Is AI ‘The Ultimate Version of Google,’ As Larry Page Wanted?
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Alphabet, the parent company of Google, announced its second-quarter financial results today. In both the press release and in CEO Sundar Pichai’s remarks, AI was mentioned every couple of lines. What wasn’t mentioned? The word “web.” Not even when it came to talking about search, the core product of Google that was built on — and for — the World Wide Web.
In some ways, this wasn’t surprising. As far back as June 1999, when Google held its first-ever press conference to announce a major funding round, then CEO Larry Page was talking about AI. According to Steven Levy’s 2011 book about Google, In The Plex, Page “talked about Google using artificial intelligence and having a million computers someday.”
Some months later, in 2000, Larry Page expanded on that goal, saying that artificial intelligence was “the ultimate version of Google.” He went on to say:
