As Google celebrates its 25th anniversary today, the company is looking to the next quarter of a century the same way it did when it first started – believing it will be able to change the world with technology. Only this time, what it envisions is far more advanced than it ever imagined in 1998.
With artificial intelligence emerging as the newest battleground in the technology arena, companies are jockeying for pole position when it comes to innovation brought further into the limelight by generative AI.
That aligns with Google's plans to make AI “for all” – the very same ideology it had when its co-founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, began dabbling with web search in September 1998 and seeing the difference it could make.
The duo's mission was to “organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful”, Sundar Pichai, chief executive of Google parent Alphabet, wrote in a message for its silver anniversary, which the company celebrates today - September 27.
Google and AI
It was, as Mr Pichai put it, an “ambitious vision” for Mr Page and Mr Brin to create, at the time, a new kind of search engine “to help people make sense of the waves of information moving online”.
Fast forward to more than two decades later, the company is getting ready for another monumental technological shift akin to what it envisioned before the 21st century kicked in.
“With AI, we have the opportunity to do things that matter on an even larger scale. There is so much more ahead. Over time, AI will be the biggest technological shift we see in our lifetimes,” Mr Pichai said.
“It’s bigger than the shift from desktop computing to mobile, and it may be bigger than the internet itself. It’s a fundamental rewiring of technology and an incredible accelerant of human ingenuity.”
Gamechanging generative AI
AI has come a long way and has been widely used across categories. But the advent of generative AI has changed all that.
Google, with its Bard service, is currently locked in a battle for supremacy with Microsoft-backed OpenAI's ChatGPT, which launched the generative AI craze, and other companies.
The company – a subsidiary of Alphabet in 2015 following a rebranding – has long known AI, which has powered its industry-leading and omnipresent search service. Google searches run well into the dozens of trillions since the service was launched.
AI is also widely used across Google's portfolio of products, which total 127 and include popular services such as Gmail, YouTube and the Android operating system, which powers smartphones that rival Apple's iPhones.
Fifteen of these products each serve more than half a billion people and businesses, while six serve more than two billion users each, Mr Pichai said, with localisation also being key to reaching more users to fulfil regional preferences.
“AI can play an important role in driving innovation in businesses and empowering people in their daily lives across the Middle East and North Africa,” Anthony Nakache, managing director of Google Mena, told The National.
“Since launching Bard in Arabic earlier this year, we've seen immense positive feedback and we're committed to continue to bring everyday AI closer to Arabic speakers across the region.”
Google's AI technology is used to analyse and understand the content of web pages, as well as to identify patterns in user behaviour, according to industry platform SEO.ai.
This helps Google to better understand what users are looking for and to provide more accurate search results, it said.
The company promoted its algorithm as the secret sauce that makes Google search faster while providing more relevant results and making it easier to connect relevant content from any web source.
“More importantly, it provided a foundation that made advertising a dominant factor in decades of Google’s revenue growth – something that most did not see coming,” Daryl Plummer, a vice president and analyst at Gartner, told The National.
Is AI Google's future?
Google's revenue has grown exponentially – from a humble $400 million in 2002 to about $279.8 billion in 2022, a 9 per cent rise from the previous year.
Net income was also healthy, growing manifold, from $99.7 million in 2002 to about $60 billion in 2022, albeit a fall of 21 per cent from 2021.
Generative AI could help maintain and boost Google's bottom line – and this draws parallels to when the company first began with its search service, Mr Plummer said.
The technology “is starting to create a productivity explosion like the world has never seen. We are in a similar place to when Google search was introduced”, he said.
Mr Plummer expects Google to “certainly use” generative AI to boost its advertising business which, like the majority of technology companies, stagnated due to persistent inflation, high interest rates and economic uncertainty.
The company is expected to “extend AI into virtually everything it does” because it will be the “next revolution in digital growth”, he said.
“Google has the opportunity, as do many others, to break new ground and find solutions that others did not see coming. The door to opportunity is open once more. Google must walk through it.”
Google's experience will certainly serve it well; true to form, its next phase of growth and innovation will, again, rely on where it all started – with searching.
“Our search for answers will drive extraordinary technology progress over the next 25 years,” Mr Pichai said.
“And in 2048, if, somewhere in the world, a teenager looks at all we’ve built with AI and shrugs, we’ll know we succeeded. And then we’ll get back to work.”
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Shubh Mangal Saavdhan
Directed by: RS Prasanna
Starring: Ayushmann Khurrana, Bhumi Pednekar
Terror attacks in Paris, November 13, 2015
- At 9.16pm, three suicide attackers killed one person outside the Atade de France during a foootball match between France and Germany
- At 9.25pm, three attackers opened fire on restaurants and cafes over 20 minutes, killing 39 people
- Shortly after 9.40pm, three other attackers launched a three-hour raid on the Bataclan, in which 1,500 people had gathered to watch a rock concert. In total, 90 people were killed
- Salah Abdeslam, the only survivor of the terrorists, did not directly participate in the attacks, thought to be due to a technical glitch in his suicide vest
- He fled to Belgium and was involved in attacks on Brussels in March 2016. He is serving a life sentence in France
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Infobox
Western Region Asia Cup Qualifier, Al Amerat, Oman
The two finalists advance to the next stage of qualifying, in Malaysia in August
Results
UAE beat Iran by 10 wickets
Kuwait beat Saudi Arabia by eight wickets
Oman beat Bahrain by nine wickets
Qatar beat Maldives by 106 runs
Monday fixtures
UAE v Kuwait, Iran v Saudi Arabia, Oman v Qatar, Maldives v Bahrain
Jebel Ali card
1.45pm: Maiden Dh75,000 1,400m
2.15pm: Handicap Dh90,000 1,400m
2.45pm: Maiden Dh75,000 1,000m
3.15pm: Handicap Dh105,000 1,200m
3.45pm: Maiden Dh75,000 1,600m
4.15pm: Handicap Dh105,000 1,600m
4.45pm: Handicap Dh80,000 1,800m
The National selections
1.45pm: Cosmic Glow
2.15pm: Karaginsky
2.45pm: Welcome Surprise
3.15pm: Taamol
3.45pm: Rayig
4.15pm: Chiefdom
4.45pm: California Jumbo
Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
