Whether you’ve extensively used Google Search over the years, accessed YouTube to watch endless hours of videos, or are simply a fan ofGoogle’s Pixel hardware, the company’s overall impact on the whole world cannot be overstated. Google (initially known as Backrub) started off as a search engine in 1996, with founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page beginning their journey in a Stanford University dorm room. Since then, Google has widened its scope to an extent that perhaps even the founders didn’t envision back in the day.
As Google Inc.celebrates its 25th anniversary this week, we’ve looked back on some of the brand’s unpopular decisions, including products thatit killed over the last quarter-century. But what does the future look like for the search giant?
By Google CEO Sundar Pichai’sown admission, the company is putting all of its eggs in the AI basket, and rightly so. While a majority of the global population’s current understanding of AI is limited to chatbots like ChatGPT orGoogle Bardand evenGoogle’s language model, BERT, to some extent, it’s clear that tech corporations have merely begun to scratch the surface. But is it just going to be just AI advancements over the next 25 years? Let’s run down through some of our predictions for the next 25 years of Google.
All the Google hardware
In the immediate future, we have thePixel 8 seriesbreaking cover with thePixel Watch 2, although there’s not a lot of mystery left about the former’s hardware, considering theextensive list of leakswe’ve come across so far. Google would want toend some of these early leaksover the next 25 years to reserve some of the excitement of a new product for launch day, but maybe we’re being too optimistic here.
On top of the regular Pixel phones, it would be interesting to see what becomes of thePixel Fold, which is decent for Google’s first foldable, but lagging behindmore advanced foldablesfrom brands like Samsung.A clamshell Pixel foldablewould be nice, too, since that’s the direction that most foldable manufacturers are taking, including the likes of Samsung, Vivo, and evenbrands like Tecno.
Meanwhile,Google’s range of smart displaysand speakers could be on the way out, andrecent developmentsand feature deprecations substantiate that notion. So we wouldn’t be completely surprised to find Google leaving behind smart displays and speakers and instead focusing on products that actually earn it money like its phones.
Services like Nest Secure, Dropcam, and Works with Nest could also be shuttered, while Google continues to offer Nest-branded indoor and outdoor cameras. But we haven’t seen any indications to suggest that the company would completely close the door on its Nest camera products as it continues to add software support forsome older hardware.
More acquisitions?
For better or for worse, acquisitions are the name of the game in the current tech sphere. Over the last quarter century, Google has already acquired a ton of companies that today are an inseparable part of the brand, including YouTube, Nest, and,more recently, Fitbit.
Google even took the gamble of acquiring Motorola Mobility over a decade ago, which happens to be its largest acquisition to date. But this didn’t end well, as it ended up selling the company to Lenovo later at asignificant loss. Overall, Google today owns more than 200 companies, and the next two and a half decades could see the company strengthening its grip across sectors with new purchases. An electric flying car startup to augment its own self-driving cars efforts, perhaps?
On the other hand, increased regulatory scrutiny might make it harder for big companies like Google to acquire other businesses, so the next 25 years might have fewer mergers in the cards than the last quarter-century. But more on that now.
A breakup of the company could also be on the cards
Despite Google’s many advancements over the past 25 years, regulatory trouble has followed it around constantly. Whether it is for the alleged malpractice in itsads businessor for supposedly enjoying a monopoly through its search products, we don’t see regulatory woes ending for Google in the next 25 years.
While theEuropean Union has long been at loggerheadswith Google over some of its products, including Android, we’ve also seen theUS Department of Justicetaking a stronger stance against the corporation. This could only intensify in the years to come, potentially leading to a breakup of the company as we know it into separate entities. This would be similar to therestructuring of Google under Alphabet back in 2015but on a much more tangible scale for consumers.
Google will do its best toresist these sweeping changesand almost certainly appeal any initial rulings, but until the company decides to fundamentally change some of its operative methods in certain parts of the world, we don’t see the regulators getting off of Google’s back.
