Sundar Pichai released an internal email today detailing the big “Platforms & Devices” reorganization of Android, Chrome, and Pixel, as well as other company-wide changes.
To truly advance computing, we must do so at the intersection of hardware, software, and AI. We are therefore formalizing the collaboration between DSPA and P&E and bringing the teams together within a new PA called Platforms & Devices.
Sundar Pichai
The Alphabet/Google CEO says the merger will result in “better products and experiences for our users and partners.” More precisely, it will “energize the Android and Chrome ecosystems” and “bring the best innovations to partners more quickly”, with Circle to Search for Samsung cited as an example.
This should “accelerate decision-making” internally. This follows the hardware division’s move in January to a functional organizational model in which, for example, there is a team for hardware engineering for Pixel, Nest and Fitbit.
Meanwhile, there are other changes in AI today. All “computationally intensive model building” now takes place in Google DeepMind. This gives other teams within Google “single access points” to “take[ing] these models and build[ing] generative AI applications.
Meanwhile, Google’s responsible AI teams are moving from research to DeepMind “to get closer to where models are built and scaled.”
We’re standardizing launch requirements for AI-powered features and increasing investments in red team vulnerability testing and broader assessments to ensure responses are accurate and tailored to our users’ prompts.
Meanwhile, Google Research receives a “clear and distinct mandate to continue investing in fundamental and applied computer science research in three key areas”:
- computer systems – including quantum
- ML and fundamental algorithms
- applied sciences and society
Fundamental computer science research is in our DNA and we have some of the best computer scientists in the world. We simply wouldn’t be the company we are today without the researchers who developed the foundations that all Google products are built on and are now inventing the foundations of our future.
Pichai ends on a “mission first” note:
We have a duty to be an objective and reliable information provider serving all our users around the world. When we get to work, our goal is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. That trumps everything else and I expect us to act with a direction that reflects that.
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