“The number one employee should be a Gemini.”. The quote is from Jesús García, Head of Hispanic Communications at Google, at I/O 2026, and it sums up the enthusiasm with which the company addresses Hispanic entrepreneurs in the United States, whom it places first in line for AI. But when asked about the rollout of those tools in Latin America, he was blunt: “We don’t have any specific plans to share.”. The advantage, then, is not cultural. It is a market classification. And expecting it to cross the border is to delegate one's own transformation to a third party.
What does “advantage” mean when a platform uses the term?
When García says that Latinos in the United States are “the ones who adopt technology much more quickly and use it more,” what he’s describing isn’t a cultural virtue but a good customer. In a platform’s vocabulary, “advantage” doesn’t refer to how much they value you. It measures how quickly you put their product to use—which is something else entirely. That’s why U.S. Hispanics come first—for the same reason any company serves the most profitable market first and leaves the one that needs it most for later.
García also points out that Hispanics lead the way in the creation of small businesses in the United States—the very demographic targeted by this “employee number one” concept. It sounds good. And, above all, it’s a slogan with a distinctly American flavor.
The border does not separate AI from access
The nuance that’s often overlooked is that Latam isn’t left out entirely. García himself clarifies that AI-powered search reaches everyone: “Google reaches places where specialized apps don’t.” The search engine that provides answers—the consumer-facing layer—does cross that boundary. On the other side are the agents—which is where the interesting stuff was: Spark, Daily Brief, AI Mode. These are the tools that, according to Google’s promise, work on their own for the user.
The real distinction isn't between having AI and not having it; it's between AI that responds to you and AI that works for you. Latam gets the first one. The second one—the very one that García touts as transformative, the one that would turn an SME into something else—is the one with no set date. We're stuck with the assistant who answers the phone; the employee who actually handles the issue is still on the other side of the border.
A dependency that is inherited by waiting
This pattern isn't new, and that's the problem. Technology reaches Latin America only after it has already matured elsewhere, and the decision about when that happens was never ours to make. We accept it as something that simply happens, almost like the weather. But every wave we waited for was a wave where we started at a disadvantage compared to those who didn’t wait. The region’s dependence on technology isn’t established all at once: it’s inherited, bit by bit, every time we treat someone else’s schedule as if it were our own.
What has changed compared to previous waves is the pace. When the advantage is measured by how much you can produce—rather than what device you have in your hand—arriving two years late is no longer just “missing out on a trend.” It means giving those who got a head start a lead that can’t be made up later.
Google's argument doesn't hold water
The most honest objection comes from the company itself, and it must be taken seriously. It's not neglect; it's market logic: it expands where there is demand and regulatory maturity, and it will reach Latin America when the conditions are right, just as has happened with every previous technology. And Google will say that the AI-powered search engine is now available to everyone, that no one has been left out.
I’ll concede the first part: the commercial sequence is rational and predictable. But it’s precisely because it’s predictable that the conclusion is turned on its head. If you know you’re going to be late, that the deadline isn’t up to you, and that the consumption layer takes precedence, then waiting is no longer a matter of patience—it becomes a decision.
And what really matters—that layer that actually works—doesn’t require Google to press a regional button. Useful enterprise AI today is built using tools that already exist and the judgment to integrate them into a company’s own processes. You don’t need to be first in anyone’s line; you just need to not need the line at all.
The question isn't when it will be our turn
The Infobae reporter himself had already pointed out this asymmetry, though not as a criticism, but simply as a fact. We still need to consider what this implies: that date speaks to Google’s priorities, not to what a Latin American company can do today. The question is who decided there would be waiting periods, and why we continue to abide by them. And while one company waits for its turn, another—which stopped waiting—is already working with the advantage it thought was reserved for the other side of the border.
Source: Infobae, “Google I/O 2026: Why Hispanics Have the Edge in the Transition to Artificial Intelligence” (May 20, 2026). Interview by Opy Morales with Jesús García, Head of Hispanic Communications at Google.
