Google's new core marks the company's future beyond search

Although one might think otherwise, Google is a very young company. It was created less than thirty years ago, in 1998, in San Francisco. The original product of its founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, was a search engine that “organizes the Internet”. And they got it. They created what became the best search engine in the world for a long time, used in most countries around the world, including Europe.

Google's activity was clearly oriented towards the sale of advertisingmaking all their products free since thanks to revenue from advertisers, they would not have to charge users themselves. This has made possible the creation of such remarkable products as Gmail, Google Maps or, less recently, Google Photos.

Google's strategy remained unchanged for many years, more than a decade, but like any business, it began to evolve, partly because of the market, and partly because of its creators' own desires. Google wanted to be much more than a search engine and he knew that to do that he had to look in another direction.

Google is an AI company

Google is one of those responsible for the current scenario of products related to artificial intelligence since studies on transformers, key elements in the development of this technology. And it's not like it's a trivial effort. Sundar Pichai already defended in 2015 that AI was one of the key parts of the company in the long term. That was almost ten years ago and since then, the manager has been working to move Google in this direction, now within Alphabet.

The reality is that most of the company's revenue still comes from advertising, pBut it is more and more normal to see subscription systems which try to diversify these profits. Google One is one of the most famous products but not the only one. YouTube Premium is gaining more and more reach and it is very likely that we will gradually see more payment or subscription proposals.

Artificial intelligence will be one of the keys to this new development since it will be integrated into all of the company's products.from Android to Gmail via Google Office or Google Photos. Sundar Pichai does not see a future for the company he runs without this technology.

Bard as a failed bet

The arrival of ChatGPT was a big blow to the table of products integrating artificial intelligence. A company that no one had on the radar, OpenAI launched a chatbot that showed us what we thought the future would be was in the present. And it wouldn't be the only product they would launch. Google was unable to react quickly, any more than Microsoft, which nevertheless decided to dip into its checkbook and invest massively in the company, hoping not to be left behind in this new era, as happened produced with smartphones.

Google's first response was Bard, a chatbot that didn't have much experience since shortly after it was renamed Gemini, the name of the technology it used. Google decided that this would be the brand of its AI-related products. Bard's death was by no means the first in Google's ecosystem, but it was This was one of the fastest.

Gemini as the last bet

After a few first months in which Google was looking for how to give a serious answer to ChatGPT and the rest of the companies that wanted to position themselves in the AI ​​sector, it seems that the company has managed to chart a course and follow it. Gemini emerges as the replacement for Google Assistantalthough we still have a dual use of both systems and the first requires the second for things as simple as controlling home automation from the cell phone. Of course, smart speakers and systems like Google TV don't yet use Geminibut it's only a matter of time before they do.

This new assistant has the potential to be much more than what we have seen in systems like Alexa or Siri, with the use of agents that connect to other Google services and, perhaps, to third-party services in the future. This would allow its use to develop in a guided and accelerated manner.

Gemini Live and the hardware of the future

A good example of how this new system is much more advanced than the assistants we have had so far is Gemini Live. This feature allows you to chat in real time with the system without having to activate voice recognition every time and in a natural way, and you can even interrupt it.

This form of interaction will be essential in the devices that will eventually replace smartphones. We don't know if they will smart headsets, virtual reality vision systems or mixed reality glasses which will project elements in front of us. What seems clear in all of these cases is that the way of entering data will be far removed from keyboards and touchscreens, and the voice will be the protagonist.

We cannot fail to mention the film Her, which 12 years ago seemed like an inaccessible science fiction film and which currently seems to be upon us, at least as far as technology is concerned. And there Google has a lot to say because They are one of the few companies that have a huge amount of data on us..

Esto supone una ventaja importante sobre empresas como Apple, que siempre han alardeado de promover la privacidad, o sobre OpenAI, que no llevan un cuarto de siglo recopilando información de sus usuarios para poder cruzarla y ofrecer una experiencia completa. Si Google lo hace bien, Gemini puede convertirse en su último gran producto. Y no porque no sean capaces de desarrollar más, sino porque no les haga falta.