Google: Winner of the AI race?
It appears that the overwhelming consensus is that Google is losing the AI race. Maybe that they have even lost the race, and they have no reason to continue competing.
From my perspective, Google is the clear winner:
- They're an API company. OpenAI and Anthropic have API's, but they're overpriced relative to Gemini.
- Google's models are good enough to do most of what businesses want in a paid model.
- Gemma allows Google to compete with open weight models. Gemma 4 is a very good model that runs well locally, even on the GPU. If the future is in fine-tuned models, Google is in prime position with Gemma.
- Google isn't spending money developing the most advanced frontier model. Doing that can only be justified if businesses are willing to pay for frontier models. I don't see that happening.
I think OpenAI and Anthropic are like Yahoo of the late 1990s. Google, on the other hand, is like...Google of the late 1990s - offering a compelling product with a good monetization strategy.