Is Google's AI Facing a Crisis as Top Talent Leaves?

Warning signs are emerging regarding Google's AI competitiveness. Key developers, including Jeff Dean and Sanjay Ghemawat, have left the company, and a growing number of talents are moving from DeepMind to competitors like Anthropic and OpenAI. Coupled with delays in the release of next-generation Gemini models, evaluations suggest that Google is falling behind in the frontier AI race. Is this the beginning of Google's decline?

However, looking at the numbers paints a slightly different picture. Google Cloud's second-quarter revenue increased by 82% compared to the previous year, Gemini's generative AI web traffic share climbed to 28%, and monthly users surpassed 1 billion. While struggling with frontier model performance, Google's influence in the consumer and enterprise markets is actually growing. In this episode of Ograph, we examined five data graphs ranging from the background of Google's AI talent "exodus," Gemini's performance issues, DeepMind's research-centric culture, to how Google's ecosystem—spanning Search, Android, Chrome, Gmail, and Maps—can serve as a competitive edge in the AI era.

Reported by An Hyemin | Filmed by Hwang Se-hoe and Cha Seung-hwan | Edited by Lee Ki-eun | Designed by Ahn Jun-seok | Intern: Shin Yeon-sung | Produced by Knowledge Contents IP Team