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In 2024, Google has become the darling of Wall Street with its dazzling performance and stock price.

Despite the company's outstanding performance in 2024 and record-breaking share price growth, Google CEO Sundar Pichai released a huge sense of crisis to employees at the end of the year.

Recently, foreign media exposed part of Google’s 2025 strategy meeting held on December 18. Sundar Pichai emphasized at the meeting that "we must realize the urgency of this moment."

Before his speech, in April this year, Google’s stock price experienced its largest increase since 2015, and its market value exceeded US$2 trillion for the first time. In the third quarter, Google's cloud business grew the fastest among all giants, up 35% from last year, with an operating profit margin of 17%. One group is thriving.

His sense of crisis comes from the AI ​​business.

Since the launch of ChatGPT at the end of 2022, consumers have witnessed the mushrooming of AI products from Microsoft’s Copilot AI assistant, Meta’s AI chatbot, and startups such as OpenAI and Perplexity.

The popularity of these tools is gradually eroding Google’s dominance in the US search field. Google's share of the search advertising market is expected to fall below 50% in 2025 for the first time in more than a decade, according to research firm eMarketer.

The search business is the foundation of Google, and the shaking of the foundation will undoubtedly affect morale. In the middle of this year, many Google employees posted complaints on the intranet, saying that the company lacked a visionary leader.

Facing such doubts, Sundar Pichai is under great pressure.

01. Return to the first place, hope is pinned on Gemini

In the face of controversy, Sundar Pichai stated at the 2025 strategy meeting that in the new year, in addition to dealing with more intense competition and regulation, special emphasis will be placed on the development of AI business.

“2025 is crucial, this is a disruptive moment.” He said, “Looking at history, you may not always be the first, but you must do well and work hard. Be the best in its category. This is what 2025 is about." He said that Google's goal is to create a new to C application with a large number of users, and this hope lies in it. On Gemini.

Executives also believe that Gemini products are expected to become Google's next application with more than 500 million users. Expanding Gemini’s user base will be their biggest focus in 2025. The hope of catching up and surpassing OpenAI is also pinned on it.

Currently, Gemini large models are providing support for all Google AI products, including Gemini Flash, a lightweight model popular with developers.

Some employees questioned that ChatGPT is becoming synonymous with artificial intelligence, just like Google has become synonymous with search. How can we turn the tide in the new year?

Sundar Pichai posed this question to Demis Hassabis, co-founder of Google's DeepMind. Currently, Gemini's large model and application business is under DeepMind. Demis Hassabis said the team will "accelerate" progress on the Gemini app, saying: "The product itself will change dramatically over the next year or two." Demis Hassabis described a vision of a universal assistant, " It works seamlessly in any domain, in any mode, or on any device."

02. Layoffs are to prepare sufficient funds for the AI ​​business

In the first half of this year, Google’s AI business progress was full of bumps.

In February, Google changed the name of its large model product from Bard to Gemini and launched Imagen 2, which converts user prompts into artificial intelligence-generated images. However, the product has come under scrutiny due to historical errors discovered by users. Google said the relaunch of Imagen 2 would take a few weeks, but it ended up taking six months, and it wasn't until August that it was relaunched as Imagen 3.

In March of this year, Google co-founder Sergey Brin admitted in a video posted on YouTube: "We really messed up in image generation."

In May, the launch of AI Overview caused a similar response. The product showed users AI snippets above traditional Google search results, but users quickly discovered problems. When asked "How many rocks should I eat per day?" the tool responded: "According to UC Berkeley geologists, people should eat at least one small rock per day." AI Overview also lists the properties of rocks. Vitamins and digestive benefits.

Prior to this, Pichai vigorously promoted the product, calling it the biggest change in search in 25 years.

Google suddenly became a laughing stock in its AI business. Since then, Google has begun to make organizational adjustments.

Layoffs are a critical step. Alphabet had 181,269 employees at the end of the third quarter of this year, down about 5% from the end of 2022. The person in charge of human resources said that the layoffs were to free up funds to develop the AI ​​business.

After layoffs,Funding has indeed tilted. Huge resources of the company flow to the AI ​​and DeepMind departments, and employee morale in related businesses is generally high. DeepMind and AI teams have larger travel and recruiting budgets, according to people familiar with the matter. Google is also moving some employees out of its eighth-floor offices on Embarcadero Street on San Francisco's waterfront and replacing them with AI and AI-related teams.

In addition, Google transferred the development team of the Gemini AI application to Google DeepMind department, led by artificial intelligence director Demis Hassabis. Employees applauded Pichai's leadership changes, which "should have happened sooner."

The unequal distribution has also caused dissatisfaction in other departments. However, the head of human resources has previously stated that in the new year, in order to develop AI, layoffs may be more cruel.

03. Regulatory crisis, embattled on all sides

In addition to AI, another key issue that gives Google CEO Sundar Pichai a headache is regulation. As its influence expands, Google faces more stringent regulation than ever before.

In August, a federal judge ruled that Google illegally monopolized the search market.

In October, a U.S. judge issued a permanent injunction forcing Google to provide an alternative to the Google Play app store for Android phones.

In November, the Justice Department asked Google to spin off its Chrome internet browser unit. In a separate case, the Justice Department accused the company of illegally monopolizing online advertising technology. The case was closed in September, pending a judge's decision. In the same month, the British competition regulator issued a statement of objection to Google’s advertising technology practices. The regulator temporarily determined that Google’s advertising technology practices affected competition in the UK.

“It is clear to me that we are facing scrutiny from the whole world,” Sundar Pichai said at the 2025 Strategy Conference. “This is due to our scale and success. This is a trend of technology impacting society on a large scale. It’s part of what needs to be experienced.”

For Google, 2025 will be a year to unleash its ambitions amid crises. In this battle between technology giants, whether Google can regain its leadership in the AI ​​field with Gemini while maintaining growth under the pressure of regulation will be the focus of attention from the global technology community and investors. How Google breaks the situation is also exciting.