Google CEO Sundar Pichai’s bold remarks during Google’s earnings report include touting Workspace as the leader in cybersecurity, Google Cloud and YouTube having a combined $100 billion run rate by the end of the year, and why a ‘strong partner program’ is needed to drive AI.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai (pictured) said Google “owns the best infrastructure for the AI era,” that Google Workspace is “now widely seen as the leader in cybersecurity,” and predicted Google Cloud and YouTube will have a combined $100 billion annual run rate by the end of 2024.

Pichai’s bullish statements about Google and Google Cloud’s future revolved around the $322 billion tech giant’s relentless pursuit of becoming a world leader in artificial intelligence and generative AI.

“It took Google more than 15 years to reach $100 billion in annual revenue,” said Pichai during Google’s earnings report on its first-quarter 2024 financial results Thursday. “We expect YouTube overall and [Google] Cloud to exit 2024 at a combined annual run rate of over $100 billion.”

[Related: Google Cloud ‘Applying AI To Our Whole Partner Incentive Portfolio’]

Google Cloud generated revenue of $9.6 billion in the first quarter, up 28 percent year over year, which reflected growth in the Google Cloud Platform (GCP) with increasing contribution from AI and strong Google Workspace growth, primarily driven by increases in average revenue per seat, Google said.

YouTube ads generated $8.1 billion in first-quarter 2024, up from $6.7 billion in first-quarter 2023. This means Pichai is predicting that Google Cloud’s growth rate will continue at a similar rate this year.

“AI is a once-in-a-generation kind of opportunity,” said Google’s CEO. “We’ve definitely been gearing up for this for a long time. For the first time, we can work on AI in a horizontal way and it impacts the entire breadth of the company—be it Search, be it YouTube, be it Cloud, be it Waymo and so on. And we see a rapid pace of innovation in that underlying.”

Here are the seven boldest statements made by Google CEO Pichai Thursday about the tech giant’s strategy and future in AI.

On Managing ‘Head Count Growth’ And Re-Engineering Google’s ‘Cost Base’

We’ve been really focused on simplifying our structures to help us move faster.

In addition to bringing together our model building teams under Google DeepMind, we recently unified our ML [machine learning] infrastructure and ML developer teams to enable faster decisions, smarter compute allocation and a better customer experience.

Earlier this year, we brought our Search teams together under one leader. And last week, we took another step, bringing together our platforms and devices teams. The new combined team will focus on delivering high-quality products and experiences, bolstering the Android and Chrome ecosystems, and bringing our best innovations to partners faster.

We remain focused on long-term efforts to durably re-engineer our cost base.

You can see the impact of this work reflected in our operating market. We continue to manage our head count growth and align teams with our highest-priority areas. This speeds up decision-making, reduces layers and enables us to invest in the right areas.

Workspace ‘Is Now Widely Seen As The Leader In Cybersecurity’

In Workspace, we announced that organizations like Uber, Pepperdine University and Penny Mac are using Gemini in Google Workspace, our AI-powered agent that’s built right into Gmail, Docs, Sheets and more.

We also announced Google Vids, a new application to create stories in short video format. And we introduced Gemini for meetings and messaging and Gemini security for Workspace.

Customers are choosing Workspace because they have deep trust in our powerful security and privacy features. Our cloud business is now widely seen as the leader in cybersecurity.

I saw this firsthand when I went to the Munich Security Conference in February. Cybersecurity analysts are using Gemini to help spot threats, summarize intelligence, and take action against attacks, helping companies like American Family Insurance aggregate and analyze security data in seconds, instead of days.

https://www.crn.com/news/cloud/2024/google-ceo-on-owning-best-ai-1-000-new-cloud-products-and-workspace-security