Google CEO Sundar Pichai says AI search will actually help the web

On this special episode of Decoder, Google CEO Sundar Pichai sat down with Nilay Patel this week following the company's I/O developer conference to talk about the state of AI, the major changes rolling out now to Google Search, and the future of the web.
Further reading: www.theverge.com/e/23922415
00:00 - Intro
00:22 - Language vs intelligence
04:06 - Future of Google Search
07:31 - "Google Zero" & website decline
10:11 - AI Overviews
14:15 - OpenAI's Sora & fair use training
17:09 - Compensating creators for content
21:45 - The rise of AI spam
25:02 - Testing AI Overviews in Google Search
30:31 - Multimodal search & competing with OpenAI
32:47 - Solving AI hallucinations
35:57 - What the web looks like in 5 years
Google I/O recap in 17 minutes: • Google I/O 2024 keynot...
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[@TheVerge]

Is the web the final boss that Google has been working its way up to killing all along?

[@itsachyutkrishna]

One thing i don't understand is the same guy published why is Google not shipping? And the same guy is saying why is Google shipping

[@NadimShaikh-qv7zj]

You didn't ask any questions about the new merger of Android, Chrome and hardware teams?

[@xionpentagast]

Unless the web becomes a paywall most content is up for grabs by aibots. That's why certain creators give some free content but if you want more there's a subscription.

[@EricBarthDev]

it's more than the Web.. they want religions, govts, and everything with power... they want it all dead and under their control via AI. Their overlord Klaus Schwab talks about all of it.

[@bb69bb]

@@NadimShaikh-qv7zj that seems like a simple internal management and organising decision, nothing that concerns us and no effect on output of products and services, just my guess

[@ahrens01]

Appreciate nilay being okay with asking real questions!!

[@kizanko]

He's avoiding the critical question being asked. And smaller websites are having a hard time, ofcourse the ''restaurant next door'' is doing very well, because it's sponsored and payed money to be seen. Google doesn't need to know it all, all it needs to do is guide us to the places that provide the information we seek. No Social media app can compare to how fun and informative websites of the past used to be. Google took that away..

[@over30edm]

Yes! No access journalism here. "Reckless" is thoughtful. Great. inteview. I listened to the whole thing in the car during the workday, but then came back here to watch the video.

[@dohmygoodness]

Sundar saying ”um uh how do I say this” means this is a good journalism 😂

[@phyzix_phyzix]

@@kizanko Vote with your eyeballs. Use another search engine like duck duck go.

[@Forgan_Mreeman]

let’s not forget to thank the internet overlord CEO for answering the questions and not ending the interview like an elon

[@madhavagrawal8303]

Nilay cooked. He always asks ceos challenging questions. But this one was crazy. Kinda hard to see Sundar struggle so much. But thank you Nilay we need more journalists like you

[@sherlan1886]

Agreed, it was interesting to see Sundar struggle through this but it also makes this topic scary for me. It seems like he was pressed on focusing on optimism, that he wasn’t prepared for those hard questions. In my opinion, he should be because these are some real concerns and these are the things Open AI, Microsoft, Google and soon Apple needs to consider.

[@mmcc2852]

@@sherlan1886 i dont really see sundar struggle as much as being honest instead of corporate BS. also some questions were framed at a pigeon hole way with singular case/anecdotal and he exercised a fair reframing of the questions

[@MentalEdge]

"let's start with an easy one" I laughed.

[@toadlguy]

Nilay pressed him on some really tough questions, but I think that Sundar also tried to answer him (for the most part). I got the feeling he really wanted to say that if Google didn't switch to "AI Overviews" then other providers using RAG were simply going to eat Google's lunch (but I think he wanted to maintain Google's invincibility). Much better discussion than you normally get from CEO interviews.

[@thenextension9160]

The Verge is the number one tech website. They got the power to have interviews like this. Very well done.

[@thenormalone6753]

Giving the CEO of Google your own phone to show him that Google Search is flawed was a move I didn't expect haha

[@yasirelec]

And sundar embracing that with checking the email remark was definitely funny as hell

[@RPHelpingHand]

25:02 Watch the CEO’s face when he starts to pull out the phone 😂 Also, the interviewer laughs at the end of every answer of the CEO like everything is jolly and casual, then dropping another straight faced banger. It’s about time someone ask about the herd of elephants in the room.

[@SleepyPossums]

You asked some hard questions! He seemed sincerely unsure how to answer a lot of them. Pichai seems completely committed to this current path, which I’m not sold on yet. Great interview, full of great insights.

