

They captured fully what I am attempting to build and create with Brigadoon gatherings.

No name tags. No PowerPoints. No audio-visual equipment.

Assemble a diverse set of subject matter experts from different states, different nations, and different ideas and insights.

A cardiologist, roboticists, AI researchers, civic leaders, wellness entrepreneurs, fashion designers, academics, pro sport executives, and agency principals, all in the same room. The format gets out of the way so the people in it can find each other.

Grateful to David and Blair for the commercial and for all they have done to help me become a better businessman and a better man.

Transcript and full podcast, click here.

If it piques your curiosity about Utah next winter, Scotland this fall, or a salon dinner closer to home, get in touch.

Enjoy the ride + plan accordingly.

-Marc.

You can always reach me @ marc@brigadoon.live.