While many other technology giants embrace the metaverse as the next frontier of growth, Alphabet Inc chief executive officer Sundar Pichai sees Google’s future in its oldest offering: Internet search.
“I feel fortunate our mission is timeless,” Pichai said in an interview in Singapore. “There’s more need to organize information than ever before.”
Earlier this month, Google parent Alphabet briefly crossed US$2 trillion in market value thanks to sales and profit growth during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Photo: AFP
When asked where the next US$1 trillion would come from, Pichai pointed to his company’s core service.
People will ask computers more questions with voice and “multimodal experiences,” he said. “Being able to adapt to all that and evolve search will continue to be the biggest opportunity.”
Since taking over Google in 2015, Pichai has pushed the company deeper into cloud computing and artificial intelligence (AI), while facing an increase in regulatory scrutiny.
In the interview, Pichai ticked off Google’s key growth businesses — cloud, the YouTube video service and its app store — and said AI investments were “underlying” each of them.
The India-born CEO also said he expects that more of Google’s products would be developed and tested in Asia first, before spreading across the globe.
Not in China, though.
After icing plans to bring search to China in 2018, following an employee uproar, Google has kept most of its services out of the nation.
“I don’t see that changing,” Pichai said.
However, he does not share other Silicon Valley executives’ dim view of China’s tech advances.
Pichai acknowledged that Google is “neck to neck” with Chinese companies in AI and quantum computing, but argued that the US and China have room to collaborate in areas such as climate change and AI safety.
Some of Google’s largest peers, such as Microsoft Corp and Facebook parent Meta Platforms Inc, have pitched their futures around the virtual worlds of the metaverse.
Google has taken several approaches at virtual and augmented reality products, with limited success.
Years ago, its first attempt, the Google Glass headgear, flopped.
Google recently placed these efforts in a new division reporting to Pichai, although he did not provide specifics about the strategy.
“I’ve always been excited about the future of immersive computing,” he said. “This doesn’t belong to any company. This is the evolution of the Internet.”
Promoters of the metaverse often talk about the potential to build in new technologies such as blockchain and cryptocurrencies.
Aside from some cloud partnerships, Google has largely steered clear of this part of the industry.
Pichai said he does not own any cryptocurrency.
“I wish I did,” he said. “I’ve dabbled in it, you know, in and out.”
To many, Tatu City on the outskirts of Nairobi looks like a success. The first city entirely built by a private company to be operational in east Africa, with about 25,000 people living and working there, it accounts for about two-thirds of all foreign investment in Kenya. Its low-tax status has attracted more than 100 businesses including Heineken, coffee brand Dormans, and the biggest call-center and cold-chain transport firms in the region. However, to some local politicians, Tatu City has looked more like a target for extortion. A parade of governors have demanded land worth millions of dollars in exchange
Hong Kong authorities ramped up sales of the local dollar as the greenback’s slide threatened the foreign-exchange peg. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) sold a record HK$60.5 billion (US$7.8 billion) of the city’s currency, according to an alert sent on its Bloomberg page yesterday in Asia, after it tested the upper end of its trading band. That added to the HK$56.1 billion of sales versus the greenback since Friday. The rapid intervention signals efforts from the city’s authorities to limit the local currency’s moves within its HK$7.75 to HK$7.85 per US dollar trading band. Heavy sales of the local dollar by
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) revenue jumped 48 percent last month, underscoring how electronics firms scrambled to acquire essential components before global tariffs took effect. The main chipmaker for Apple Inc and Nvidia Corp reported monthly sales of NT$349.6 billion (US$11.6 billion). That compares with the average analysts’ estimate for a 38 percent rise in second-quarter revenue. US President Donald Trump’s trade war is prompting economists to retool GDP forecasts worldwide, casting doubt over the outlook for everything from iPhone demand to computing and datacenter construction. However, TSMC — a barometer for global tech spending given its central role in the
The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) yesterday met with some of the nation’s largest insurance companies as a skyrocketing New Taiwan dollar piles pressure on their hundreds of billions of dollars in US bond investments. The commission has asked some life insurance firms, among the biggest Asian holders of US debt, to discuss how the rapidly strengthening NT dollar has impacted their operations, people familiar with the matter said. The meeting took place as the NT dollar jumped as much as 5 percent yesterday, its biggest intraday gain in more than three decades. The local currency surged as exporters rushed to