PaLM 2 arrives, Bard goes to 180 countries, and search gets generative AI

At Google I/O, Google announced PaLM 2, with better multilingual understanding, logical reasoning, and coding, supporting more than 20 programming languages including Python, JavaScript, C++, Verilog, and Prolog. Google said it was already powering 25 products including Android, YouTube, Gmail, and Google Docs. Bard switched to PaLM 2, dropped its waitlist, and opened to over 180 countries, adding Japanese and Korean alongside English with 40 languages promised — this was when Japanese support arrived. Google also announced the Search Generative Experience (SGE), putting AI-generated summaries into search results as an experiment. Three months after February's stumble, this was the event where Google committed to putting generative AI across its main products.