As we settle into the new year, several big tech companies have held their earnings calls for the fourth quarter of 2024. Among them are Microsoft, Meta, Apple, and Alphabet (Google's parent company).
During Alphabet's earnings call on Tuesday, Google's CEO, Sundar Pichai, stated that its biggest product, Google Search, was in the midst of a journey around artificial intelligence.
AI is nothing new for Google. The Transformer model that powers chatbots like ChatGPT started as a research project at Google and was published back in 2017. During the earnings call, Pichai said:
As AI continues to expand the universe of queries that people can ask, 2025 is going to be one of the biggest years for search innovation yet.
He also outlined the next steps for integrating AI into Google Search, aiming to make it behave more like an AI assistant.
The shift from a traditional search box that returns a list of links and snippets started with the introduction of AI Overviews in May 2024. However, its launch was rocky, with the feature generating incorrect and sometimes dangerous answers. Speaking on the evolution of Google Search, Pichai said:
You are really dramatically expanding the types of use cases for which Search can work—things which don’t always get answered instantaneously, but can take some time to answer.
Those are all areas of exploration, and you will see us putting new experiences in front of users through the course of 2025.
He sees an opportunity to allow users to ask follow-up questions in Google Search, similar to what platforms like Perplexity AI already offer.
Google is also working on projects like Project Mariner and Project Astra, which it plans to integrate into Search. Mariner provides AI agents that can take control of a browser, click buttons, and fill out forms. Astra, on the other hand, is a multimodal AI system that Google describes as its vision for future AI assistants.
Another potential addition is Gemini Deep Research, which was introduced last month. This tool generates detailed reports based on research questions, including key findings, source links, and related content that can be exported to Google Docs.
Traditionally, users looking for research papers might search Google Scholar or use advanced search filters like "[topic] filetype:pdf" in Google Search. Now, it seems Google aims to automate that process and generate complete reports.
Source: TechCrunch
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