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Decoder · 3 min · May 27, 2025

Google invests before it can see the next big business

Sundar Pichai argues that companies should back promising technology and products before a breakout business is obvious. He points to Google Cloud and Waymo as examples of value building over time.

Sundar Pichai

Sundar Pichai is CEO of Google and Alphabet.

Helped build Google Toolbar and Chrome, then led Google from 2015 and Alphabet from 2019.

  • Nilay Patel, Host · Editor-in-chief, The Verge

    Helped start The Verge in 2011 and has hosted Decoder since 2020.

About this segment

Sundar Pichai argues that companies should back promising technology and products before a breakout business is obvious. He points to Google Cloud and Waymo as examples of value building over time.

From “Google CEO Sundar Pichai on the future of search, AI agents, and selling Chrome”, May 27, 2025. Watch the full episode

“one of the mistakes people make often in a period of rapid innovation is think about what is that next big business”
Sundar Pichaiat 8:32 · Decoder8:32

Takeaways

  1. Look for products people love, not only an immediate big business.
  2. AI can affect many parts of Google's business at once.
  3. Waymo's negative sentiment did not stop Google from increasing investment.

In this episode

Full episode

  1. 7:36Google invests before it can see the next big business2:51

  2. 28:48Agents will force businesses to choose how they participate5:54Up next
  3. 21:08Google says AI search will keep sending traffic to the webPro pick 6:15
  4. 4 more moments in the full episode

Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

  1. 7:48

    One of the reasons I'm asking this and I'm pushing on this is the amount of huge investment in the capability from Google and others has to pay off in some products that return on that investment. NotebookLM is great. I don't think it's going to fully return on Google's data center investment, let alone the investment in pure AI research. Do you see... a product that can return on that investment at scale?

  2. 8:11

    Look, do you think in 2004, if you had looked at Gmail, which was a 20% project which people were internally using as an email service, how would we be able to think about Gmail as what led us to do workspace, get into the enterprise? I made a big bet on Google Cloud, which is tens of billions of dollars in revenue today. right? And so my point is, you know, things build out over time, right? Think about the journey we have been with Waymo, right? And so I think one of the mistakes people make often in a period of rapid innovation is think about what is that next big business versus looking at the underlying innovation and say, can you build something and put out something which people love and use?

  3. 8:57

    and out of which you do the next thing and, you know, create value out of it. So when I look at it, AI is such a horizontal piece of technology across our entire business. It's why, you know, I mean, it impacts not just Google Search, YouTube, cloud, all of Android. You saw XR, et cetera, Google Play. Things like Waymo, isomorphic, which is based on AlphaFold. So I've never seen one piece of technology which can impact and help us create so many businesses.

  4. 9:30

    And, you know, AI is going to be so useful as an assistant. I think that people will be willing to pay for it. We are introducing subscription plans. So there's a lot of, you know, headroom ahead, I think. And obviously that's why we are investing because we see that opportunity. Some of it will take time and it may not be always immediately obvious. You know, I gave the Waymo example. In fact, the sentiment on Waymo was quite negative three years ago.

  5. 9:55

    You know, but I actually, you know, as a company, maybe increased our investment into way more at that time, right? Because you're betting on the underlying technology and you're seeing the progress of where it's going. But these are good questions, right? In some ways, if you don't realize the opportunities, that may constrain the pace of investment in this area. But I'm optimistic we'll be able to unlock new opportunities.