“The stakes are high”: The head of Google called on employees to prepare for a difficult 2025

During a meeting with employees last week, Google CEO Sundar Pichai told his subordinates that the 2025 horizon is “high stakes” as the company confronts competitors, government actions and strives not to lose the initiative in the rapidly developing field of artificial intelligence.

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The event took place on December 18. “I think 2025 will be decisive. It’s important that we recognize the urgency of this moment; we as a company need to move faster. The stakes are high. These are disorganizing moments. In 2025, we need to be relentlessly focused on unlocking the benefits of this technology and solving pressing user problems,” said Sundar Pichai. The past year has been difficult for Google. Revenue from search advertising and cloud services showed strong growth, but competition in the company’s core markets intensified, and internal problems related to cultural clashes and Google’s management’s vision of the future intensified.

In August, a federal judge ruled that Google illegally maintains a monopoly in the search market; in November, the Ministry of Justice demanded the compulsory alienation of the project to develop the Chrome browser. The agency also accused the company of illegal dominance in the field of online advertising technologies – the trial was closed in September and is awaiting a judge’s decision. British antitrust regulators also expressed dissatisfaction with Google’s actions in the field of advertising technologies. “I can’t help but notice that we are facing intense scrutiny around the world. This is due to our size and success. This is because of the trend in which technology has begun to have a large-scale impact on society,” said the head of Google.

The company’s search business still dominates the market, but generative AI has opened up new ways for people to access information online, and with it, Google has a host of new competitors, including OpenAI ($157 billion) and Perplexity ($9 billion). Google is making significant efforts to counter new rivals; Its key product is the large Gemini language model. The company’s priority now is to “create a big new business,” in which Gemini has a key role – Google hopes that the audience of this application will reach half a billion users; The company’s product range already includes 15 such applications.

Mr. Pichai admitted that Google may lag somewhat behind competitors in the field of AI in 2025, but expressed hope that the company will remain at the forefront. “In history, you don’t always have to be the first, but you have to do your job well and release the best product in its class. I think this is what 2025 will be like,” said the company’s CEO. DeepMind co-founder Demis Hassabis talked about a universal AI assistant that “can work seamlessly anywhere, in any format or on any device.” An experimental version of such a system called Project Astra is expected to be updated in the first half of 2025. Hassabis also assured employees that Google is not going to follow OpenAI in introducing an expensive subscription for $200 per month.

The head of Google Labs, Josh Woodward, demonstrated several new products: Jules, a coding assistant; several new NotebookLM tools, including for working with podcasts; Project Mariner, an AI-powered, multi-tasking extension for Chrome, added Tripadvisor’s top restaurants to Google Maps on demand.

Throughout the event, Sundar Pichai reminded employees to “stay determined.” In 2023, Google had to cut costs, lay off 6% of its employees and focus on efficiency. As of the end of the third quarter of 2024, Alphabet employed 181,269 people – 5% less than at the end of 2022. Pichai recalled that the company emerged 26 years ago, long before the advent of cloud computing and powerful AI tools. “Look at how the founders built our data centers in the early days of Google—they were passionate about every decision they made. Constraints often breed creativity. Not all problems can be solved by the number of employees,” he noted.