Sundar Pichai’s Reflections on Google’s 25-Year Evolution
In commemoration of Google’s 25th anniversary, Sundar Pichai, the CEO, has penned a public memorandum. Traditionally, Google has celebrated its birthday on September 27th, a date chosen somewhat arbitrarily. However, for its 25th milestone, the company is taking a proactive approach. Sundar Pichai, the CEO, has initiated the festivities with a 2,400-word public memorandum, reflecting on the company’s journey.
Within the memorandum, there are few surprises for those familiar with Pichai’s extensive speeches. It predominantly comprises self-praise, which is understandable given that Pichai is the second-highest-paid CEO of the world’s fourth-most valuable company. Nevertheless, it is a moment worth exploring, considering the current transition.
Before presenting the full memorandum, let us delve into a few excerpts that have captured our attention:
Over time, the inquiries I’ve directed towards Google have evolved: “How can one repair a leaking faucet?” “What’s the quickest route to Stanford Hospital?” “Methods to soothe a weeping infant?” Then, sometime around the spring of 2003, perhaps the question arose: “How can one excel in a Google interview?” One must wonder, did Sundar genuinely seek Google’s guidance on acing his own interview at the company?
Interestingly, Google initially appealed particularly to small businesses, such as the mail-order lobster business that was its inaugural client. It’s worth noting that Google’s colossal advertising enterprise had humble beginnings tied to lobsters.
In any 25-year odyssey, one encounters challenges, absorbs lessons, and strives for improvement. Recall Google Wave? And who can forget Google Reader?
Looking ahead to 2048, if a teenager, somewhere in the world, nonchalantly views the vast AI-driven landscape we’ve constructed and simply shrugs, we’ll recognize our triumph.
Here is the complete memorandum:
To all users of our products worldwide, our dedicated employees, and our supportive partners:
This month, Google celebrates its 25th anniversary—a momentous occasion made possible by the individuals who utilize our products, encouraging us to continue innovating. It is also a tribute to the countless Googlers, past and present, who have dedicated their talents to crafting these products, as well as to our partners who share our mission.
This is a time for gratitude and reflection.
I have been contemplating the remarkable progress of technology over the past quarter-century and the adaptability of people to it. Many years ago, while I was studying in the United States, my father, who was in India at the time, acquired his first email address. Excited to have a faster and more cost-effective method of communication, I sent him a message. However, I waited, and waited some more. It took a full two days to receive a response, which read, “Dear Mr. Pichai, email received. All is well.” Perplexed by the delay and formality, I phoned him to inquire. He explained that a colleague at his workplace had to access the email on their office computer, print it, and then deliver it to him. My father dictated a response, which his colleague wrote down and eventually typed up to send back to me.
Fast forward to a few months ago when I was with my teenage son. He observed something intriguing, swiftly took photographs, and shared them with his friends. They exchanged messages, and it all transpired more swiftly than the time it would have taken me just to retrieve my phone. Comparing how I communicated with my father years ago to how my son communicates today highlights the significant generational shift. Technology that took us years to adapt to has become second nature to our children. Ideas that once fascinated my father as science fiction—such as making phone calls from a watch or instructing a car to play a favorite song—elicit mere shrugs from my children. These shrugs fill me with hope for the future, setting a high standard for the innovations and inventions of the next generation. I eagerly anticipate witnessing what will elicit shrugs from their children.
An undeniable fact about innovation is that once you push the boundaries of technology, it swiftly transforms from extraordinary to commonplace. This is why Google has never taken its success for granted.
It all commenced with a simple quest.
Larry and Sergey initially outlined our mission 25 years ago: to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and valuable. Their ambitious vision gave birth to a groundbreaking search engine designed to help individuals navigate the ever-expanding realm of online information. The product they created, Google Search, has since assisted billions of people worldwide in finding answers to their questions.
For a few years, I was just like any other internet user, benefiting from Google’s ability to unearth answers to even the most obscure queries, whether it was a minute detail hidden on a store’s customer service page or an arcane football regulation.
Over time, my queries to Google evolved: “How can one repair a dripping faucet?” “What’s the fastest route to Stanford Hospital?” “Ways to pacify a crying infant?” And perhaps, sometime around the spring of 2003: “How to excel in a Google interview?” Google progressively improved its ability to provide satisfactory responses.
