Google plans ‘high-risk’ bet on major Gemini push in 2025

Edgar Cervantes/Android Authority
long story short
- Google executives recently held a strategy meeting to outline the company’s high-stakes goals for 2025.
- They emphasized that Gemini was central to the company’s plans and promised significant upgrades and innovations.
- A key priority is scaling Gemini on the consumer side, with the goal of reaching 500 million monthly users.
Google is preparing to push artificial intelligence on an even larger scale in 2025, with its Gemini LLM program in the spotlight. At a recent internal strategy meeting, CEO Sundar Pichai and other top Google leaders wore festive sweaters, no doubt excited about Gemini after 2024 has already been filled with Gemini-related announcements. Will be a star going into the new year. (hour/time: CNBC)
At a December gathering at Google’s Mountain View headquarters, Pichai told employees that “the stakes are high” as the company contends with increasing competition, especially in artificial intelligence. Gemini is expected to continue its rapid expansion in 2025, with the ultimate goal of becoming the 16th Google product to reach 500 million monthly users.
Pichai stressed the urgency to “move faster as a company” and emphasized that these “disruptive moments” require Google to continue to focus on the growth of artificial intelligence. He pointed out that while Google doesn’t always have to be the first to market, its products must be “best in class” once they hit the market.
DeepMind co-founder Demis Hassabis, who also spoke at the conference, said Gemini will be “massively developed” in the next year or two, suggesting that major updates could reshape the way people interact with artificial intelligence. Hassabis described his vision for a universal artificial intelligence assistant that can work across a variety of devices, process different modalities (such as text, speech and images) and solve problems in almost any domain.
Google already has 15 applications with more than 500 million monthly users – such as Gmail, YouTube and Maps. Executives believe Gemini will soon join this exclusive club, but competition is now fiercer than in the past. Rival systems, notably OpenAI’s ChatGPT, have captured the public imagination, raising internal questions about whether Google’s artificial intelligence efforts are at risk of being obscured. One employee question that Pichai read aloud even mentioned ChatGPT becoming “synonymous with AI,” similar to how Google became synonymous with search.
However, Pichai and Hassabis remain confident that Gemini can catch up and surpass its competitors by leveraging the breadth of Google’s platform to deliver a richer, more integrated experience. “We will enhance the performance of the Gemini application,” Hassabis said, highlighting the momentum built over the past few months.
As Google’s advances in artificial intelligence continue to accelerate, the company has come under unprecedented scrutiny from regulators around the world. A U.S. court has investigated the company’s alleged monopoly in search and online advertising, and Britain’s competition watchdog has expressed concerns about Google’s ad technology business. Acknowledging the challenges, Pichai told employees: “It’s not lost on me that we’re facing scrutiny around the world.”
Despite these obstacles, Google leaders believe the best way to deal with the turmoil is to continue focusing on delivering breakthrough technologies and applying them responsibly. Pichai said companies must continue to use artificial intelligence to “solve real user problems” and not be derailed by regulatory pressure or competitive noise.
One of the most pressing questions employees have is the cost of artificial intelligence tools. Some worry that scaling up Gemini could lead to expensive subscription tiers similar to other AI products on the market. Hassabis responded that there are currently no plans to charge anything close to “$200 a month.”
It’s clear that Google’s focus over the next 12 months is on expanding its AI ambitions on the consumer side. If all goes according to Google’s plans, Gemini could solidify its status as a household name in artificial intelligence by 2025.