[@Cevichelicious]

I think that's something similar to every ai company right now. They all seem to be excited about the prospects, and don't legitimately trying to deal with possible negatives but still unsure of what will happen etc. it really shows how much of a uncharted territory this is

[@sherlan1886]

@@Cevicheliciouswhich is what makes it very very dangerous at the same time. If they are all going into this with just optimism, we are gonna have a major problem in the next few years. Clearly there are negatives and these cannot be ignored.

[@Petrolhead11]

Nilay should do all the CEO interviews. Kudos to Sundar for answering all the questions honestly rather than avoiding.

[@phyzix_phyzix]

That guy dodged so many questions I'm gonna start calling him Neo Pichai

[@JoseJimenez-il5vs]

It's what he's paid $200 million a year for. And yet, he's completely incompetent.

[@jajajinks1569]

"answering all the questions honestly rather than avoiding" did we watch the same interview??

[@Spo8]

Surprisingly weighty questions for a level of CEO that’s usually surrounded by a PR buffer. Good stuff.

[@tantoun]

It seems the job of a CEO is to find the best non answer to every question

[@sonajalg]

That's the function of the comms team usually😅

[@harshavardhanvenkatasaikot6861]

Out of all the pichai’s interviews this one feels different and honest.

[@bombombalu]

Did he even answer a single question? He deeply feels something… is all I heard. Hardly any concrete answers/solutions for creators for all the deep thinking they do at Google.

[@GM-xk1nw]

Bro really said honest

[@salaarkhan3438]

Not all pichai all ceo

[@harshavardhanvenkatasaikot6861]

In my opinion, Honest is the wrong word but out of all the interviews I have seen this one by far he opened up, Google invented the transformer, I think they have a bigger model than anyone but they got it every time wrong when competing with Open AI, and they can do more, but they have limitations like anti-trust cases, AI safety, etc..., They do have the tools. everyone wants exciting tools like chat GPT4o and something new the race is on so let's see who wins

[@unquestionabletv]

Interview Tim and Craig again after WWDC please

[@bb69bb]

apple isn't open to unscripted interviews lol

[@zt9233]

lol indeed.

[@toadlguy]

Just don't let them see this interview, first 🤣 (Or they might not show up)

[@0BAMiiN]

Nice questions, finally an interview that wasn't catered to make the interviewee look good. The answers on the other hand weren't that nice, seems like Sundar didn't even have a straight answer in the first place for many of them.

[@mdmsearcher]

He guess he hinted it , in transition you will see a lot of unknowns and many of the users don't know how to use it properly (Including himself?).

[@Rajinikanthan-M0]

That's because of questions related, how it's gonna be in future or 5 years from now... how can Sundar Pichai predict that accurately... only presume / assume... but I appreciate the honesty of Sundar Pichai, always....

[@rintintin_]

07:01 wow the answer that Sundar gave to Nilay was really just ‘this is the end of an era’.

[@issiewizzie]

Great hard interview .... great work team

[@MMMM-vh5wl]

Nilay did a great job asking tough questions without excessively grilling Sundar to the point where he became defensive, although his answers to many questions weren't great, the interview itself was conducted well.

[@_____case]

Remember kids, there's no such thing as "searching the web". You're only ever searching some company's indexed corpus of the web's content. Edit: Lots of people in the comments are either not understanding my point (that censorship is inherent in how search engines work), or they believe this point is so obvious that it's not worth stating, which seems naive to me.

[@Errhhk]

Stating the obvious much

[@chris_ibe]

There’s no such thing as “using your phone” you’re only using some company’s assembled product… very unintelligent take

[@ChuckMahon]

This!!!!

[@andrevshimself]

​@@chris_ibeyou are wrong. Google gives you the web they want you to see. If you make a Website and Google doesn't want people to see it then it won't show up in search.

[@CleansHaven]

Google isn't the only thing that exists ​@@andrevshimself

[@tpain525]

15 mins in and bro is asking BANGER questions, between this and the apple Vision... tells me the verge has NO fear lmao

[@JacobWoods567]

Great interviewing. It’s important that these companies get grilled

[@stevendecoeyer1987]

Really good interview; excellent questions!!

[@leafhurricane30]

After a loooong time watching a real interview!

[@afmo500]

Best opening interview questions ever.

[@joghaella9500]

Thanks to the Verge team for adding the slides for the referenced articles in the video!