Big leap for Android
While it’s impossible even to fathom the direction Android will take over the next 25 years, I just hope the company continues to innovate on what we’re currently seeing withAndroid 14. A bulk of these changes could be AI-related, expanding on some of thebest Pixel featurescurrently available.
But more than anything, I just hope thatAndroid 39faces no delays when it launches in thefall of 2048. It would also be nice for thePixel 33and33 Proto remain a secret until launch day. One can’t be sure if the Pixel Watch and Pixel Tablet lineup will last until 2048, quite frankly, though I would love to be proven wrong. Who knows, maybe we will have chips built right into our heads by then, talk to an AI all day, and don’t even need to bother with visible tech at all anymore.
AI, AI, and more AI
Google has already expanded its experimental generative AI tool Bard intoWorkspace productsandeven extensions, albeit in a limited capacity. It can already help draft emails in the tone of the user’s preference, set up form letters, and even hold its own in a conversation,with the big caveat that it can be hilariously wrong sometimes.
Beyond the products that we already know about, AI has already leapfrogged into other sectors, too, such as healthcare. With theMed-PaLM 2 language modeldesigned specifically for medical professionals, anybody in the field can gain important insights, ask AI to go through entire documents and even help draft full responses in no time. More broadly, Google says it intends to “alleviate the global shortages of physicians” with new and more refined AI models for healthcare.
Education is another area where AI could take big strides by 2048. The transition from classrooms to virtual learning began during the COVID-19 pandemic, shifting millions of students from schools and back into their homes.
While in-person learning has resumed,recent researchshows that the United States currently has thousands of teacher vacancies open, a phenomenon more prevalent in the South and Southwest parts of the country. This is another area where AI could step in over the next decade and a half by filling some of the vacancies. At the same time, there arebroader concerns about plagiarismthat continue to plague educators, thanks to the prevalence of OpenAI’s ChatGPT and a series of other chatbots currently available.
These will be some of the big challenges that AI needs to tackle, with Google getting a front-row seat to the changing landscape. Illustrating the seriousness of Google’s AI push, co-founder Sergey Brin isreported to have taken up a more active role at Googleto pursue the company’s efforts. So it’s clear that a bulk of Google’s next quarter century will revolve around AI.
What about self-driving cars?
While the year or so has been dominated by news of AI and its impact on everyday humans, Google has always explored afuturistic (and sometimes controversial) vision, even when others weren’t particularly too keen on it. The self-driving car project,rebranded as Waymo several years ago, is one such venture.
The Waymo One
When Uber and Lyft had to shutter their self-driving car efforts a year apart from each other, it may have seemed like self-driving cars were gone for good. However, Waymo continues to grow, with the brand currentlyrunning autonomous taxisin San Francisco, CA, and Phoenix, AZ, with plans to expand to Los Angeles and Austin, TX, imminently. By 2048, Google might either be the leading brand for autonomous driving, with none of us actually owning cars anymore but only hailing them, or it could be a long-forgotten project killed by Google, one of just so many on theGoogle graveyard.
All the other stuff
Google has also gotten involved with some unusual product categories,such as jacketsandsmart insoles, with Project Jacquard. While this idea is heading to the graveyard, too, this may not be the end of the road for intelligently integrated technology. Google may just need to find another approach.
For gamers invested in the Google ecosystem,the death of Stadiawas the most shocking of all. So we’re not seeing that making a comeback anytime soon, with the company even burying plans to use Stadia tech as a white label solution for others. More recently, Google also ended its ambitiousPixel Pass programjust a month short of it turning two years old. Taking these factors into account, it’s clear that it’s hard to predict what exactly will stick around long-term at Google and what won’t.
The search giant certainly probably wouldn’t shy away from hardware in the next couple of decades, though. While AI will continue to be its primary focus, Google will also have to work with regulators onbuilding new guardrailsfor its services, given the more dangerous risks of advanced AI models, such as their ability for misuse, especially by malicious actors.
