Google CEO Sundar Pichai has backed growth of artificial intelligence over virtual reality as the next era of computing.
Speaking on the company’s earnings call, where Google reported year-on-year revenue growth of 23% to $20.3 billion for Q1, Pichai highlighted investments in machine learning projects and artificial intelligence will continue, though the team is not discounting virtual reality completely.
“And overall, I do think in the long run, I think we will evolve in computing from a mobile first to an AI first world,” said Pichai. “And I do think we are at the forefront of development. So we don’t view it as adapting to it as much as pushing hard and getting there. And so that’s the core of what we do, and we’ll continue to do that.”
While the company has been making progress in the world of AI in recent months, Google launched its Cloud Machine Learning product last month, it has seemingly been playing catch up with the likes of Watson and AWS whose offerings have been in the public eye for a substantially longer period of time. Although it could be seen to be playing catch-up, Pichai believes increased investments and prioritization of AI could be the market differentiator for Google.
“We do think we are competent across a range of work flows,” said Pichai. “And areas where we view we will be uniquely capable over time is, because of our machine learning capabilities, helping enterprises really understand their data, understand how best they can do what their core competency is and really revolutionize around that. It’s early days and it’s a long-term investment. But bringing our machine learning APIs over time through cloud to our enterprise customers is going be a huge source of differentiation for us.”
The company has in recent months been aggressively building its position in the public cloud market, and from what Pichai has said on the earnings call, it would appear this charge will continue. Pichai claims Google has been doing cloud, internally at least, since its inception, though the company has now matured its processes to ensure it is able to serve customers in an effective manner. Pichai also believes the acceptance of AI in enterprise, and the introduction of Diane Greene, positions Google in a bold stance to improve its share of the cloud computing segment.
“Last December, we have unified our cloud businesses under one leader (Diane Greene), so we can innovate faster and better serve our customers,” said Pichai. “This decision is already paying off. Enterprises are starting to see the power of combining Google Cloud Platform with our suite of business applications, all of which are infused with our machine learning services.”