[@jonmarc876]

This should be a template for how all interviews with Tech CEOs should be. Honestly, just great.

[@zeth609]

Eli is not pulling his punches. Great.

[@theinnocent_one]

Its Nilay.

[@BryceDriesenga]

I think it's Nelly, actually

[@studiouslyx]

​@@BryceDriesenga its Eli lily

[@martinlutherkingjr.5582]

It’s cheese cake, actually

[@definitelyabot]

Great interview!! You asked some difficult questions

[@AlastairTyeSamson]

This interview didn't do much to quell my sense that Pichai is completely out of his depth. The question-dodging is not unexpected. I don't like it, but CEO gonna CEO. What's far more damning here are all the questions he appears to be completely unprepared for. I'm sure he's a smart dude - you don't just fail upwards into his role - but there really are times he comes across inarticulate and out of his depth. I've never seen a company's products be allowed to fall from grace so miserably. If AI is the direction he wants to go then do it! But to launch products before they're ready while allowing the existing products and services that they're replacing to devolve so dramatically that they're utterly unusable while the replacement is not up to scratch only leaves your users with an ecosystem where nothing works. This breeds resentment towards your brand and sends users looking for a replacement ecosystem. I genuinely think we're witnessing the biggest corporate fumble in modern history.

[@woocashky]

yeah, you're making really good points here - Sundar's unpreparedness in that interview is eerily reflective of how Google was caught off guard by OpenAI in recent years. I don't think they will go down but they will likely loose the leadership in the tech world - they already lost as a tech innovator for sure.

[@DingoAteMeBaby]

when he started getting catty you could tell hes def out of his depth

[@Jump-2-the-moon]

Clearly Sundar should do more layoffs to protect his pockets /s

[@designthinkingwithgian]

Google is scrambling to move fast but they are a VAST organization with many layers and this is the reality of mega corporations trying to “pivot” against this disruption

[@TheMrNatch]

You absolutely fail upwards because the guys who go upwards aren’t the ones who do good things for users it’s the ones who make a lot of money for other people

[@MaxArthey]

Great interview! Please keep uploading Decoder to KZbin!

[@bilalazhar4495]

Thanks verge for making first real interview on your channel and AI related in general

[@TimothyLeeClark]

hard hitting questions. excellent interview!

[@dplj4428]

Not quite off topic, interviewers like this should be the ones who quiz our political candidates.

[@gunhaver12]

This is a true no-bulshhit conversation. Nilay has real life things at stake here. I live for these kinds of interviews.

[@kuakilyissombroguwi]

Really awesome interview! Definitely great to see Sundar come down from his ivory tower and discuss things in this format.

[@antonmartinsson]

No one asks the tough questions like Nilay. What an interview!

[@karanchordiaable]

Never seen such a raw and on point interview in a long time.

[@TheTravisNewton]

Not Pichai giving politician answers.

[@isaacstevens1912]

I mean, Google has more employees than many politicians have constituents, so it tracks. Not to mention the number of customers

[@SearchingForSounds]

He doesn't sounds like he believes his own words 6:40 - Sorry but people are right. AI will kill traffic. Without a content attribution model baked into LLM system, nobody is going to save most websites with legacy content.

[@ksX-pk8su]

At some point AI Corps maniacs will realise that the "well of information(the web)" is nearing empty and thus their precious AI bots will have limited or zero resources to be trained on. I don't think they are that naïve to think otherwise. Consequently, they will encourage contents to be published and distributed, it's in their interest at the end of the day. AI are dependent on access to old and new information and knowledge and for that they will need content (text, videos, images etc). It's really that simple, they cannot cut off the hand that feeds them.

[@gowdersareonthego]

Thanks for asking the questions we all want to hear answers to! Not sure he really answered them, but thanks for putting them out there!

[@danielsundersingh1]

Excellent interview! Very interesting to see an interview challenging the guest, especially on crucial topics.

[@jmoralesh]

I know they're two different giants, but in interviews, to me Sundar Pichai often seems insecure and with thin answers, but Satya Nadella seems like navigating known waters, even though Nadella often evades half of the questions. For a tech CEO in this kind of league this is just totally deathly.

[@Cevichelicious]

I mean I think it's comforting when someone is honest even when it's not purely direct. If there's one thing I've realized watching sadya, Sam and Sundar is that they're all excited for the technology but none of them seem to really have solid set answers for the concerns

[@sherlan1886]

Satya is more charismatic.

