{"id":683579,"date":"2026-05-20T19:09:25","date_gmt":"2026-05-20T19:09:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/683579\/"},"modified":"2026-05-20T19:09:25","modified_gmt":"2026-05-20T19:09:25","slug":"how-google-is-starting-to-win-the-a-i-race","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/683579\/","title":{"rendered":"How Google Is Starting to Win the A.I. Race"},"content":{"rendered":"

Just two years ago, Google looked like it was in trouble. In a desperate move to play catch-up with the OpenAI chatbot that had upended the tech industry, the search giant debuted an unpolished version of its artificial intelligence on Google.com. The A.I. spat out shoddy information, including advice for people to eat rocks and put glue on their pizza<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Google\u2019s reign over the internet seemed at risk.<\/p>\n

But today, consensus is forming in Silicon Valley not only that Google has recovered and caught up but that it could actually win the A.I. race, a testament to how so much can change in so little time.<\/p>\n

Google announced on Tuesday at Google I\/O, its conference for software developers, that in only one year the number of people regularly using its chatbot, Gemini, had more than doubled to 900 million, on a par with OpenAI\u2019s self-reported number of active users for ChatGPT<\/a> and nearly 30 times the estimated web traffic of Anthropic\u2019s Claude chatbot, which is more focused on business customers.<\/p>\n

And unlike Anthropic and OpenAI, which are still losing money from operating expensive A.I. data centers, Google is rapidly developing ways to use A.I. to increase profit with online advertising<\/a>, its bread and butter. In its last quarter, Google reported, its advertising revenue rose 16 percent to $77 billion, fueled by A.I. technology that has helped marketers collect deeper information about users\u2019 interests.<\/p>\n

Pretty soon, Gemini will become a staple on a competitor\u2019s platform: Apple\u2019s iPhone. Google and Apple said in January that Gemini would become the foundational A.I. technology for a future version of Siri, Apple\u2019s voice assistant. Gemini is already included on Android devices, so the partnership with Apple will, in effect, bake Gemini into virtually all of the world\u2019s phones.<\/p>\n

At I\/O this week, Google shared its vision for how it would use A.I. to increase sales for online retailers, including through a new type of shopping cart that automatically surfaces promotions to shoppers.<\/p>\n

The company also said it was continuing to add its A.I. into tools that people use every day \u2014 for instance, by letting a person using Google Docs ask Gemini to draft a speech that includes personal anecdotes and jokes.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf I had to put a wager on the biggest winner of A.I., I would say it\u2019s Google,\u201d said Gary Rivlin, a former New York Times reporter who wrote a book about the tech industry\u2019s race to cash in on A.I.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you asked me that same question a year and a half ago, the answer wouldn\u2019t have been Google,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

Google\u2019s success with Gemini is a case study in how even a juggernaut can seemingly transform itself overnight to remain dominant. But past incumbents faced with similar existential threats did not have the same story.<\/p>\n

About 15 years ago, Microsoft, whose leadership in personal computing was challenged by the rise of Apple\u2019s iPhone and Google\u2019s Android ecosystems, failed to stay relevant in the mobile phone era even after releasing its Windows Phone devices and acquiring the handset maker Nokia<\/a> for $7.2 billion. Microsoft remains extremely profitable thanks to business customers, and it has a large video game business, but it no longer leads the pack among consumers.<\/p>\n

(The Times has sued OpenAI<\/a> and Microsoft, claiming copyright infringement of news content related to A.I. systems. The two companies have denied the suit\u2019s claims.)<\/p>\n

Instead of isolating Gemini, Google reinvented itself by blending A.I. into all of its most important products. To name a few: There is a team working on Gemini for Gmail, another working on Gemini inside Google Maps and yet another focused on the Gemini chatbot app.<\/p>\n

Google is also in a position to use A.I. to capitalize on the travel industry. Gemini is the only chatbot with native access to Google Flights and Google Hotels for looking up airfare and lodging, which makes it a superior travel agent.<\/p>\n

To put it another way: What Google has that other A.I. companies lack is cultural cachet. And with the Gemini model integrated into so many popular services that people rely on every day for work and play, Google has made it much more likely that people will interact with its A.I., said Carolina Milanesi, the president of Creative Strategies, a consumer technology research firm.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not about just how good the model is, but where it is and how easy it is for people to discover Gemini and then use it and get value,\u201d Ms. Milanesi said.<\/p>\n

Google clearly leaned into its advantages to improve its technology. It made A.I.-generated answers a permanent fixture on Google.com \u2014 still the most visited website in the world \u2014 without giving users the ability to opt out of seeing them.<\/p>\n

Despite making glaring mistakes about the nutritional value of rocks, among other errors, in its early days, Google quickly honed the model. But there is still some work to do. A recent analysis from The Times concluded that Google\u2019s A.I.-generated responses were correct 90 percent of the time<\/a>. Google disputed the study and argued that its answers were more accurate.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey just have this reach that few, if any, companies on Earth have,\u201d Mr. Rivlin said. \u201cLooking for the next Google? It\u2019s probably Google.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Just two years ago, Google looked like it was in trouble. In a desperate move to play catch-up…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":683580,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[256,313120,254,255,64,63,5004,11711,214340,56737,106285,149978,329529,105],"class_list":["post-683579","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-anthropic-ai-llc","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-chatgpt","tag-computers-and-the-internet","tag-gary","tag-google-inc","tag-online-advertising","tag-openai-labs","tag-rivlin","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/683579","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=683579"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/683579\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/683580"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=683579"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=683579"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=683579"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}