
Google Doubles Down On AI, Urges Employees To Boost Productivity Amid Massive Investment
Google CEO Sundar Pichai urged employees to boost productivity amid "extraordinary investment" in AI.
As Google doubles down on artificial intelligence, CEO Sundar Pichai has urged employees to boost productivity and efficiency during what he called a phase of 'extraordinary investment." In an internal meeting, an audio recording of which was obtained by CNBC, Pichai said the company needs to adapt to the AI transition without a proportional rise in headcount.
'Anytime you go through a period of extraordinary investment, you respond by adding a lot of headcount, right? But in this AI moment, I think we have to accomplish more by taking advantage of this transition to drive higher productivity," Pichai told employees. He stressed the need to be 'frugal with our resources" and emphasized that he remains 'very optimistic" about Google's current performance.
Brian Saluzzo, a senior executive at Google, revealed the company is actively developing tools for software engineers to accelerate development cycles and encourage broader AI adoption across teams.
Saluzzo introduced a new internal platform, AI Savvy Google, which offers employees curated learning materials, toolkits, and product-specific sessions to sharpen their AI skills. He also announced a collaborative training program with DeepMind called Building with Gemini, aimed at equipping engineers with advanced capabilities using Google's Gemini AI model.
view comments
Disclaimer: Comments reflect users' views, not News18's. Please keep discussions respectful and constructive. Abusive, defamatory, or illegal comments will be removed. News18 may disable any comment at its discretion. By posting, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
&w=3840&q=100)

Business Standard
2 minutes ago
- Business Standard
SC stays Madras HC order allowing Testbook's suit against Google billing
Supreme Court has put a pause on a Madras High Court order that allowed ed-tech firm Testbook to go ahead with its case against Google over billing policies on the Play Store Rimjhim Singh New Delhi The Supreme Court (SC) on Monday stayed a Madras High Court order that had allowed a civil suit filed by ed-tech firm Testbook Edu Solutions against Google India to proceed, Bar and Bench reported. The stay was granted by a Bench comprising Justices JB Pardiwala and R Mahadevan, while hearing an appeal filed by Google challenging the High Court's earlier ruling dated June 11. HC had rejected Google's plea to dismiss suit In its June order, the Madras High Court had dismissed Google's plea under Order VII Rule 11 of the Civil Procedure Code, which allows a court to reject a plaint at the initial stage. Google had sought dismissal of the suit on the ground that it was barred under the Competition Act and the Payment and Settlement Systems (PSS) Act. Testbook's challenge to Google billing rules Testbook, which operates over 700 mobile applications that provide government exam preparation services, filed the civil suit in July 2023. The company challenged Google's billing policies, including the Google Play Billing System (GPBS) and User Choice Billing (UCB), which impose service fees ranging from 15 per cent to 30 per cent. Testbook argued that these billing models amounted to a "unilateral novation" of its agreement with Google. It claimed the policies violated public policy and exerted undue economic pressure on developers. The firm said it could face revenue losses of up to 26 per cent, and alleged that Google had built its market position by offering services for free in earlier years. In its suit, Testbook also took objection to Clause 15.3 of Google's Developer Distribution Agreement (DDA). This clause limits the legal remedies available to developers, stating that their only option in case of disagreement is to stop using the Play Store. Testbook described the clause as "arbitrary" and claimed it violated the Indian Contract Act. Google's defence Google had argued that the civil suit should be dismissed because the issues raised fell within the domain of the Competition Act and the PSS Act. It also pointed out that similar suits by other developers had previously been rejected by the high court. The tech company relied on past judgments and an exclusive jurisdiction clause in the DDA to make its case, the news report said. High court found Testbook's case distinct The Madras High Court, however, had found Testbook's claims different from earlier cases. It held that the issues raised were specific to Testbook and involved personal contractual grievances, including waiver and tortious interference, rather than competition law violations. It also rejected Google's arguments based on the PSS Act and the jurisdiction clause in the agreement. With the SC now staying the high court's order, proceedings in the civil suit have come to a temporary halt. The apex court will now examine whether contractual disputes of this nature can be heard in civil courts despite arguments of statutory bar under other laws.


