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Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai gestures during a session of the World Economic Forum (WEF) annual meeting in Davos on January 22, 2020.
Fabrice CAFRINI | AFP | Getty Images
CEO of Google Sundar Pichai told employees last week that the “stakes are high” for 2025 as the company faces increased competition and regulatory hurdles and grapples with rapid advances in artificial intelligence.
At a 2025 strategy meeting on Dec. 18, Pichai and other Google executives, dressed in ugly holiday sweaters, raved about the year ahead, especially in terms of what’s next for AI, according to an audio recording obtained by CNBC.
“I think 2025 will be a critical year,” Pichai said. “I think it’s very important that we realize the urgency of this moment and we have to move faster as a company. The stakes are high. These are devastating moments. In 2025, we must be relentlessly focused on unlocking the benefits of this technology and solving real user problems.”
Some employees attended the meeting in person at Google headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., while others attended the meeting virtually.
Pichai’s comments come after a year filled with some of the most important strong pressure Google has survived since going public two decades ago. While areas such as search advertising and the cloud have delivered strong revenue growth, competition in Google’s core markets has intensified and the company has faced internal calls including cultural clashes and concerns about Pichai’s vision for the future.
In addition, regulation is now more difficult than ever.
In August, a federal judge managed that Google illegally holds a monopoly on the search market. The Department of Justice in November asked Google to be forced to get rid of its block of the internet browser Chrome. In a separate case, the Department of Justice accused the company of illegally dominating advertising technology on the Internet. The trial ended in September and is awaiting a judge’s decision.
In the same month, Britain competition watchdog issued a statement of objections to Google’s advertising technology, which the regulator had previously found to affect competition in the UK
“I’m not wrong that we are facing worldwide scrutiny,” Pichai said. “It has to do with our size and success. This is part of a wider trend where technology is now affecting society at scale. So, more than ever, at this point, we need to make sure we’re not distracted.”
A Google representative declined to comment.
Google’s search business still has a dominant market share, but generative artificial intelligence has created all kinds of new ways for people to access information online and brought with it many new competitors.
ChatGPT OpenAI launched the hype cycle in late 2022 and investors including Microsoft the company has since been valued at $157 billion. In July, OpenAI announced the launch of a search engine his own. Perplexity is also pushing its AI-powered search service and recently closed a $500 million funding round for Estimated at $9 billion.
Google is investing heavily to try to stay on top, mainly through Gemini, its AI model. The Gemini app gives users access to a number of tools, including Google’s chatbot.
Pichai said “building great new business” is a top priority. That includes the Gemini app, which executives said they believe will be the next Google app to reach half a billion users. The company currently has 15 apps that have reached this mark.
“There’s been strong momentum with the Gemini app, especially over the last few months,” Pichai said. “But in 2025 we will have to work hard to close the gap and take the lead.”
“Scaling Gemini from the consumer side will be our biggest focus next year,” Pichai later added.
“You don’t always have to be the first”
At the meeting, Pichai showed a chart of large language models where Gemini 1.5 leads OpenAI’s GPT and other competitors.
“I expect there will be some back and forth in 2025,” Pichai said. “I think we will be at the level of technology.”
He admitted that Google had to catch up.
“Historically, you don’t always have to be first, but you have to perform well and really be best-in-class as a product,” he said. “I think that’s what 2025 is all about.”
Executives answered questions submitted by employees through Google’s internal system. One comment, read aloud by Pichai, suggested that ChatGPT “is becoming synonymous with AI in the same way that Google is looking for,” with the author asking, “What are our plans to combat this next year? Are we not focusing on consumers before the LLM?”
For an answer, Pichai reached out to DeepMind co-founder Demis Hassabis, who said the teams are going to “turbocharge” the Gemini app and that the company has seen progress in user numbers since the app launched in February. He said that “the products themselves are going to evolve massively over the next year or two.”
Hassabis described the vision of a universal assistant that “can work seamlessly in any domain, any modality, or any device.”
Project Astra, an experimental version of Google’s universal assistant that the company announced in May, will be updated in the first half of the year.
Another question from the employee wondered if Google would be able to use AI products at scale without charging $200 a month “like other companies.”
“At this point, we don’t have any plans for that level of subscription,” Hassabis replied, adding that he thinks the $20 monthly fee for Gemini Advanced is a good value. “I wouldn’t necessarily say never, but there are no plans at this point.”
Towards the end of the meeting, Google welcomed Josh Woodward, head of Google Labs, to the stage. He took the mic as Zombie Nation’s “Kernkraft 400” played loudly in the background.
“I’m going to try to do six demos in eight minutes,” said Woodward, who is known for his high energy level.
Woodward began by introducing Jules, a coding assistant who participates in the Trusted Tester Program. He said, “This is where the future of software development is going.”
Woodward then moved on to the AI note-taking product NotebookLM, which introduced a number of updates in 2024, including a podcasting tool. Woodward demonstrated how the company is testing a new feature that allows a user to “call in” a podcast.
He then moved on to Project Mariner, an AI-powered multitasking Chrome extension. Woodward asked him to add the best restaurants from Tripadvisor in the Maps program. After a short pause, the demonstration worked successfully, causing the staff present to burst into applause.
Throughout the meeting, Pichai kept reminding employees to “stay cool.” Google has gone through an extensive cost-cutting phase that has included eliminating about 6% of its workforce in 2023 and a continued focus on efficiency.
Alphabet had 181,269 employees at the end of the third quarter, down about 5% from the end of 2022.
At one point, Pichai referenced the founders of Google Larry Page and Sergey Brinwho founded the company 26 years ago, long before cloud computing or artificial intelligence tools existed.
“If you look at how the founders built our data centers in the early days of Google, they were very sharp in every decision they made,” Pichai said. “Often limitations lead to creativity. Not all problems are always solved by the number of personnel.”
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