Google I/O 2025: Search giant goes AI-everywhere as cofounder Sergey Brin returns

Pichai, accompanied by a slew of key executives, made over 15 announcements across all fronts—a new AI model with more reasoning capability for better generative performance, an ‘AI Mode’ for its mammoth search engine, an AI-driven 3D video conferencing platform called Beam, live speech translation on Google Meet, a network of AI agents for businesses called ‘Project Mariner’, a new video generator called ‘Flow’ that can also create matching audio with coherent dialogues, live search of everything around, and more.

The developer statistic, alongside Google’s full list of announcements, is key. Three people that Mint spoke with at Google said that, since last year in particular, Google’s top brass expressed concerns about the company’s progress in AI. This led to the return of cofounder Sergey Brin, who had stepped down from the role of president in December 2019.

Brin, each of the executives added, is also keen on pushing Demis Hassabis, the company’s Nobel laureate AI chief, to become a more regular and prominent leadership figure. While this does not imply any immediate change, Google’s urgency to ramp-up its AI work is evident for all to see.

“The hierarchy is going all-in on AI. Back when ChatGPT had launched and created the buzz that it had, Google had sent an internal directive asking all employees to use an early rendition of its Gemini AI platform (previously called Bard) as much as they could—even in their free time, to find ways to improve the platform. Now, the company is again going after AI with all guns blazing, and Brin is unofficially spearheading the boost from Mountain View," said one of the three executives cited above, requesting anonymity.

“It’s almost a war room-scale urgency—Google, and especially Brin, isn’t about to let go of where the company stands today without a fight. Engineer hirings, as a result, have ramped up especially over the past 12 months," a second executive added.

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Why this sense of urgency, though? Since 2022, a relative unknown in OpenAI took the world by storm when it released an application named ChatGPT. The latter, which set an all-time record by amassing 100 million users within just two months of launch, made the cutting-edge field of generative AI a household name.

But generative AI was not invented by OpenAI. Instead, it was Google that funded the Stanford University research that gave birth to this field, when the research was published in June 2017.

Falling behind

Since then, Google has fallen behind in Big Tech’s latest race for global supremacy. The technology's originator is today competing with Meta Platforms and Microsoft, as well as upstarts such as Anthropic and Perplexity AI. Today, Google seeks to convince shareholders and AI industry leaders that the company is far from being out of the dogfight for AI supremacy.

Thus, a vicious AI race is unfolding, one to which Google is increasingly contributing more firepower. A quick look at Google’s own ‘careers’ page, where the company posts all of its open hiring positions, shows that both globally and in India, more than one out of every three job postings is linked to AI engineering and sales. Out of nearly 3,400 job postings around the world, almost 1,200 are for AI roles.

A spokesperson for the company did not respond toMint’s emailed request for a comment on AI hiring until press time.

“Technology is moving so fast, and we’re shifting faster than ever. Since last year’s I/O, we’ve announced over a dozen foundation models, multiple research breakthroughs, and released over 20 major AI products. This is only a slice of innovation that is across the company—from Search, to Cloud, to YouTube and even subscriptions. There’s a lot of momentum, and there’s more to come," Pichai said on Monday in a pre-brief to journalists around the world.Mintwas a part of this briefing.

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Senior company executives also added that prioritizing AI in every feature and service that Google provides is indeed an internal mandate today. Mitesh Agarwal, managing director of Asia-Pacific for Google’s cloud business, toldMintthat Google’s current corporate strategy is to have AI “be deeply integrated in every layer of every product, giving users a choice to use AI at every point."

More partners

“We’ve committed to a very fast pace of innovation, but also to offering the best-in-class in AI for every feature. For developers, AI tools and features should be available in quick clicks through our AI studio developer platform," Agarwal added.

Through developers, Agarwal said that in India, Google is already powering AI features in companies such as mobile ad-tech firm Glance, and financial services companiesFederal Bank and HDFC Ergo, among others.

The company is also increasingly partnering with engineering and developer influencers, such as The Cutting Edge School with over 800,000 followers, 100xEngineers with over 900,000 followers, and Varun Mayya with over 1.9 million followers across Instagram and YouTube. OpenAI, too, is actively engaging such creators to increasingly reach out to developers and convince them to build and propagate their AI models, tools and platforms to users and businesses alike.

Industry consultants believe that there is a rising resurgence in Google, although long-term proof of success is yet to be seen. Jayanth Kolla, partner at tech consultancy firm Convergence Catalyst, said that at one point, “the pedantic pace of decision-making at Google brought to the fore a clear threat of them becoming what IBM made of itself."

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“In the early parts of the decade, IBM’s Watson was seen as the gold standard of AI development. But IBM’s regressive approach to corporate strategy led it to become nearly insignificant in today’s AI race. The reason why Google lost out to Meta, OpenAI and others in the early leg of the generative AI race is purely because the company simply didn’t move fast enough. Eventually, it needed Brin to come back to fire a sense of urgency into the way it operates today," Kolla added.

Kashyap Kompella, AI analyst and founder of technology consultancy firm RPA2AI, added that Google “can never be written off, but there are clear challenges."

Roping in developers

“A company like Google has massive might and clout in the industry. Even today, the numbers continue to suggest that Google is being resilient in AI in fields such as search and advertising, which are its areas of dominance. But, there’s no denying that its rivals are moving fast, and there are clear indications within the industry that Google’s AI products are not the first-choice for developers and end-users. The biggest benefit of OpenAI, Anthropic and Perplexity is that these companies move fast in deploying features, reaching out to developers and serving a broad variety of AI use cases in the market today. In the long run, it is the developer-friendly approach and the strength of the ecosystem around AI platforms that will define who wins the AI game," he added.

The company’s pitch to the AI world on Tuesday echoes its urgency. But investors have not been entirely convinced yet. In the past 12 months, Google’s share price has fallen nearly 6%.

However, there are green shoots. In the past month, Google’s share price has risen 12% to make up for what has been a difficult year so far. With a market cap of $2.03 trillion, Google remains the fifth-largest company in the world. OpenAI, though, is not too far behind—the as-yet-private upstart disclosed a $300-billion valuation last month. This would make it the 30th most valuable company in the world—a feat it has achieved largely within the past three years.

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“This race is only getting started. There’s no reason to write Google off yet, but the next five years will prove if Big Tech can retain its place," Kolla said.

The author is in Mountain View, California, to attend I/O 2025 on Google’s invitation.