It is inspiring to witness how people have harnessed the answers to their questions, whether to locate healthcare or solace during trying times, acquire new skills, explore fresh career paths, or initiate new enterprises. The notion that a student in rural Indonesia can access the same information as a professor at Stanford was revolutionary, profoundly transforming lives and our world. It has opened doors to education and entrepreneurship like no other development before or since. Search laid the groundwork for Google’s economic influence beyond its own confines. Our advertising platforms and tools, much like Search itself, were initially conceived with a simple premise: to assist businesses in connecting with customers already seeking the products and services they offer. This platform particularly appealed to small businesses, including the mail-order lobster enterprise that was our first client. Similar to Search, the capability for any business to advertise online has brought about a truly transformative impact, enabling countless businesses to participate in the digital economy.
A quarter-century of questions.
Search remains the cornerstone of our mission and represents our most audacious venture, with plenty more to come.
Of course, Google is now more than just a search engine. We offer 15 Google products, each serving over half a billion people and businesses, with six of them reaching over 2 billion users each.
Like most Google searches, all these products sprang from questions. Gmail, for instance, posed the question: Can we provide 1 GB of storage to every individual? When Gmail launched in 2004, this storage capacity was more than 100 times what most other free webmail services offered!
Subsequently, we recognized an opportunity to revolutionize web browsers and, consequently, the internet experience for people worldwide. With Chrome, we asked ourselves: Can we create a browser that enhances the web, prioritizing simplicity, speed, and security? Just before launch, I pondered: Will people embrace this innovation?
YouTube dared to ask: What if we granted everyone a means to share their knowledge with the world? Today, it stands as a potent platform for learning and information dissemination.
The questions persisted, and we kept improving and expanding our product offerings with innovative solutions. What if Google Maps allowed people to explore every street in intricate detail worldwide? What if we developed a translation tool enabling individuals to access information and communicate across multiple languages? What if you could retrieve all your archived photos by simply describing what you desired to see?
We also contemplated how we could optimally share our tools, breakthroughs, and infrastructure with others. Google was conceived in the cloud, even though we only introduced our Cloud business in 2008. Today, Google Cloud ranks among the world’s top enterprise companies. Partners across various sectors employ Google technology to enhance customer support and supply chain efficiency, reduce environmental impact, create new applications, and harness the potential of AI. Similar to our advertising partners before them, Cloud’s collaborators are functioning more effectively, expanding faster, and generating employment opportunities with our assistance.
Naturally, not every inquiry led to success. Along a 25-year journey, one encounters setbacks, absorbs lessons, and strives to excel. Who could forget Google Wave?
We have also confronted critical questions about our company’s future. In the 2000s, doubts arose about the web’s longevity. In the 2010s, we grappled with the challenges of adapting to the era of mobile computing and pondered whether search was becoming obsolete. Each time, we returned stronger than before. Our unwavering focus on our mission, our commitment to leveraging advanced computer science to enhance people’s lives, and our audacious determination to challenge the impossible have guided us through these junctures.
A daring determination to defy the impossible.
This daring mindset has empowered us to tackle challenges that others either could not or would not take on. One such seemingly impossible notion was to place a powerful computer in the hands of every individual, regardless of their income or internet accessibility. Today, Android operates on 3 billion devices worldwide, ranging from cutting-edge foldables to entry-level phones. It has played a pivotal role in our efforts to make the internet accessible to all and has inspired other transformative products. Chromebooks, similarly, made computing accessible to schools worldwide. Google Pixel, on the other hand, puts the latest technology directly into the hands of users, including machine learning-powered cameras, speech recognition, transcription capabilities, tensor chips, and more.
This brings us to the realm of AI. Google has been investing in AI from the very beginning. We were among the pioneers in employing machine learning in our products, commencing in the early 2000s for tasks such as spelling corrections, enhancing the quality of advertisements, and providing suggestions and recommendations.
Then, in the early 2010s, a significant breakthrough occurred with deep neural networks. In 2012, a few of us attended a demonstration near Charlie’s, our primary campus cafe. I vividly remember being in awe as the Research team showcased their progress in image recognition, driven by advancements in neural networks. It was the moment when I realized that this was going to revolutionize everything!
A similar revelation struck me when I witnessed the groundbreaking interdisciplinary research conducted at DeepMind, focused on comprehending the essence of intelligence. This progress significantly influenced my thinking when I assumed the role of CEO in 2015; I believed that Google should pivot to become an AI-centric company.
