While many big tech are about to delve into metaverso indicated as the new frontier of growth, there are those who instead see their future in what is already there today, in the present. It is the case of Sundar Pichai at the head of Google and its parent company Alphabet which sees the future of the Mountain View giant in its oldest offer, namely internet search.
“Our mission is timelessPichai said in an interview with Bloomberg Television. “There is more need to organize information than ever.”
$ 2TRL Club and up
Earlier this month, Alphabet briefly crossed the fateful threshold of 2 trillion dollars in market value thanks to sales and profit growth during the pandemic. Google’s parent company thus joins Apple and Microsoft in the small club of $ 2,000 billion Mega Caps. Alphabet is the best performing stock this year among the five largest US tech companies with a hefty + 71% YTD on Wall Street. And the bulls are seeing the stock rise further due to its valuation and higher growth rate than most of its megacap peers. Analysts are optimistic, with all but one of those polled by Bloomberg evaluating Alphabet as a buy and an average target price of $ 3,320.
The new challenge is in empowering the internet
And when asked where the next trillion worth to Google, Pichai pointed to his company’s main service, the internet. Consumers will question computers more with voice and “multimodal experiences,” Pichai predicted. “The biggest opportunity will be to be able to adapt to all of this and evolve research to that effect,” said the CEO.
Since taking over Google in 2015, Pichai has pushed the company deeper into cloud computing and artificial intelligence. Today, according to Pichai Google’s key growth businesses are the cloud, the YouTube video service and its app store, but investments in artificial intelligence will also make a difference. The Indian-born executive also expects more Google products to be developed and tested in Asia before launching around the world. Not in China, though. Google has kept most of its services out of the world‘s most populous nation. “I don’t see this change,” Pichai said, not sharing the opinion of other Silicon Valley executives on China’s technological advancements.
Some of Google’s biggest peers like Microsoft and Facebook have launched their futures around the virtual worlds of the metaverse. Google has taken several approaches to virtual and augmented reality products, with limited success. Years ago, his first attempt, Google Glass, failed dramatically. Metaverse proselytes often talk about the potential to build new technologies such as blockchain and cryptocurrencies. Aside from a few partnerships in the cloud, Google has largely avoided this part of the industry. Pichai said he doesn’t own any cryptocurrency. “I’d like to do it,” he said. “I delighted in it, you know, inside and out.” In short, Google is increasingly traditionalist.