According to reports, in a recent employee meeting, Google CEO Sundar said that (essentially) the entire focus of Google in 2025 will be AI and pushing it out to consumers in a “scrappy” way — with him referencing the early days of Google. This was when, I would note, their rush resulted in massive arrogance, and privacy problems at the firm were at a peak. Over the years these both were reduced — especially privacy issues where Google actually has become world class in terms of protecting users’ privacy (and security). Both could return to former terrible levels under Sundar’s deeply flawed AI approach.
With such a focus on AI and so much money between poured into it by Google, it is inevitable that other core Google services will ultimately suffer, and given Google’s notoriously deficient “customer service” when things go wrong — from account lockouts to a wide range of other problems — it’s only going to be getting worse. Word is that Google teams not mostly devoted to AI are already suffering cutbacks. How long before Google decides that Gmail, etc. just aren’t worth keeping around anymore? Couldn’t happen? Think again.
Google’s AI continues to be an endless source of mediocrity and wrong, confused, and even utterly inane and nonsensical answers and false statements, and Google refuses to take responsibility for these and how they could negatively (sometimes even dangerously) impact users. This renders Google’s incredibly reckless pushes to embed AI deeply into Google Search (thanks to AI, decreasingly trustworthy), and the introduction of their new “AI Agents” (taking over web browsers on behalf of users — an enormous target for hackers and phishing attacks), both horrific risks for consumers.
Sundar would (I suspect) say that unless Google moves in this direction, Google is doomed. I believe that he and his executive team have it exactly backwards. Consumers do not want AI. The more they learn about it, the less they trust it or care for what it does in their day to day lives. They don’t want to pay for it. They don’t want it popping up in their faces constantly and being shoved down their throats. They certainly DO want Google to take 100% responsibility for what it does.
Sundar wants Google to be scrappy. We might as well delete that leading “s” — unfortunately, that’s Google’s likely fate, because his AI path will lead to Google’s almost certain doom one way or another. The exact timing and form of that doom cannot be accurately predicted right now, but billions of Google’s users will suffer in the process.
And one more thought. It’s been reported that apparently Sundar has now joined the exalted ranks of the billionaires. How that may or may not be affecting his thinking in these matters I’ll leave as an exercise for the reader.
Dark times for Google’s users, indeed.
–Lauren–