"Google is now a five-layer company, says David Bader, director of the Institute for Data Science at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. One of the key layers is AI, which could account for $185 billion in capital expenditure this year, "larger than the GDP of most countries," according to Bader. That level of spending signals how dramatically the company has changed direction. "No serious search-only company spends like this," he says."
"That focus on AI is increasingly visible to end users, with AI layered into more and more Google products. "They're shoving Gemini into every nook and cranny, whether it's GSuite, whether it's email, whether it's Maps, whatever," says Alex Hanna, a former Google employee and director of research at the Distributed AI Research Institute."
"Still, there remains a gap between what Google is, depending on who you ask and where they sit. "There's how Google sees itself internally, which I think is they see themselves a bit more as an AI company," says Hanna. That contrasts with how much of the world still sees the company: primarily as a search engine. And, in Hanna's view, that experience has deteriorated. "When you use Google Search, it's trash. It sucks," she says."
Google became synonymous with online search and achieved unprecedented dominance. The company has since expanded into a more complex, multi-layer structure, with AI as a major layer. AI spending is projected to reach $185 billion in capital expenditure, indicating a major strategic shift. AI features are increasingly integrated into products such as GSuite, email, and Maps. Internal views position Google more as an AI company, while many users still see it mainly as a search engine. Search quality is described as deteriorating, and the decline is linked to changes in the business model for an AI-driven post-ChatGPT environment where AI can bypass traditional search.
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