Hindustan Times
2 minutes ago
- Hindustan Times
AI's Overlooked $97 Billion Contribution to the Economy
The U.S. economy grew at an annual rate of 3% in the second quarter, which is great news. Does that mean artificial intelligence is delivering on its long-promised benefits? No, because gross domestic product isn't the best place to look for AI's contribution. Yet the official government numbers substantially underestimate the benefits of AI. First-quarter 2025 GDP was down an annualized 0.5%. Labor productivity growth ticked up a respectable but hardly transformative 2.3% in 2024, following a few lean years of gains and losses. Is AI overhyped? Only if you look exclusively at GDP. Our research, with Felix Eggers, widens the lens and finds that Americans already enjoyed roughly $97 billion in 'consumer surplus' from generative AI tools in 2024 alone. Consumer surplus—the difference between the maximum a consumer is willing to pay for a good or service and its actual price—is a more direct measure of economic well-being than GDP. Generative AI's $97 billion in consumer surplus dwarfs the roughly $7 billion in U.S. revenue recorded by OpenAI, Microsoft, Anthropic and Google from their generative AI offerings last year. It doesn't appear in GDP because most of the benefit accrues to users rather than the companies. Economists have heard this story before. Personal computers failed to improve measured productivity significantly for nearly two decades after they were introduced to office desks. As Robert Solow famously quipped in 1987, 'You can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics.' ChatGPT reached 100 million users in two months, yet productivity still behaves as if it were 2015—when the AI chatbot didn't even exist. There are structural reasons for the lag. Translating a flashy demo into organization-wide workflows requires new software, retraining and—most crucially—an overhaul of management practices. In the short run, many firms pay twice: first for the AI software and then for employees to learn how to use it. Payoffs often come later, through complementary investments such as redesigned supply chains or revised legal processes. The costs are counted today; many benefits arrive tomorrow, leading to a productivity J-curve. The larger issue is conceptual. GDP captures the value of most things bought and sold. But with few exceptions, free goods are invisible in the GDP numbers, even if they make consumers better off. When a consumer takes advantage of a free-tier chatbot or image generator, no market transaction occurs, so the benefits that users derive—saving an hour drafting a brief, automating a birthday-party invitation, tutoring a child in algebra—don't get tallied. That mismeasurement grows when people replace a costly service like stock photos with a free alternative like Bing Image Creator or Google's ImageFX. To bridge the gap, we developed a measure, GDP-B (B for benefits), in our forthcoming paper with Erwin Diewert, Mr. Eggers and Kevin Fox. Rather than asking what people pay for a good, we ask what they would need to be paid to give it up. In late 2024, a nationally representative survey of U.S. adults revealed that 40% were regular users of generative AI. Our own survey found that their average valuation to forgo these tools for one month is $98. Multiply that by 82 million users and 12 months, and the $97 billion surplus surfaces. William Nordhaus calculated that, in the 20th century, 97% of welfare gains from major innovations accrued to consumers, not firms. Our early AI estimates fit that pattern. While the consumer benefits are already piling up, we believe that measured GDP and productivity will improve as well. History shows that once complementary infrastructure matures, the numbers climb. Tyler Cowen forecasts a 0.5% annual boost to U.S. productivity, while a report by the National Academies puts the figure at more than 1% and Goldman Sachs at 1.5%. Even if the skeptics prove right and the officially measured GDP gains top out under 1%, we would be wrong to call AI a disappointment. Life may improve far faster than the spreadsheets imply, especially for lower-income households, which gain most, relative to their baseline earnings, from free tools. As more digital goods become available free, measuring benefits as well as costs will become increasingly important. The absence of evidence in GDP isn't evidence of absence in real life. AI's value proposition already sits in millions of browser tabs and smartphone keyboards. Our statistical mirrors haven't caught the reflection. The productivity revolution is brewing beneath the surface, but the welfare revolution is already on tap. Mr. Collis is an assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon University's Heinz College of Information Systems and Public Policy. Mr. Brynjolfsson is a professor at Stanford and co-chairman of Workhelix, a company that assesses machine-learning opportunities.


Indian Express
2 minutes ago
- Indian Express
Chrome now has iPhone-style swipe animations: Try it out now
One reason why Google Chrome has managed to be the go-to mobile browser for millions is that the tech giant often adds new and useful features that make it stand out from the competition. Back in Android 13, Google added a nifty little feature called Predictive Back, which lets you see what you will be switching to before completing the back gesture. Now, Google is testing a similar functionality for Chrome. First spotted by Android Authority, the publication says that the new iOS-style page transition shows a dimmed preview of the last page in tabs with browsing history. Also, in new tabs, Chrome showed a greyish background with the Chrome logo, hinting that the back gesture would take you back to a new tab. The new transition animation is currently showing up for select users in Chrome version 138. While it was hidden behind a flag last year, now Google seems to be testing it in the public build. 1. To enable the new iPhone-style swipe animations, you need to open Chrome on your mobile and type 'chrome://flags' in the address bar. 2. On the page that appears, tap on the search bar and look for flags named '#back-forward-transitions' and '#right-edge-goes-forward-gesture-nav'. 3. Enable them one by one, and Chrome will show you a 'Relaunch' button at the bottom that restarts the browser and automatically enables these flags. 4. Alternatively, you can also type 'chrome://flags#back-forward-transitions' and 'chrome://flags#right-edge-goes-forward-gesture-nav' directly in the address bar to avoid searching for them on the flags page. 5. Once you restart Chrome, the new back and forward animations will show up. Note: Since these flags are not enabled by default, they might cause some visual glitches. If you experience any problems, repeat the above process to disable these flags, and you are good to go.