Google's biggest mistake?

A theory about what went wrong, and some open questions about what might happen next

TL;DR

Google is widely seen as having fallen behind in AI, despite possessing significant resources.
The article's theory focuses on a distal trigger, a key decision made in 2023.
This decision is suggested to be the costliest mistake made by CEO Sundar Pichai.
Proximal triggers like talent departures and model performance are not the main focus of the theory.

Google is clearly on the back foot in AI; it should, by rights, be dominating AI. They have the money, the data, the compute, and, for a long time, they had a gigantic lead in talent. Now (although I wouldn't count them out) they are widely viewed as having fallen behind.

Many people have written theories about what went wrong.

It clearly wasn’t money or a lack of resources.

Here’s my guess, from the outside, not about the obvious proximal triggers of what happened over the last few months (talent leaving, Gemini models falling behind, morale over military involvement) but about a more distal trigger that is maybe less obvious — a key decision made all the way back in 2023.

If my theory is right, the decision I have mind in might ultimately prove to be the costliest mistake that Alphabet’s generally excellent CEO, Sundar Pichai, ever made.