Google is much more than an advertising company…privilege to have users trust in us: Sundar Pichai | Technology News
“We are much more than an advertising company,” Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai underlined in an interaction with global media on the sidelines of the Google I/O event on Wednesday.
“We are probably the third largest enterprise software company… We have Waymo, you can think about Android, you can think about Google Play… YouTube has both subscriptions and advertising, we have AI subscription software now and so on. So we are pretty broad that way,” he expanded, when asked if its new push for AI was also just to optimise its advertising business.
“All our teams approach advertising with the same focus on quality like we do our other businesses. And we shouldn’t underestimate that in any economy people are looking for commercial information and businesses are trying to reach those users. Connecting that is a valuable service and we approach it from that first principle in mind. AI will in certain cases make those ads more relevant to people… if we ever get it wrong, all our metrics will show that,” he added.
Saying that privacy is a fundamental value for Google as a company, Pichai said that looking at the kind of services they provide, “it’s a privilege to have users trust in us”.
Pichai, who is completing a decade as CEO at Google this year, said it was Google’s deep technology approach to drive progress in people’s lives that always appealed to him. (Nandagopal Rajan/Express Photo)
Accepting that there are complex regulations constantly evolving around the world, he said AI is a new frontier with Google also “innovating on behalf of users”.
“I have been encouraged by my conversations with European Union leaders who are seeing this as an opportunity to invest in, innovate and and also to simplify regulation so that people like us can serve European consumers,” he said in response to a question on what Google was doing to comply with data privacy laws like GDPR as it rolls our AI products.
“They (European consumers) are equally hungry for access to these products and we are committed to getting it to them. So I think it’s an opportunity for Europe as well.”
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On a personal note, Pichai, who is completing a decade as CEO at Google this year, said it was Google’s deep technology approach to drive progress in people’s lives that always appealed to him.
“We have been investing in quantum computing for the last decade and we worked till it became a reality. If you look at WayMo three years ago, people were pessimistic, but we still invested in the company. We have always taken a foundational approach, a research and science and technology approach, but relentlessly working to bring it into the hands of as many people as possible,” he said, adding that this is what made him drop out of his PhD programme but still tells him to channel a bit of that energy. “Staying close to research is one of the best parts of my job.”
On the pace of technology at the moment, Pichai said if he travels for a couple of weeks he has to walk around the DeepMind team to understand what has happened in that period.
“I don’t think there’s been a time like that… we have been innovating and shipping at a relentless pace. Our philosophy at this moment is to put products out in the hands of people as soon as possible.”
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(The author is in California on the invite of Google)
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