“Inside Google’s Two-Year Frenzy to Catch Up With OpenAI” by Paresh Dave and Arielle of Wires

To build the new ChatGPT rival, codenamed Bard, former employees say Hsiao plucked about 100 people from teams across Google. Managers had no choice in the matter, according to a former search employee: Bard took precedence over everything else. Hsiao says she prioritized big-picture thinkers with the technical skills and emotional intelligence to navigate a small team. Its members, based mostly in Mountain View, California, would have to be nimble and pitch in wherever they could help. “You’re Team Bard,” Hsiao told them. “You wear all the hats.”

In January 2023, Pichai announced the first mass layoffs in the company’s history—12,000 jobs, about 7 percent of the workforce. “No one knew what exactly to do to be safe going forward,” says a former engineering manager. Some employees worried that if they didn’t put in overtime, they would quickly lose their jobs. If that meant disrupting kids’ bedtime routines to join Team Bard’s evening meetings, so be it.

I remember, not long ago, when Bard was announced and feeling like Google was being left behind. Bard felt safe and rushed and plenty of people were calling OpenAIs ChatGPT the next Google if not just fully replacing Google. Reading through this profile proves to me that OpenAI being the new player in the game of innovation, not having as much guardrails, was perfect for Google to ignite competition within their walls.

Josh Woodward, lead on Google Labs, explains the vigor within Google:

“AROUND 6:30 ONE evening in March 2024, two Google employees showed up at Josh Woodward’s desk in the yellow zone of Gradient Canopy. Woodward leads Google Labs, a rapid-launch unit charged with turning research into entirely new products, and the employees were eager for him to hear what they had created. Using transcripts of UK Parliament hearings and the Gemini model with long context, they had generated a podcast called Westminster Watch with two AI hosts, Kath and Simon. The episode opened with Simon speaking in a cheery British accent: “It’s been another lively week in the House, with plenty of drama, debate, and even a dash of history.” Woodward was riveted. Afterward, he says, he went around telling everyone about it, including Pichai.

The text-to-podcast tool, known as NotebookLM Audio Overviews, was added to the lineup for that May’s Google I/O conference. A core team worked around the clock, nights and weekends, to get it ready, Woodward told WIRED. “I mean, they literally have listened at this point to thousands and thousands” of AI-generated podcasts, he said.”

I personally thought NotebookLM was incredibly impressive when I was in attendance at I/O 2024. It felt like Google Duplex, but on steroids. It felt like Google had been woken up from a slumber of complacency and lack of competition really gunning for them. Just looking at their AI Journey page shows just how quickly things ramped up after 2021. I think Google is still just getting started. My prediction is that within these next two years, Google is going to ship even more fleshed out products across their Platform and Services team.