Inside Google’s Two-Year Frenzy to Catch Up With OpenAI

The search giant should’ve been first to the chatbot revolution. It wasn’t. So it punched back with late nights, layoffs—and lowering some guardrails.

                                                                             

Under mounting pressure, Google had no choice but to accelerate its AI efforts. CEO Sundar Pichai issued a “code red,” signaling the urgency of the situation. Hsiao, a seasoned Google executive with a track record of delivering major projects, was tasked with assembling a team and shipping a competitive AI chatbot—fast.

Over the next hundred days, Google engineers, researchers, and product leads worked around the clock. The company had the underlying technology—its LaMDA model—but it needed to refine it, make it more conversational, and, crucially, ensure it didn’t produce too many embarrassing or misleading responses. The team also had to navigate Google’s famously cautious approach to AI, balancing the need for speed with the company’s commitment to safety and accuracy.

By early 2023, Google unveiled its response: Bard, a conversational AI designed to rival ChatGPT. The launch was rushed, and early demos showed the bot making factual errors, leading to a dip in Google’s stock price. Still, the race was on, and Google wasn’t backing down. It rapidly iterated on Bard, incorporating feedback and improving its capabilities, while also integrating AI more deeply into its core products, including Search.

The AI wars had begun, and the hundred-day challenge was just the opening battle.

                                                                           

The pressure was mounting. Google, once the undisputed leader in AI research, was now seen as lagging behind a startup. Wall Street investors were skeptical. Employees were frustrated. And the world was watching.

Pichai’s vision of an “AI-first world” had yet to materialize in a meaningful way. Despite pioneering the transformer architecture—the very foundation of OpenAI’s ChatGPT—Google had been slow to commercialize its breakthroughs. Instead of revolutionary AI-driven products, it had delivered incremental updates to its search engine and an underwhelming Assistant that mostly set timers and played music. Meanwhile, key researchers who had built the technology behind modern AI, including transformer co-inventor Aidan Gomez, had left for startups or rival companies.

The financials told a grim story. Alphabet’s stock had plummeted nearly 40% in 2022, dragged down by a slump in digital ad sales—its core business. Investors worried that Google was being outpaced by Microsoft, which had quickly partnered with OpenAI to integrate ChatGPT into Bing and enterprise tools. If search was truly under threat, Google had no time to waste.

For Hsiao, the hundred-day challenge wasn’t just about launching a chatbot. It was about proving that Google still had what it took to lead the AI revolution.

#longreads #Google #Open #AIartificial intelligence #Google Gemini #ChatGPT #AIRevolution #GoogleAI #ChatGPT #ArtificialIntelligence #SundarPichai #TechIndustry #Innovation #GoogleVsOpenAI #AIFuture #TechCompetition #Transformers #MachineLearning #DigitalTransformation