Right before the holiday break, Google made a rather big splash, as it announced Android XR, co-designed with Samsung. However, it might not be long before even more major announcements are made, Gemini will be at the forefront for most of it.
According to CNBC, Google held a “2025 strategy meeting” in mid-December, where Google CEO Sundar Pichai and other Google executives laid out expectations for the coming years. Pichai even went so far as to say that “the stakes are high” and that “2025 will be critical.”
This comes following a barrage of court trials, some of which are related to Google’s advertisement practices, and another that could see Chrome and Android needing to be sold. All the while, Google continues to invest heavily into Gemini, with Pichai stating that “scaling Gemini on the consumer side will be our biggest focus next year.”
Over the past month alone, Google has introduced quite a few updates to Gemini. These include things such as the Deep Research feature, which is touted as “your personal AI research assistant,” and is already available. At the same time, Gemini 2.0 Flash Experimental was announced, providing an updated AI model supporting multimodal inputs, while outperforming Gemini 1.5 Pro “on key benchmarks, at twice the speed.”
A goal within Google is for Gemini to become the company’s “next app to reach half a billion users.” However, Pichai confirmed that there are some challenges ahead, and expects “some back and forth.” Ultimately, Pichai believes that Gemini can lead the industry while stating “In history, you don’t always need to be first but you have to execute well and really be the best in class as a product.”
From there, Demis Hassabis, co-founder of DeepMind, claimed that “the products themselves are going to evolve massively over the next year or two.” Hassabis went on to provide a bit of a goal, aiming for “a universal assistant that can seamlessly operate over any domain, any modality or any device.”
And if you’re wondering where Project Astra stands in all of this, Hassabis shared that it “will be updated in the first half of the year.” In early December, Google made it possible to sign up for the “trusted tester waitlist,” however, the floodgates have not been opened just yet.
As if there wasn’t enough pressure from various government agencies, Google is also feeling the pressure from OpenAI. The AI giant recently concluded its “12 days of ship-mas,” where a variety of new features were introduced. Arguably the biggest of which was Sora, which lets you create AI-generated videos using nothing more than a text prompt.
Not only that, but OpenAI also announced some major improvements to ChatGPT Search, clearly setting Google in its sights. And not to be outdone by Gemini 2.0, OpenAI revealed its o3 and o3 mini AI models, which are said to offer a substantial improvement over the previous o1 and o1 mini models.
However, OpenAI also recently introduced ChatGPT Pro, a new subscription priced at $200 per month. By signing up, you are provided “with the highest level of access,” including unlimited access to GPT-4o, o1, and advanced voice.
This is one area of concern for everyone who’s even tangentially interested in the future of AI, including whether Google plans to charge similar prices to access Gemini. In the meeting, Hassabis reportedly responded by saying “Right now, we don’t have any plans for this kind of subscription level.” Of course, there’s nothing to say that this couldn’t change tomorrow, but it does offer a bit of reprieve if you have concerns.
Providing a roadmap for what it expects to achieve in 2025 is just one piece of the puzzle. It’s even more important to follow through, reach, and maybe even surpass those goals. Needless to say, it’ll be quite interesting to see how everything plays out over the course of the next 12 months.