Google CEO: Search to Evolve Profoundly by 2025

Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Google, recently participated in an interview with Andrew Ross Sorkin at the New York Times DealBook Summit, where he shared insights into the anticipated changes for Google Search in 2025. Alongside this, he addressed concerns about the company’s relationship with content creators, though his responses lacked clarity, leaving some questions unanswered about how Google plans to support those who contribute to the internet’s rich content ecosystem.

During the discussion, Pichai was asked to evaluate Google’s position in the evolving technology landscape and whether the company deserves to remain the “default winner” in the search engine space. He responded by describing the current state of the industry as “the earliest stages of a profound shift,” underscoring that this transformational phase would redefine the future of technology and how users interact with it.

Pichai stressed that Google is not simply following trends but leading the charge in artificial intelligence. He highlighted that Google’s research has been instrumental in shaping the AI industry as we know it today. Specifically, he pointed to Google’s groundbreaking work in developing transformers—an advanced machine learning architecture that has become the foundation of many AI models in use today. These innovations, which Google generously open-sourced, have allowed the entire AI ecosystem to flourish, driving the rapid progress we now see in applications ranging from conversational AI to predictive algorithms.

Despite this leadership position, the conversation touched on how Google would navigate its responsibility to content creators. While Pichai acknowledged the importance of supporting creators, his remarks lacked specifics, leaving some ambiguity about how Google plans to balance its advancements in AI with the need to sustain a healthy, collaborative digital environment.

As the digital landscape continues to evolve, Pichai’s remarks indicate that Google aims to remain at the forefront of innovation, guiding the industry through this transformative era while grappling with the complex challenges of leadership in a rapidly changing world.

Sundar Pichai provided a detailed response, highlighting Google’s leadership and comprehensive approach to AI during the interview. He described the current moment as incredibly dynamic, emphasising that we are witnessing the “earliest stages of a profound shift” in technology. Google’s strategy, he explained, involves a deep, full-stack approach to artificial intelligence that spans research, infrastructure, and product development.

Pichai pointed out that Google is a leader in AI research, being the most cited institution globally in generative AI studies. He elaborated on the company’s advancements, including the development of six generations of tensor processing units (TPUs) that underpin their AI infrastructure. This technology enables Google to support both internal AI operations and external developers, with over three million currently leveraging the tools Google provides.

In addition to its foundational AI models, Google boasts an extensive product reach, with 15 products serving over half a billion users each. Pichai highlighted their groundbreaking research, mentioning recent advancements where text and image prompts can create 3D scenes, showcasing the rapid evolution of the AI frontier.

Looking towards 2025, Pichai expressed optimism about the innovation ahead, stating Google’s commitment to remaining at the forefront of AI development and ensuring its continued state-of-the-art contributions in the field.

Blue Link Economy And AI

During the interview, the host pointed out that while Google was initially seen as a pioneer in AI, it seemed to lose its lead following OpenAI’s breakout success in 2022. The interviewer questioned whether Google had held back its AI advancements to protect its “blue link economy,” a business model worth hundreds of billions of dollars, from potential disruption.

In response, Sundar Pichai clarified that AI has always been integral to Google, particularly in enhancing its search capabilities. He highlighted that AI innovations like BERT (Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers), MUM (Multitask Unified Model), and multimodal search have significantly improved search quality by addressing critical gaps. These advancements demonstrate Google’s ongoing commitment to applying AI aggressively to its core services.

Pichai also reminded the audience that Google’s engagement with AI stretches back to 2012, when it used deep neural networks for tasks like image recognition and speech processing. By 2014, Google introduced sequence-to-sequence learning for understanding text, and in 2015, the company launched RankBrain, an AI system specifically designed to enhance search result rankings.

Explaining further, Pichai stated:
“The area where we applied AI the most aggressively, if anything, in the company was in search. The gaps in search quality were all addressed using Transformers internally. We call it BERT and MUM, and we made search multimodal. These improvements were about enhancing language understanding in search, which is why we developed Transformers in the company.”

He added that recent innovations continue to show Google’s leadership in AI, noting that Gemini, its latest AI technology, is already being used by over a billion search users. This demonstrates Google’s consistent focus on leveraging AI to refine and expand its search capabilities.

Search Will Change Profoundly In 2025

Sundar Pichai elaborated further, sharing his thoughts on how Google Search will evolve significantly, not only throughout 2025 but starting as early as the beginning of the year. He acknowledged that while advancements in search technology will continue, the challenges ahead will be greater, as much of the “low-hanging fruit” in innovation has already been addressed.

