I’ve long argued that Google is the AI King. Here’s Why.
Mobile. There are only 2 mobile operating systems that matter: Android (72% share) and iOS (28%) share. Therefore, when users interact with their phones through voice, they are primarily using Google’s natural language AI (Google Assistant) or Apple’s natural language AI (Siri). Nowhere to be found is Microsoft Cortana nor Amazon’s Alexa. Google Assistant was so superior to Siri that I switched to an Android phone in 2017 and have not looked back (First the Essential Phone founded by Android founder Andy Rubin and Google Pixel phones ever since).
Apps. Google Translate, Google Maps, Google Lens/Multisearch, Google Live Caption and many other Google apps and services are infused with advanced AI such that many of the executable instructions take place entirely on device – no need to go out to the cloud or the edge of the network. Google was doing this back in 2019 (see our article with demos HERE).
- Microsoft Cortana is nowhere to be found.
- Siri. To be fair I have not tested Siri since I left Apple, but it will be impossible for Siri to ever make share gains on Google given that AI-based platforms benefit from usage. iOS dramatically lags Android from a market share / usage perspective. Usage is hugely important as it accelerates the training of machine learning models (machine learning models underpin AI). Today, the scaling of machine learning training is approximately doubling every six months. Thus, the more time that passes, the greater Google’s AI lead.
Search. Infusing natural language AI into generic search is interesting. Microsoft’s Bing has partnered with and is an investor in OpenAI. Google has its own in-house offering – Bard. You may now use OpenAI’s offering – ChatGPT – as part of Bing. I’ve tried it. Investors should try it as well and determine if that search experience is something that will dethrone Google’s dominant position in search. I doubt it. In addition, don’t forget Google Lens/multisearch / image search and YouTube – all of which are part of broadly-defined “Search“.
Cloud services. AWS, Azure and Google Cloud – the three leading remote server companies – all leverage AI / machine learning in their respective offerings. Google Cloud lags from a marketshare standpoint but leads from a technology standpoint in my view as it has more AI-powered services as compared to AWS and Azure. It would make enormous sense for Google to acquire Oracle to beef up its remote server marketshare.
Smart home devices. I believe that Google’s Nest product line will take share from Amazon and Apple in this category over the years based on the quality of the AI that underpins Google’s offerings. However, this is a topic for another day.