As Google expands access to its new artificial intelligence (AI) services, the company will continue to make meaningful investments in support of its AI efforts, re-engineering our cost base in order to help create capacity for these investments in support of long-term sustainable financial value, Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai has said.
Pichai said that it is all part of the focus on making AI more helpful for everyone, like the Search Generative Experience (SGE) which is our experiment to bring Generative AI capabilities into Search.
“We have learned a lot from people trying it, and we have added new capabilities, like incorporating videos and images into responses and generating imagery. We've also made it easier to understand and debug generated code. Direct user feedback has been positive with strong growth and adoption,” he said during the company’s Q3 earnings call.
In August, Google opened up availability to India and Japan with more countries and languages to come. “With Generative AI applied to Search, we can serve a wider range of information needs and answer new types of questions, including those that benefit from multiple perspectives,” Pichai noted.
He said that ads will continue to play an important role in this new Search experience. “People are finding ads helpful here as they provide useful options to take action and connect with businesses. We'll experiment with new formats native to SGE that use Generative AI to create relevant high-quality ads customized to every step of the Search journey,” the Google CEO added.
Google’s AI chatbot Bard can now integrate with Google apps and services, showing relevant information from Workspace, Maps, YouTube, and Google Flights and Hotels. “We've also improved the Google it feature. It provides other sources to help people evaluate Bard's responses and explore information across the web,” said PIchai.
Earlier this month, Google announced Assistant with Bard, a personal assistant powered by Generative AI. It combines Bard's generative and reasoning capabilities with Assistant's personalized help. One can interact with it through text, voice, or images, and in the coming months, “you'll be able to opt in on Android and iOS mobile devices,” Pichai informed.
Companies are increasingly using AI for the purpose of analyzing data. “And customers are choosing Google Cloud because we are the only large cloud provider with a unified platform to analyze structured and unstructured data. In Workspace, thousands of companies and more than a million trusted testers have used Duet AI,” Pichai noted.
For the third quarter, Alphabet’s consolidated revenues were $76.7 billion, up 11 per cent in both reported and constant currency. Search remained the largest contributor to revenue growth. In terms of expenses, total cost of revenues was $33.2 billion, up 7 per cent, primarily reflecting other cost of revenues of $20.6 billion, which was up 6 per cent, said the company.
YouTube advertising revenues of $8 billion were up 12 per cent, driven by both brand advertising and direct response.