Google's AI charge: How Sergey Brin is taking on the might of OpenAI

Mint

2 days ago

New Delhi/Mountain View, California: In Mountain View, California, right next to Google's three million square-feet Googleplex headquarters, is a satellite office. While, from the outside, there's nothing seemingly special about it, the building currently houses an elite team of specialist engineers who have been tasked with only one thing: build the best foundational artificial intelligence (AI) model in the world. At the centre of its biggest room sits a man who many in Silicon Valley refer to as a living legend—Sergey Brin, Google's co-founder.
Brin retired in December 2019 but returned to the company last year to lead a light brigade of over 300 engineers, all of whom are charging at OpenAI's GPT models, Google's primary rival in a high stakes battle. OpenAI's GPT models are disrupting the way people search, posing an existential threat to Alphabet Inc., Google's parent company.
Brin is spearheading the development of Gemini, Google's suite of foundational AI models. Gemini's success, or failure, would impact two major areas within Alphabet—Search, and the nascent space of video generation.
For one, Search currently accounts for 56% of Alphabet's annual revenue of $350 billion. Search is also a matter of personal pride for Brin and Larry Page, Google's second founder. Giving up its market dominance in Search means letting go of the duo's legacy—their entire life's work.
Alongside Search, Brin was also concerned about Sora, OpenAI's video generation model. Last year, Google briefly showcased Veo, its video-generating foundational model. However, the market found Veo to be an effort from Google to catch-up with OpenAI.
'This prompted Brin's efforts to create Google Flow this year and launch the AI subscription plans—all a part of his efforts to show that Google, in fact, is still the behemoth as far as Big Tech is concerned," said a senior executive working on the integration of AI in Google's cloud offerings. He didn't want to be identified.
At I/O 2025, an annual developer conference held in May this year, Google launched Flow, a video generation and editing platform that lets users create films with dialogue and background music, without needing any camera, audio and editing setup at all.
A second executive, who also didn't want to be identified, said that much of Google's AI showcase at the conference was driven by what Brin's team has been up to.
'The core task that Brin is leading right now is to prove that Google is not following OpenAI's lead in AI—it is ready to lead innovation for others to follow. Last year, announcements that Google made were all either work in progress, or an iteration of what OpenAI had already showcased. This year, we've largely undone that," the executive, who works with Google's worldwide developer relations teams, said.
A legacy at risk
Much of Google's success, thus far, lies in the 'PageRank' algorithm that made Search the global behemoth that it is today. While the algorithm's patent is owned by Stanford University—Brin's alma mater—he, along with Page, were the ones who invented it.
After failing to sell its algorithm to then-market leader Yahoo twice between 1998 and 2002, Google went on to lead the market globally. In 2021, Yahoo was sold to investment fund Apollo Global Management at $4.88 billion. Alphabet, in 2024, generated $350 billion in annual revenue.
Page, to be sure, is no longer involved with Google's everyday operations, even though he retains a board seat. Instead, Page is focusing on a new AI venture, Dynatomics, which seeks to use generative AI to automate design-led manufacturing of products.
In June 2017, a Stanford University research paper titled 'Attention is all you need', gave birth to the technology behind the transformer model, the fundamental architecture that underpins 'foundational' models. These models, trained on massive troves of data, today crossing trillions, aim to understand, think, calculate and feel like humans. This paper, and the study behind it, was funded by Google.
But Google essentially squandered a technology that it believes it should rightfully lead.
In November 2022, OpenAI—still not well-known back then—introduced ChatGPT, taking the world by storm and causing futurists to predict the doom of human jobs the way we know it today. Others predicted the nascent technology to have spurred into action an 'AI revolution', a seismic shift in the socio-economic balance akin to the industrial revolution of the 18th century.
Alongside OpenAI's shortcut to global stardom, other big tech firms started cashing in on the AI overload. Microsoft was the first to pounce on the opportunity, investing nearly $14 billion in OpenAI and striking various forms of exclusive partnerships. Meta went the open-source way, appearing as a surprise early mover with its Llama family of foundational AI models. By December 2024, Amazon had announced its own family of 'Nova' foundational AI models, even though among Big Tech firms, its direct exposure to AI's algorithmic excellence was the least (Amazon earns its core revenue from e-commerce and cloud services).
Apart from Google, only Apple has so far come off worse. The latter's implementation of AI is yet to see any response of enthusiasm from its customers—and analysts remain sceptical about its ability to keep up with the Big Tech fellows.
Too big, too slow
Analysts state that much of Google's sluggish start in generative AI is attributable to the company's way of functioning. Jayanth N. Kolla, cofounder and partner at consultancy firm Convergence Catalyst, said that at one point, there were concerns internally within senior Google staff that the company was becoming like IBM. 'Too big for its own good, too complacent, and too slow to move on anything," he said.
In 2023, Google shared an internal note following the hype and surge of ChatGPT and OpenAI, asking all its employees to use its internal generative AI platform as much as possible.
'The idea was to maximize the usage hours and mine as much data as possible to bring it up to a certain scale," said a third executive who is with Google's software engineering teams. 'Bard and PaLM (the precursors to Gemini), however, underperformed, which spurred Brin to start taking increasing interest in Google's AI progress," the executive added.
Brin, who turns 52 this August, isn't being strictly shy about his role. At I/O 2025, he made a surprise appearance at a fireside chat with DeepMind chief and Nobel laureate Demis Hassabis.
DeepMind, an AI research laboratory, is a subsidiary of Alphabet.
Speaking about why he came out of retirement, Brin said, 'As a computer scientist, it's a very unique time in history. Honestly, anyone who's a computer scientist should not be retired right now, and be working on AI." He added that he intends to make Gemini 'the world's first AGI, before 2030."