More questions emerged. How could we empower this new era of computing? We invented Tensor Processing Units, or TPUs, which delivered staggering performance gains of 30X to 80X for machine learning, surpassing other hardware available at the time. TPUs powered the AlphaGo computer that defeated the Go world champion, Lee Sedol, in 2016. Around the same period, we introduced our groundbreaking Transformer paper in 2017, establishing the neural network architecture that underpins most contemporary generative AI and large language models.
Many of these technological breakthroughs have spawned some of our most remarkable product innovations. Large language models like MUM and BERT have significantly enhanced search results for complex queries. We have introduced entirely new means for individuals to express their information needs through voice, images, and even queries about visual content using multisearch. Generative AI is presently enabling us to reimagine our core products in innovative ways, from the new Search Generative Experience (SGE) to “Help Me Write” in Gmail. Earlier this year, we unveiled Bard, an initial experiment that allows people to collaborate with generative AI.
My most cherished moments revolve around observing how our products have positively impacted people’s lives. Whether it’s a busy parent capturing a photo of their craft supplies and utilizing Bard to spark a rainy day project for their children, a traveler using Lens to translate a foreign train schedule, or, more profoundly, a family gaining the ability to hear the voice of an individual with ALS, thanks to our research in speech recognition and synthesis.
Designing products that serve people on a global scale is both an honor and a responsibility. People have their own questions: Can we trust these new technologies? We meticulously contemplate how to construct responsible technology from the outset, ensuring the protection and security of everyone’s data while safeguarding individuals from malicious actors in the digital realm. This also encompasses actively engaging in vital discussions regarding how these technologies will influence our society and collaboratively seeking answers. AI plays a central role in this dialogue. Despite our enthusiasm for AI’s potential to benefit individuals and society, we acknowledge that, like any nascent technology, AI introduces complexities and risks. Our development and deployment of AI must address these risks and foster responsible technology. The AI principles we introduced in 2018 are integral to this endeavor. These principles prompt us to question whether our AI applications will be helpful to people and society or if they might pose any harm. They shape our product development and guide us in finding solutions to emerging challenges. For example, just last week, we introduced SynthID, a tool for watermarking and identifying AI-generated images, a significant step toward transparency. We will continue to collaborate with experts and the community to learn and improve.
Peering into the future.
As we gaze ahead, I reflect upon the commitment articulated in our original founder’s letter from 2004: “to create services that enhance the lives of as many individuals as possible— to do meaningful work.”
With AI, we possess the opportunity to enact meaningful change on a grand scale.
We are merely scratching the surface of the potential of the next technological wave and its rapid advancements. Already, a million people are using generative AI within Google Workspace for writing and content creation. Flood forecasting now covers regions inhabited by more than 460 million individuals. A million researchers have accessed the AlphaFold database, featuring 200 million predictions of protein structures. This resource has contributed to efforts to reduce plastic pollution, combat antibiotic resistance, address malaria, and more. Furthermore, AI has enabled us to collaborate with the aviation industry in reducing contrails from aircraft, a crucial measure for mitigating climate change.
Nonetheless, there is much more ahead. Over time, AI is poised to become the most significant technological transformation of our lifetimes, surpassing even the shift from desktop to mobile computing and potentially eclipsing the impact of the internet itself. It represents a fundamental reconfiguration of technology and a potent catalyst for human ingenuity.
Empowering AI to benefit everyone and deploying it responsibly stands as the foremost means through which we will fulfill our mission in the coming decade and beyond.
Now, AI affords us, as well as others, the opportunity to explore questions such as:
How can each student gain access to a personal tutor, proficient in any language and subject?
How can we empower entrepreneurs to pioneer novel, sustainable energy sources?
What tools can we devise to assist individuals in designing and creating new products and fostering new businesses?
How might fields like transportation and agriculture be reimagined?
How can communities enhance their ability to predict and prepare for natural disasters?
As these uncharted frontiers loom on the horizon, we are once again presented with an invitation to act with boldness and responsibility, to enhance the lives of as many individuals as possible, and to persistently pose these profound questions.
Our quest for answers will propel extraordinary technological advancements over the next 25 years.
In 2048, should a teenager, anywhere in the world, casually observe the vast landscape we have shaped with AI and simply shrug, we will know that we have succeeded. And then, we will return to our endeavor.
With immense appreciation for an incredible 25 years,
Sundar Pichai
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