This article originally appeared on Business expert.
In April, Google indulged in one of its favorite pastimes: reorganization.
Musical chairs for executives have turn into all too common at Alphabet. Still, this commotion was one of the most dramatic in the company’s 25-year history. CEO Sundar Pichai announced that he’ll mix the company’s two fundamental units – platforms and devices – into a supergroup that can focus on Android, the Chrome browser and gadgets built by Google comparable to the Pixel phone. In a note to staffPichai said the move will “supercharge the Android and Chrome ecosystems” and speed up decision-making.
The announcement capped a dramatic 12 months of change inside the search engine giant. This got here almost 12 months after Google combined the two solutions key artificial intelligence groups, DeepMind and Google Brain. The timing is not coincidental: Google is fighting the narrative that it is lagging behind in AI, becoming complacent and falling behind in the industry. There were even calls for Pichai to step down.
In response, Pichai redesigned its leadership team to maneuver faster and foster greater collaboration between historically isolated parts of the company. To do this, he looked inside the company and promoted each long-time employees and established leaders to steer the next era of Google.
Pichai currently has 18 direct reports, in accordance with an internal organizational chart obtained by Business Insider, although they include names comparable to former YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki, who now serves as advisers to the company. Pichai’s updated leadership team still outnumbers many of its Google peers, although several leaders now oversee more teams as the company streamlines and removes barriers.
A Google spokesman didn’t reply to a request for comment on this matter.
Google AI MVP
Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis. Google via BI
Demis Hassabis could also be the most significant person at Google right away.
The founder and CEO of DeepMind, who sold the startup to Google in 2014, has spent much of the last decade running the unit at your fingertips from the mothership. Then last April, Pichai announced that he would merge DeepMind with Google’s internal artificial intelligence unit, referred to as Brain, into a supergroup called Google DeepMind.
Hassabis commands a recent AI command center – he calls this unit “Google’s engine room in the age of AI“ — and oversees about 2,600 employees, in accordance with internal BI data. This week, Hassabis made its debut on stage at Google I/O, one other sign of how Google has embraced its AI crown jewel.
Hassabis has gained more power in recent months. Pichai said that as a part of last month’s reorganization, some other teams in the research group – including those building machine learning models – will turn into a part of Google DeepMind. Hassabis’ unit would also absorb the Responsible Artificial Intelligence group, responsible for the protected development of artificial intelligence.
Consolidating teams could help Hassabis and Google DeepMind achieve their building goal faster artificial general intelligence — a mandate agreed upon by Hassabis and Google co-founder Larry Page when DeepMind was acquired. It also means Hassabis now works more closely with employees who bring artificial intelligence to Google’s core products. Last 12 months’s merger meant DeepMind sacrificed some projects deemed too academic or those who didn’t have a clear path to consumer-facing products, a former worker said.
Former and current Google employees interviewed by BI for this story spoke on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t permitted to talk to the press. Their identity is known to us.
Some insiders have tipped Hassabis as a candidate to turn into Google’s CEO, although two people near the DeepMind co-founder suggested that the day-to-day management of a company with nearly 200,000 employees can be hell, in accordance with Hassabis.
That doesn’t suggest he doesn’t have to exercise his corporate diplomacy responsibilities now. The merger of Google’s artificial intelligence units meant Brain and DeepMind had to beat a years-long rivalry that had caused friction over how much research was shared between the teams (and even went so far as to cover his code from himself) – said former employees.
Under Hassabis’ leadership, Google gained traction in OpenAI with the release of its Gemini large language model. It also faced setbacks, including the embarrassing failure of the Gemini image generator created historically inaccurate images of individuals of color.
As OpenAI continues to rapidly advance its research, Google cannot afford to decelerate. One worker said he was busy training the Gemini successor, and at this week’s I/O conference the company showed off countless recent whiz-bang products running on the Gemini platform.
Pixel’s leader gains more power
ED JONES/Getty Images via BI
The clash between Google’s services and hardware groups wasn’t just a dramatic structural change; this showed tremendous confidence in Rick Osterloh, the head of kit who has built this division for the past eight years.
