Google previously made a high-profile announcement about the AI Studio mobile app at I/O 2026 and opened pre-registration to attract about 800,000 users, continuing to position AI Studio as a core tool from prompts to prototypes; concurrently, independent AI applications like Pixel Studio have been gradually shut down and redirected to Gemini, indicating Google's ongoing effort to streamline its dispersed AI product line.

Resources are shifting from creating a standalone app to collaborating with the Gemini team to embed conversational application generation, motivated by leveraging Gemini's existing large user base to reduce customer acquisition and maintenance costs, avoiding fragmentation of "the next app"; similar actions can be seen in Google's complete replacement of Google Assistant with Gemini and the integration of tools like Lens into the main application.

This decision is akin to OpenAI consolidating some standalone features into the main ChatGPT interface and Microsoft's deep integration of Copilot into Office and Windows; currently, Google's AI product line is transitioning from parallel multiple tools to a concentration on the Gemini super entry point, with independent development tools being downgraded to a web professional version.

Essentially, this reflects capital concentration and technological substitution: the customer acquisition and operational marginal costs of standalone apps are higher than those of embedding into the main application, and conversational generation capabilities can directly reuse Gemini's models and distribution channels, ultimately driving the reconstruction of AI interaction from dedicated tools to everyday conversational entry points.

ABAB News · Cognitive Laws

Standalone apps disperse traffic; the main entry point is the moat.
No matter how many pre-registrations, they cannot compare to an existing user base.
Features should be embedded whenever possible; creating new ones is always more expensive.