The creator of Gmail knows why Google fell behind in the AI race. It’s because…

Though Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page initially envisioned it as an AI company, Paul Buchheit, the creator of Gmail, says that it shifted this focus away from AI in order to preserve its status as the world’s largest search engine.
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Directly answering queries from users in a way a chatbot like OpenAI’s ChatGPT might do so, disincentivizes them from clicking on ads, Buchheit said, on a Y Combinator Startup podcast episode.
Google shifted its focus away from AI in 2015 when the reorganisation under Alphabet happened, according to Buccheit. The primary focus now was towards its search engine, which ended up impacting its AI prowess.
This was also the same time when the company’s founders stepped back and current CEO Sundar Pichai took the helm.
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“A search company has an inherent tension between profitability and giving the right answers because there’s always a temptation that if you make your results worse, people will actually click on more ads,” Buchheit added.
Google’s AI offerings have seen tough times so far. For example, its AI search feature called AI Overviews was supposed to be used for generating summaries with Google search results, but ended up generating bizarre responses like telling users to put glue on pizza.
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The search engine giant also ended up losing $100 billion in market value over just a single day in April when Bard, Google’s offering to compete against ChatGPT, displayed a wrong answer during a demonstration.