[@Brian-oz8io]

Yeah a lot of his answers were basically “I don’t know, but these are my intentions” which I think is honest and I really prefer that over a strongly delivered lie

[@mrcandycanemcc6686]

Nadella is overrated ASF.

[@RazeenMujarrab]

Nilay you're one of the best journalists that I've ever heard. Glad to be a fan since the early 2010s!

[@childoftheweb_]

wow this was an actuallly good interview nilay!!

[@Mionwang]

This is an excellent interview! The Bloomberg interview felt like it was heavily scrutinized by Google. P.S. Having listened to the interview and having processed it, here's what I think is the primary problem with Pichai continuing to lead this monstrosity of an entity that's Google: He lacks opinions and visions that are his own. Unlike, say, Musk or Sama, Pichai doesn't seem to have any strong opinions about anything. He seems like a robot, reacting to the things happening around it according to its programming. That works when everything is going well and there's no competition, but backfires when you're required to innovate. Whenever some critical question (that didn't require technicalities but were more of a moral/philosophical question) was asked, he defaulted to "i don't know, i'll have to ask my team". I think that's a huge problem. I think that my point can be proven by the fact that google services have been becoming increasingly buggy and unreliable. They've also cancelled some incredible projects that had the potential of becoming massive if only they could keep pushing through and taken some minor losses for a few initial years. That's the result of someone who lacks vision and passion.

[@designthinkingwithgian]

To be fair, Google is a massive conglemerate a many business units. To have granular opinions on all topics seems like a tall order to fill. I agree that he needs to be more decisive and have a “go forward” vision. But this level of disruption is a dance with one foot in the future and one future in the “current state” since AI first search would cannibalize their own business model.

[@Omar-et7sb]

Love you Nilay for the tough, nuanced, smart questions... Some parts were uncomfortable - and that was a good thing. Weird he said you put "words in his mouth" on something obvious.

[@lolista]

Nilay has the best questions of all journalists out there.

[@kristenmarkel9857]

Finally an interviewer asking hard questions! Wish there were answers but appreciate the great efforts of the verge team.

[@GregoryPiferi]

Amazing questions from Nilay pushing back at Google. It's scary how far companies are willing to go to become so dominant.

[@VishnuPadmanabhan]

Nilay has outdone himself with this interview. Great, direct questions and on point. Excellent!

[@MrNick99]

Great interview

[@Rajinikanthan-M0]

Nilay always straight forward.... never shying away from that.....

[@hasitharanavaka1765]

The best interview I saw in the AI space. Generally the interviews are super focused on the user, not much about the content creator. Just like the LLMs. I think Google will have a balancing act to play as they have the incentive to do so.

[@bobble227]

Nilay’s best interview work by far 👍

[@teespeck3285]

wonderful interview nilay! these questions need to be asked by lawmakers and other large business owners

[@satoriasimov9169]

I’m really impressed by the questions asked. Well done

[@trueRisshi]

This is a very good interview, well done.

[@dan110024]

This was a great interview.

[@JoveroIV]

Great interview and props to the CEO for answering these tough questions.

[@JoveroIV]

Now I want to see Apple agree to a tough interview like this after WWDC!

[@JoshxDarnxIt]

God damn, this interview went hard. Good job team lol

[@michaeltrinh3332]

tough questions, a joy to watch

[@321erup123]

Bro needed to get grilled a little

[@itsachyutkrishna]

One thing i don't understand is the same guy published why is Google not shipping? And the same guy is saying why is Google shipping

[@waleedkhalid3744]

This is probably the best Tech CEO interview I have seen. Great questions! 😊

[@madscola]

Not only great questions here. Sundar’s answers are explaining his / googles point of view in a (to me) surprisingly honest and thoughtful manner. While he is listening to the questions and the perspectives in the questions he is fairly explaining his point of view and pushing back. Great interview! This was very interesting to me.

[@peteresenwa]

Love this interview. Asked questions I hadn't even considered.

[@bonital119]

40 minutes of Silicon Valley NPC spitting tech jargon 😍

[@chaosjacky]

"We put * insert any type of user * at the center". The dude as the most corporate answers possible it's frustrating

[@adriablancafort]

Very well done interview. Straight to the point.

[@ItsNewYokio]

Great interview good questions

[@StolenGarage]

wow. good job on that intterview!

[@eggyeggbean]

Hell of an interview Nilay!

