AI Ambitions: Unpacking Google's Grand Strategy

0:01Today on the podcast, I want to talk about some breaking news out of Google. And really at the end of the year, I want us to do kind of a year end and 2025 recap on where Google is today, where they've been, why they might be there, and what they can do in the future to catch up. And we're going to hear straight from the horse's mouth from the CEO of Google exactly where they feel they are and some of the areas that they might want to improve on. So let's get into the episode. Before we get into the episode, I wanted to say if you've ever wanted to start an AI side hustle, learn how to make money with AI tools, I would love to have you as a member of the AI hustle school community.

0:38You can check out the link in the show notes to join that. For this week only, we're doing a New Year's promotion where it is$19 a month to join. In the future, it might raise the price, but I share exclusive videos every single week that I don't share anywhere else on different ways I'm growing and scaling my own software company with AI tools. So I'd love to have you as a member of the community. You could check it out. All right, let's get into what Google is doing today that I think is kind of interesting. So recently, Google, sort of over the holidays, they had this ugly sweater party, I guess.

1:09I think this is a classic over at Google. And they essentially said that Gemini is going to be the company's, quote, biggest focus in 2025. If that doesn't, I guess, sort of shake you and make you realize this is important to them, I don't think anything will. I think Google knows right now that if they drop the ball, if they fumble on essentially AI and search today or an AI in all of the different platforms, which Gemini is kind of the core of that. Google as a company, in my opinion, is on a decline and trend that we've seen other companies take that will essentially kill them. So Google knows that Gemini has to be a big priority for them.

1:44They have to win in this area. If they don't win in this area, Google essentially will die. So Sundar Pichai, he told a bunch of different employees that this is going to be a critical year for the company. 2025 is going to be a critical year for the company. And I think he's, when he says critical, I think what he means is this is a make or break. If they fall behind, if they can't keep up, they're done. If they can keep up, they're going to be okay. And I think that there is some silver lining someone to go over. But all this comes from an audio file that CNBC got from a December 18th strategy meeting where he was talking to a bunch of other executives and he was essentially going over their priorities for the coming year, what they're gonna be working on.

2:22So he said, I think 2025 is gonna be critical. I think it's really important we internalize the urgency of this moment and we need to move faster as a company. The stakes are high. Keyword here is that he said that they need to move faster, not like, oh, we gotta go fast. Oh, we gotta get stuff done faster. They're not moving fast enough. And a lot of people have given Google credit, especially at the end of the year for a lot of the innovation, a lot of the stuff that they've come out with, like they are making a lot of progress compared to the past. I know like, I don't know, a lot of people are sort of roasting them because of the big news cycle over the last few days that Google search is adding like a new animation.

2:56They used to have these like blue lines that would sort of like animate when a bubble would pop up. And now they're changing them to this like sparkle effect. And people are like, okay, well, when your technology is not innovating, you just start making new graphics and designs. And somehow that's like the news cycle of Google, which I at all. It's not a bad thing. It's funny. But obviously, you're going to need a lot more than animations to make these AI tools and your AI results actually work. So I want to talk about some of the areas that I think Google's strong in and some of the areas that I think they're struggling.

3:25We'll start with the struggles. I think the biggest thing that Google is struggling with, and they know this, is in search. They have a bunch of competitors, namely Perplexity, which has been backed by Jeff Bezos and is past billion-dollar valuation. And I believe it's actually at a maybe like$3 billion valuation, if I remember correctly, as of its last round of funding. Perplexity AI is absolutely eating Google's lunch. Now, the problem with Google is that if you've seen kind of Google's AI results that they put, you do a search, they have a little AI blurb, and then below is the rest of the Google results.

3:59Now, this is Google essentially trying to fit AI into their current workflow. And the problem is that a lot of users don't want AI just fit into their workflow. They just want an AI tool. That's why they love perplexity. It gives you all of the search results in a really, you know, gives you that kind of like a summary of all your results in a simple blurb, kind of like what a chat GPT would do. And even chat GPT came out with chat GPT search. So there's a lot of companies that are really focusing on this right now. And Google knows that they're going to have their market share completely eaten into and they're going to struggle a lot.

4:31So Google knows that this is a big, big focus, but beyond just how their AI is displaying it. They can't even do this part well if their Gemini search AI foundational model isn't, you know, best top tier crushing. And why would anyone ever use Gemini when, you know, Claude is amazing for coding and Chatshift is amazing for like everything. And they're all coming up with these new models. So I think Google has a lot of a lot to fight there. That's where they're struggling. Now, the one area where I will give Google an immense amount of credit is in the integration of AI into their current offering.

5:05So the way that they're integrating AI into Gmail. And even to be honest, one of the biggest things is the way that they're integrating their AI, their Gemini model into their new pixel devices. So Google is now integrating. If you buy a new Google pixel phone, you can go and there's a little Gemini search thing where it's essentially searching all of your local documents on your phone, as well as of course, the internet and everything else. And this is really useful. So for example, I've seen, you use case where people are like, what's my flight number for my flight that's happening in a few days?

5:34I don't remember what airline I booked. I booked this thing six months ago. I don't remember where it is. I just know that I have a flight in a few days and I don't know my confirmation code so I can check in or whatever. You just type that into the Gemini search bar and it, boom, pops it up and it has a little link to go to the email where the flight confirmation code was. Now, this is something amazing because in Gmail, I swear their search is like the worst. It drives me crazy. I try to put keywords that I remember being in the email. But if you could just use natural language to prompt and search.

6:00I think this is amazing. Once you apply it to your phone, where it can go through all of your different files. Now, I know people have privacy concerns about that, but I, for one, on the convenience level, think this is amazing. I think Google has a really strong competitive advantage there because they own so much software. They own everyone's emails and they have their devices. So I think in the device front, they can absolutely crush it. And even in the Gmail and some of the email workspace things, I think they can do well. This is what they have to leverage. They have distribution there. They need to leverage that.

6:30And I think that they can do some catch up and do better. So this is, of course, a moment where a bunch of tech companies like Google are making massive investments into AI. These are not always positive. Some of these are completely flopping. Pichai, the CEO of Google, said that the company has been catching up and has a lot more catching up to do on the AI side. He described the Gemini app based off of essentially what the company has today with their Gemini model is having, quote, strong momentum. But he also said that they, quote, have some work to do in 2025 to close the gap and establish a leadership position there as well.

7:09Scaling Gemini on the consumer side will be our biggest focus next year. So I think this is a really interesting point as Google is going into the new year. They know that they have a ton of work to do, but they also have a little bit of momentum. They're not completely left in the dust. They're not completely out of the picture. So I'll keep you up to date on everything happening with Google Gemini. And again, if you want to learn to make money with AI tools or grow and scale your current business like I'm doing with my software company, AI Box, using AI tools, make sure to join the AI Hustle School community.

7:42We would love to see you there. And I hope you have a fantastic rest of your new year.