AGI stands for artificial general intelligence, which is loosely defined as an algorithm that mimics the functioning of the human brain, capable of structuring randomized thought, emotion and empathy—qualities that machines lack.
Google showcased more than 16 new products and launches at I/O 2025. The list includes its foundational model's new reasoning capabilities; a 3D video conferencing platform called Google Beam; an always-on version of Gemini Live; a production variant of Project Astra, a multi-modal, all-purpose AI assistant, and Android XR, a new platform for wearable devices.
The headlines, however, were made by Search introducing a new 'AI mode', showcasing for the first time a chat-based interface that changes the way Google's search engine has worked since being incorporated in 1998.
Beating OpenAI
Insiders Mint spoke to said that over the past 12 months, Brin has a single-minded focus—beating OpenAI. A fourth executive working on product management at Google said that the transformer model 'should be rightfully our area of expertise and leadership."
Since 2024, Brin has also been showing up personally at I/O—entering product demos without a prior warning to check on audience feedback.
Executives and analysts believe that Brin's urgency lies in Google's own history. In turn, the executive's return has had a major role in shifting the company's focus—and channeling its focus.
'Sergey has been back since 2023. He's been at work every day focused on AI and Gemini. Another key player is Peter Danenberg who is the godfather of Gemini. In general, the existential threat from Microsoft and Open AI galvanized the entirety of Google to focus on AI," said Ray 'R' Wang, chief executive of US-based tech consulting firm Constellation Research.
Busy Pichai
Brin is bringing unfazed focus to Gemini, Search and Veo, as Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Google and Alphabet, has multiple areas to focus on—lawsuits, global businesses, government relations, cloud, Android and more, the first executive cited above said.
'In the long run, Google foresees its ability to use video generation as a platform to rope in advertisers worldwide, and eventually, establish market dominance in this field," he added.
Pichai, for the longest term, has been viewed as a conservative leader, steering Google's ship with 'one eye on the rear-view mirror," said an analyst who didn't want to be identified.
'For Brin, that's too safe a stance at a time when Silicon Valley is going to war with each other over AI dominance. Plus, Pichai has too much to deal with. Brin's view is that AI today needs undivided attention and he's clearly right, as Google's spate of product launches and share price movement shows," the analyst added.
In the past year, the company's shares are down over 6%, compared to Microsoft's rise of nearly 10%.
While there is no indication that Pichai, who will complete 10 years as the CEO of Google this August (he took over as Alphabet's chief in December 2019), is on his way out, the leadership directives seem to be clearly divided.
Google did not respond to Mint's request for a comment on Brin's recent involvements.
Narrowing gap?
Brin's work may be showing early results.
At a pre-keynote session with journalists during the developer conference, chief executive Pichai said that the Gemini developer platform currently had over seven million developers using its code to create AI applications. This is significant because as of this year, OpenAI's official statistics pegs its outreach at around three million developers.
Earlier this year, at an antitrust lawsuit in a US court, Google conceded that while its developer count is higher than OpenAI's, the latter is still outpacing Google in its monthly active users count. As per filings, OpenAI's ChatGPT platform had over 600 million monthly active users, to Gemini's 350 million. Gemini's numbers, though, are a huge improvement—a year ago, ChatGPT had 400 million monthly active users, in comparison to Gemini's 9 million.
Some analysts do believe that the tide is turning.
'Google is clearly in the lead for AI right now. However, search and ads and mass personalization is about to become more targeted, more actionable, and more intelligent. AI native companies will disrupt existing companies, because intelligence (in business systems) is doubling every seven months—and these AI native companies deliver on exponential efficiency," Constellation's Wang said.
Phil Fersht, chief executive of New York-based tech analysis firm HFS Research, said that Google is 'sitting in an unbelievable position to win the enterprise AI war—if it can get its business model right."
'Net-net, the firm needs to be prepared to cannibalize half of its legacy search business and insert Gemini onto as many enterprises and individual users as possible. It has the resources, talent, and user base to take on OpenAI, Microsoft and Anthropic," he said.
Speed wins
GenAI startups such as OpenAI, Anthropic and Perplexity are known to move fast. They deploy features super quick, reach out to developers and serve a broad variety of AI use cases. Google, in contrast, is viewed to be slower, like Kolla of Convergence Catalyst hinted.
Pichai, speaking with journalists a day ahead of I/O 2025, underlined a new way of working—with speed.
'Typically, we don't make announcements leading up to our big day at I/O each year, but this time it's different. Right now, we're launching products in very frequent intervals, and making technological progress at a rapid pace like never before," he said.
Then, at a post-event chat, Pichai reiterated that Google is now making AI announcements to the world 'within an hour or two" of the DeepMind team showcasing the latest advancements in Gemini.
'In the end, agility and appeal to developers will play the biggest role," said Kashyap Kompella, founder of tech consultancy and research firm RPA2AI Research. 'There's no denying that its rivals are moving fast, and there are clear indications within the industry that Google's AI products are not the first choice for developers and end-users," he added.
The hope is that Brin's startup-style approach, coupled with Google's inherent strength garnered over almost three decades, could be the company's trump card, says Thomas Reuner, principal analyst at UK-based tech consultancy firm PAC.
'Brin might help shore up Google's advertising business in the short term, but its biggest strategic assets are threefold: the vast data assets from the search business, data integration at scale and the unique IP of DeepMind," he said. 'Given the market noise around generative and agentic AI, these assets don't always make the headlines but provide the moat that so many startups are lacking," he added.
Sitting in that satellite office in Mountain View, Brin may be hoping that this moat could firmly establish Gemini, akin to his PageRank moment 29 years ago.