Pichai explained:
“And I just feel like we are getting started. Search itself will continue to change profoundly in 2025. I think we are going to be able to tackle more complex questions than ever before. You know, I think we’ll be surprised even early in 2025, the kind of newer things search can do compared to where it is today…”

He also pointed out the increasing difficulty of making progress in the field:
“I think the progress is going to get harder when I look at 2025, the low-hanging fruit is gone. But I think where the breakthroughs need to come from, where the differentiation needs to come from, is your ability to achieve technical breakthroughs, algorithmic breakthroughs. How do you make the systems work, you know, from a planning standpoint or from a reasoning standpoint? How do you make these systems better? Those are the technical breakthroughs ahead.”

Pichai’s comments highlight Google’s ambitious vision for Search, where the focus is shifting towards addressing more intricate challenges and achieving significant technical and algorithmic advancements. This effort reflects Google’s commitment to ensuring Search continues to evolve in meaningful and transformative ways.

Is Search Going Away?

The interviewer questioned whether Google has fully embraced AI, referencing an author who argued that Google’s “core business is under siege.” This claim was based on the observation that people are increasingly turning to AI and other platforms outside of traditional search engines for answers. Additionally, concerns were raised about the potential “deterioration” of search value as online content becomes dominated by AI-generated material.

Pichai responded by asserting that in a world overwhelmed by inauthentic content, the role of search becomes even more critical and valuable.

“In a world in which you’re flooded with a lot of content… if anything, something like search becomes more valuable,” Pichai stated. He emphasised the importance of search in helping users find trustworthy, reliable, and meaningful content amid an influx of information. “In a world in which you’re inundated with content, you’re trying to find trustworthy content, content that makes sense to you in a way reliably you can use it, I think it becomes more valuable.”

Pichai also addressed the broader context of how people consume information in various forms, noting that new platforms like Facebook, YouTube, and TikTok have historically offered alternative ways to access information. He remarked, “Information is the essence of humanity. We’ve been on a curve on information… when Facebook came around, people had an entirely new way of getting information, YouTube, Facebook, TikTok… I can keep going on and on.”

He criticised the notion that platforms are in a zero-sum competition for users’ attention, suggesting that the reality of how people consume information is far more dynamic. “The problem with a lot of those constructs is they are zero sum in their inherent outlook. They just feel like people are consuming information in a certain limited way and people are all dividing that up. But that’s not the reality of what people are doing.”

Pichai’s remarks highlight Google’s confidence in the enduring relevance of search, even as the digital landscape evolves with the rise of AI and alternative information platforms.

Pichai Stumbles On Question About Impact On Creators

The interviewer posed a critical question about the perceived devaluation of content in the digital age. He compared the traditional process of creating a book—where an author meticulously researches a topic, reads numerous sources, cites them, and publishes a work—with the way Google processes and disseminates vast amounts of information. Highlighting this contrast, he said, “You [Google] get to spit it out a million times. A million times a day. And I just wonder what the economics of that should be for the folks that create it in the beginning.”

In response, Sundar Pichai attempted to defend Google, emphasising the company’s focus on supporting the “ecosystem” of publishers and the traffic it sends their way. However, the interviewer did not address contentious issues such as search results often prioritising Reddit threads or ads over expert content, or the declining visibility of news articles, which has had a detrimental impact on news organisations worldwide.

Pichai’s response appeared hesitant as he struggled to articulate Google’s position. Speaking in abstract terms about the “ecosystem,” he avoided directly mentioning specific websites or issues. Eventually, he shifted focus to Google’s Content ID program, a system designed to support copyright holders, particularly in industries like music, film, and television.

“Look I… uh… It’s a… very important question… uhm… look I… I… think… I think more than any other company… look you know… we for a long time through… you know… be it in search making sure… while it’s often debated, we spend a lot of time thinking about the traffic we send to the ecosystem. Even through the moment through the transition over the past couple of years. It’s an important priority for us,” Pichai explained.

He then highlighted how YouTube uses Content ID to identify copyrighted material and enable monetisation for creators. This program, primarily benefitting corporate copyright owners, helps enforce fair use and compensate creators.

“In YouTube we put a lot of effort into understanding and you know identifying content and with content ID and uh creating monetization for creators. I think… I think those are important principles, right. I think um… there’s always going to be a balance between understanding what is fair use uh… when new technology comes versus how do you… give value back proportionate to the value of the IP, the hard work people have put in,” Pichai concluded.

The discussion underscored the complex challenges tech giants face in balancing technological innovation with ensuring fair treatment and compensation for original content creators.