Google Flash Thinking, GitHub Padawan and a new browser for mindfulness
Plus: Mobile app retention rates report, why your product org should be ugly, AI pricing explored
Hi product people 👋,
Coming up this week, we explore the latest reasoning models from Google Gemini and why they could boost Google’s AI moat, a new announcement from GitHub that could transform the end to end product development process and a new marketplace for finding pre-built AI apps you can use in your own product.
Plus, Linear’s head of product shares why org charts should be ugly and if you’re a little worried about how much time you spend in front of a screen, Opera has launched a new browser that puts mindfulness at its core that might help.
Enjoy the rest of your week!
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Key reads and resources for product teams
New from the Department of Product Substack this week:
Knowledge Series - How to create visuals and diagrams you can use at work with AI
From creating product frameworks to adding data visualisations to documents and crafting process diagrams from a single line of text, AI can be a powerful addition to your visual communication toolkit at work.
Deep - What new AI features are product teams building?
In this deep dive report, we’ll explore how 25+ top tier companies like Google, Adobe, Docusign, Meta, Zoom and others are integrating new AI features into their products. If you’re working on your own set of AI features for the year ahead, this should hopefully come in handy in giving you some inspiration on what other product teams are building. (Department of Product)
Strategy Resource - A presentation on the evolving landscape of the AI voice market
The voice agent market exploded in H2 2024. One data point: companies building with voice represented 22% of the most recent YC class. Voice agents are also being added as a capability to more horizontal or multi-modal products. This excellent presentation from A16Z’s Olivia Moore tells you everything you need to know. (A16Z)
Design - Why 90s design trends are coming back
Understanding the cyclical nature of design trends allows us to build on the past and fulfill the evolving needs of users. 3 examples of returning trends are neumorphism, dark mode, and gradients. (NN Group)
Case study - How Atlassian built a universal navigation for all its products
Atlassian decided to unify its navigation design across its entire product portfolio. The result? With over 30,000 users across 250 organizations using the new navigation, only 2.7% have switched back to the old navigation — far better than the 5% typically expected for changes of this scale. Put another way, 97.3% of users are choosing to stay with the new navigation. (Atlassian)
Team building - Linear’s Head of Product on why your Org Chart should be Ugly
Do org charts really have to be symmetrical and aesthetically pleasing? Nan Yu, Head of Product at Linear, argues that they should reflect the focus of a company's product. (YouTube)
New product features and innovation this week
GitHub has launched a new agentic product called “Agent Mode”, elevating Copilot from pair to peer programmer. Available in VS Code, agent mode allows Copilot to iterate on its own code, propose and guide terminal commands, and analyze and resolve run-time errors. GitHub also gave us a sneak peak of an upcoming feature it called Project Padawan. When it’s released later this year, Project Padawan will allow you to directly assign issues to GitHub Copilot – and have it produce fully-tested pull requests.
For product teams, these new updates are likely to transform the end to end software engineering experience. Unsettling but also exciting times. Watch it in action here.
Google has released an updated version of its Gemini app mobile and desktop which includes its own reasoning model Gemini 2.0 Flash Thinking. What this means in practical terms is that the model can now be connected to other Google products including Google Maps, YouTube and Google Search. This enables a bunch of new AI-powered interactions that theoretically can’t be matched by competitors like OpenAI and Deepseek.
When using Gemini 2.0 Flash Thinking through the mobile app, the model can:
Access real-time information from Google Search to provide up-to-date answers
Retrieve relevant YouTube videos to supplement responses
Utilize Google Maps data for location-based queries
The integration allows the model to go beyond its training data and access current information or specific details from these connected apps. For example, when asked about travel times or directions, it can consult Google Maps directly to provide accurate and timely information. It’s potentially a powerful way of leveraging Google’s existing assets to enhance its overall AI strategy.
Another Google app, Google Photos, is getting a handy new UX improvement. The ability to “hide clutter from other apps” will remove all non-Photo materials like screenshots, GIFs and attachments from other apps like WhatsApp.
Meanwhile…
OpenAI has undergone a major rebrand which includes a new typeface called OpenAI sans - a bespoke sans serif for use across its product line. It was developed in-house by a team led by Head of Design Veit Moeller and Design Director Shannon Jager.
If you’re looking to quickly add AI features to our product, Lightning AI’s new AI Hub might be worth checking out. It's a marketplace for both AI models and applications. You can browse pre-built AI applications including speech generators, facial recognition, synthetic data sets and image classification.
Snapchat is launching an AI text-to-image research model for mobile devices. It runs 100% locally on-device which makes it much cheaper. Snap says the model can produce high-resolution images in around 1.4 seconds on an iPhone 16 Pro Max and it will be used to power features including AI Snaps and AI Bitmoji backgrounds. This week, Snapchat also grew its subscription product, Snapchat+ 131% year on year, doubling its subscribers to 14 million.
AI product pricing models
Tools you can use
Decagon - Reimagine your customer service with conversational AI. Combine your brand with unstructured knowledge and real-time data sources to deliver the best answers.
Opera Air - a new browser built entirely around the idea of mindful web browsing. Includes meditations, beats for productivity and more.
Hero - see your life, all in one place. Hero combines calendars, reminders, notes, groceries, weather, GPT, voice and more to create what it calls the ultimate daily assistant.
📈 Product data and trends to stay informed
New analysis revealed this week suggests that the gap between API revenues and subscription revenues is narrowing at OpenAI, with B2C subscription revenues reaching $4 billion in 2024 while API revenues hit $3.2 billion. The company has also seen substantial growth in its user base, with paying subscribers nearly tripling from 5.8 million in 2023 to 15.5 million in 2024.
What impact will cheaper models have on API revenues? Could new product launches from OpenAI continue to keep B2C subscription numbers growing?
OpenAI launched Deep Research this week and it’s likely that they will continue to roll out fully fledged products - and potentially expand its workplace tools to threaten Google Workspace / Office.
HR SaaS startup Rippling says it managed to increase customer self-service rates from 38% to 50% thanks to AI.
Spotify set a new Q4 record and its first full year of profitability. Subscribers grew to 263 million, up 11% YoY. The product and platform section of the earnings call focused heavily on Spotify’s recent updates to its video player as it looks to stave off the threat from YouTube. Link to earnings deck and product highlights.
Video traffic on LinkedIn is booming - it increased 36% year on year and is growing at twice the rate of other platforms, according to its Director of Product Video Product.
Over 75% of US adults were using Amazon Prime in 2024.
Retention rates for mobile apps are falling. In 2024, overall day 1 retention rates fell from 14% to 13%. Day 30 retention remained at 3%. Ecommerce marketplace apps had the highest day 1 retention rate of 25%l. Mobile app trends 2025 report.
Other product news in brief
☹️ Uber’s latest earnings disappointed investors
⌚️Meta is rumoured to be launching six new wearables this year
🫡Sonos is cutting 12% of its staff
🔈Invites have been sent by Amazon for the unveiling of the new version of Alexa
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What a useful newsletter! Thanks 😊