It was also a sign that Google desired to get more serious about its hardware like the Pixel, especially because it looked to capitalize on the key opportunity presented by artificial intelligence in Android. In an April memo to employees Pichai said the change would give Google “an incredible opportunity to rethink computing platforms for the next decade.”
In April, Google also promoted Sameer Samat to president of the Android ecosystem. Previously vice chairman and general manager, he’ll effectively replace former Google Android leader Hiroshi Lockheimer, who retired last month to pursue other projects at Google.
Osterloh now oversees nearly 25,000 employees, giving him one of the largest departments in the company, in accordance with internal documents – about the same size as Google’s search and promoting group, which is run by Prabhakar Raghavan, a senior vice chairman.
Some current and former employees have expressed disappointment with the progress Google has made in hardware under Osterloh’s leadership (including clunky products like Fitbit AND Stadiums). Google Pixel smartphones have improved features and appearance, and yet they have barely established themselves in the market.
While Apple is working on introducing AI features for iPhoneAs The New York Times reports, Siri has so far been disappointing as an AI assistant, giving Google the opportunity to mix AI and hardware into something much more compelling.
Under Osterloh’s watch, Google struggled to catch as much as Apple in one other category: augmented reality. Leadership changes and strategy pivots have thwarted attempts to build something that might compete with Apple’s Vision Pro.
Google will make progress on technology acquired from Raxium in 2022, an worker with knowledge of the matter said, which can pave the way for Google’s own AR device. In the near future, Google still plans to release the Android XR operating system and find partners to build glasses on top of it, BI previously reported and Pichai hinted at Tuesday interview for CNBC.
Osterloh will spend the next few weeks and months playing diplomat providing Android partners nothing will change in this department. For many years, there has been a firewall between Google hardware and Android devices, so Google can avoid playing your favorite songs on its own devices.
Some employees in the Android organization viewed Osterloh as responsible for recent layoffs in the hardware division, which fearful them that their positions might suddenly turn into less vulnerable, one current worker said.
Other Google employees say Osterloh is a good selection, having the obligatory sharp elbows – and now the resources – to make moves that might keep Apple CEO Tim Cook up at night.
One executive said Osterloh was willing to make decisions, if obligatory, that “would piss off a lot of people.”
“Hiroshi is nicer, but being nice doesn’t get you anywhere on Google,” they added, “at least not anymore.”
The Search Veteran takes over
SAJJAD HUSSAIN/Getty Images via BI
In March, Google named company veteran Liz Reid as head of search as a part of a larger changing of the guard around the company’s most useful product.
Although Reid’s appointment received less attention than other recent moves, her rise was significant. Reid reports on to Raghavan, senior vice chairman of promoting and search, and is overseeing the radical transformation of Google Search. During this week’s I/O event, Google made the announcement Artificial Intelligence Reviews — the company’s generative artificial intelligence search tool — was being rolled out in the U.S. and expected to be available to greater than a billion people by the end of the 12 months.
Reid, who joined the company in 2003 as one of Google Local’s first engineers, has spent her profession there focusing on bringing high-quality, relevant information to users. In 2021 – BI reported that Reid took on a larger role at Google Search and has since focused on working on artificial intelligence features.
In one other sign of the importance of AI to the way forward for Google Search, the company has named Cheenu Venkatachary, a vice chairman of product who joined Google to work on AI, as head of search quality and rating. Pandu Nayak, who was replaced by Venkatachary, stepped aside to take over as chief scientist and will proceed to seek the advice of on issues comparable to search quality and rating.
With the launch of Google’s Generative AI Search, Reid and the team face big challenges: increasing the amount of AI-generated spam, decreased visibility for publishersand turmoil for the company’s money cow, search engine promoting.
It also fights chatbots from firms comparable to Embarrassment and OpenAI, which are increasingly behaving like search engines like google, with proclaims that OpenAI be near launching your personal comprehensive search product. Fears of chatbots ruining Google’s search dominance have yet to be confirmed, giving Google time to reinvent its most hallowed product. Still, he knows he has to act quickly.
“While smaller companies like Perplexity are getting solid PR, it doesn’t really show in the inquiry share numbers,” Bernstein senior analyst Mark Shmulik told BI. “I think Google is actually doing well when it comes to something that was considered an existential risk a year ago.”