Google’s CEO Pichai tells employees that ‘products are high’ for 2025
Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai gestures during a session at the World Economic Forum (WEF) annual meeting in Davos on January 22, 2020.
Fabrice COFFRINI | AFP | Getty Images
CEO of Google Sundar Pichai The company told employees last week that “the stakes are high” for 2025 as it faces increasing competition and regulatory hurdles and grapples with rapid advances in artificial intelligence.
At a Dec. 18 2025 strategy meeting, Pichai and other Google leaders broke out ugly holiday sweaters and hyped up the coming year, especially as it pertains to what’s to come in artificial intelligence, according to audio obtained by CNBC.
“I think 2025 will be critical,” Pichai said. “I think it’s really important that we embrace the urgency of this moment, and as a company we need to move faster. The stakes are high. These are disruptive moments. In 2025, we need to be relentlessly focused on unlocking the benefits of this technology and solving real user problems.”
Some employees attended the meeting in person at Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, California, while others listened virtually.
Pichai’s comments come after a year full of most things intense pressure Google has gained experience since going public two decades ago. While areas such as search advertising and the cloud have delivered strong revenue growth, competition has intensified in Google’s core markets, and the company has faced it. internal problems including concerns about culture clashes and Pichai’s vision for the future.
In addition, regulation is now heavier than ever.
A federal judge in August ruled That Google illegally has a monopoly on the search market. In November, the Ministry of Justice asked Google to be forced to refuse its Chrome internet browser section. In a separate case, the DOJ accused the company of unlawfully gaining an advantage over online advertising technology. That trial was closed in September and is awaiting a judge’s decision.
In the same month, Britain competition watchdog issued a statement challenging Google’s ad technology practices, which the regulator found temporarily affected competition in the UK.
“It’s not lost on me that we’re facing scrutiny around the world,” Pichai said. “It comes with our size and our success. It’s part of a larger trend where technology is now affecting society at scale. So more than ever, we need to make sure we don’t get distracted at this point.”
A Google spokesperson 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.
OpenAI’s ChatGPT started its hype cycle at the end of 2022, including investors Microsoft has since valued the company at $157 billion. OpenAI in July, a search engine own Perplexity also promotes an AI-powered search service and recently closed a $500 million funding round. worth 9 billion dollars.
Google is investing heavily to stay on top through Gemini, which is mainly an AI model. The Gemini app gives users access to a number of tools, including Google’s chatbot.
Pichai said that “building big, new businesses” is a top priority. That includes Gemini, which executives say they see as Google’s next app to reach half a billion users. The company currently has 15 programs that have reached this milestone.
“There’s been strong momentum with the Gemini app, especially in the last few months,” Pichai said. “However, we have some work to do to close the gap in 2025 and establish a leadership position there as well.”
“Scaling Gemini on the consumer side will be our biggest focus next year,” Pichai added.
‘You don’t always have to be first’
At the meeting, Pichai showed a graph of Gemini 1.5 leading OpenAI’s large language models with GPT and other competitors.
In 2025, “I’m looking forward to some back and forth,” Pichai said. “I think we’re going to be cutting edge.”
He admitted that Google had to catch up.
“You don’t always have to be first in history, 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 took questions submitted by employees through Google’s internal system. One of the comments read aloud by Pichai suggested that ChatGPT “has become as synonymous with AI as it is with Google search,” and the questioner asked, “What is our plan to combat this in the next year? Or are we just not paying enough attention to the consumer” facing LLM ?”
For an answer, Pichai turned to DeepMind co-founder Demis Hassabis, who said the teams are preparing to “turbocharge” the Gemini app and that the company has seen an uptick in user numbers since launching the app in February. “The products themselves are going to evolve massively over the next year or two,” he said.
Hassabis described a vision for a universal assistant “that can work seamlessly across any domain, any modality, or any device.”
Project Astra, an experimental version of Google’s universal assistant the company announced It will be updated in May, in the first half of the year.
Another employee asked if Google could scale its AI products without charging $200 a month “like other companies.”
“Right now, we don’t have any plans for that kind of subscription level,” Hassabis said, adding that he thinks the $20 monthly fee for Gemini is a good value. “I wouldn’t say never, but there are no plans for that right now.”
Towards the end of the meeting, Google welcomed Josh Woodward, head of Google Labs, to the stage. As Zombie Nation’s song “Kernkraft 400” played loudly in the background, he grabbed the microphone.
“I’m going to try to do six demos in eight minutes,” said Woodward, known for his high energy level.
Woodward began by demonstrating Jules, a coding assistant in a trusted testing program. “This is where the future of software development is headed,” he said.
Woodward then moved on to AI note-taking product NotebookLM, which introduced a series of updates in 2024, including a podcasting tool. Woodward demonstrated how the company is testing a new feature that allows a user to “call” a podcast.
It then moved on to Project Mariner, a multi-functional Chrome extension powered by artificial intelligence. Woodward asked him to add the best restaurants Tripadvisor To the Maps application. After a short break, the demo worked successfully, drawing applause from the workers involved.
Throughout the meeting, Pichai reminded employees to “stay casual.” Google has gone through an extensive phase of cost-cutting that includes eliminating about 6% of its workforce in 2023 and a continued focus on efficiency.
As of the end of the third quarter, Alphabet had 181,269 employees, down about 5% from the end of 2022.
At one point, Pichai referred to the founders of Google Larry Page and Sergey BrinHe founded the company 26 years ago, long before cloud computing or artificial intelligence tools existed.
“When you look at how the founders built our data centers in the early days of Google, they were really nimble with every decision they made,” Pichai said. “Often limitations lead to creativity. Not all problems are always solved by the number of employees.”
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