[@MartinCharles]

This is one of the best interviewers I've seen in a long time

[@mikecmc2015]

Nilay killed it with the questions.

[@bluepurplepink]

Fantastic interview by the Verge. They didn’t Molly coddle Sundar Pichai. What this man does with Google affects all of our lives significantly. It impacts politics and well being of humanity unironically

[@ijimkoz]

Nilay well-done sir…

[@user-lj8nm3pw1n]

Nilay always enjoy. Thanks for sharing. 💯✌️

[@ilibraci]

Nilay's interviews are always very good

[@taylorscott1849]

I really apprecaite the depth and thoughtfulness to these questions!

[@zhanezar]

im scared we wont have things like the verge in the future at least not freely avaliable . Great work Nilay and the team

[@saminnippon]

No matter how Google I/O came across as Corporate we can’t just ignore the fact that they went all in on the human first aspect of integrating their AI research

[@Cevichelicious]

It also seems they're at least putting some effort into doing things responsibly. I don't think it's enough and I'm assuming they're being rushed because other companies are going full speed seemingly with no worry about safety

[@KalpeshMange92]

Able to appreciate this candour from Sundar a lot more with Nilay's questions, trying not to un-answer everything; much better than just saying a bunch of no-nothings to super hard questions from Bloomberg's Emily Chang. Thank you Nilay for these super grounded questions. Loved the flow. Also, what a beautiful question to start this conversation with. :) PS: It's so hard for a CEO to answer any questions about directions when the org's in a flux. Thanks Sundar for showing this steadiness. :)

[@aljosacebokli]

Sundar very non committed and wishy washy, Which tells me that there are a lot of things that they haven't planned for. Including monetization of sources and websites. I think this has a great potential to end in disaster both for Google and the web at large

[@karamyers2638]

I have to be honest his answer about him not seeing it crushing small businesses as a trend caused my blood to boil because literally thousands upon thousands of us have shown the data to prove that it is the case.

[@fromscratch4109]

Hard-core questions wow great work

[@PepsT]

I remember when I was a teen wanting to work at Google so badly because of how much innovation they had-this was around the time Gmail came out, and I used to ask for Gmail invites back then. Google should get a CEO who will bring them back to that level.

[@lezgoverci]

i can already see the downfall of Google based on his responses.

[@martiandrover]

The way Sundar's answers start with 'that's a really good question' proves Nilay cares so so much about the web!

[@davadh]

Pichai is always so professional in interviews and his speeches

[@christophermancey3818]

Here after hearing this recommend on Waveform podcast. It didn’t disappoint

[@nirbhaykumarchaubey8777]

Brutal questions by Nilay Patel

[@sreev887]

Where is the Brother printer question 😹 But fantastic questions and kudos to Sundar for balancing diplomatic and realistic answer

[@romeo72899]

Excellent set of questions

[@human_shaped]

This was an amazing interview. Very tough and relevant questions. It was good of Sundar to make himself available for it and on the whole he also did exceptionally well in a difficult situation. Probably this is not entirely good for publishers in the end and there's only so much he can say without lying outright. But unfortunately there's really no way for Google to escape the AI tide. If they stuck to the old model, they would just quickly lose the market anyway, which would probably hurt publishers even more. AI is transforming all industries and jobs. We just need to get used to it.

[@AndreaMontes_]

Great interview. Real questions asked

[@PentUpPentatonics]

For a brief moment there, a ray of hope appeared. When Sundar was asked "What does the best version of the web look like 5 years from now?" I misheard his response as: "I hope the web is much richer in terms of morality." My ears pricked up, thinking "wow, I love that his immediate thought was for humanity in 5 years time". Nope! What he meant to say was: "I hope the web is much richer in terms of modality"....

[@1kbean]

Same here.

[@NPRixix]

Nilay did a very good job with this interview.

[@lucasnstube]

Great interview, bravo

[@vigneshpadmanabhan4088]

Solid interview!

[@Lemonade15757]

Great questions!!

[@quantx6572]

great interview.

[@cosmicwit]

Fascinating that, when asked about the AI system getting the camera film thing wrong, he doesn't admit that LLM technology and neural nets are simply not able to permit computers to understand the world and how it works. I suppose he can't cop to that, and may not even be familiar with the underlying tech to that level.

[@joxxen]

Very nice intervju, hard questions

[@vasudevakilaru61]

It's on par with level of interviewing tech ceos, others or just chitchats.

[@Sleep-somemore]

What is the counter on the word"ecosystem" in this interview.