25th Anniversary of Google: "AI is the Most Important Way to Fulfill Google's Mission"

On the 27th, Google, celebrating its 25th anniversary, pledged continuous innovation.

Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and Alphabet, conveyed a message of gratitude on the official blog, stating, "Making AI useful to everyone and deploying it responsibly is the most important way for Google to fulfill its mission over the next decade and beyond."

Google was founded in 1998 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin with the mission to "organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful," launching Google Search. Google has continuously evolved by helping people easily understand information in the online world through its new search engine. Among Google's various products, six have over 2 billion users, and fifteen have over 500 million users.

CEO Pichai explained, "Google has continuously developed its products by constantly asking itself how it can help people, and has led technological innovation by not giving up on challenges that others deemed impossible."

Going beyond early text search, Google launched Google Images in 2001, recognizing that users wanted to search for photos. Even when users made spelling mistakes, Google began introducing the "Did you mean?" feature through new AI-based technology to help find the desired content.

In 2006, Google launched Google Translate based on machine translation technology to break down language barriers online. In 2008, it expanded user environments by introducing the Google Mobile App for mobile use. Subsequently, it introduced image-based search functionality (2011), AI-powered flood prediction to reduce casualties from floods (2018), and combined image and text search capabilities (2022).

Notably, in 2015, when Sundar Pichai became CEO, Google declared its transition to an "AI-first" company after recognizing the potential for innovation in AI research from Google DeepMind and the research team.

This year, Google released 'Bard,' an early experimental version that collaborates with generative AI, and introduced generative AI into search, providing services that make it easier for users to utilize AI. Currently, 1 million people are using generative AI in Google Workspace to write and continue creative activities. Using the AlphaFold database, which predicts 200 million protein structures, about 1 million researchers are applying AI in various fields such as reducing plastic pollution, solving antibiotic resistance issues, and eradicating malaria.

Meanwhile, to commemorate its 25th anniversary, Google launched a special page titled "Search Evolved Over Time" and decorated the Google homepage with a Google 25th anniversary doodle. On the special page, users can scroll through the screen to see Google's search innovation technologies by year at a glance.

CEO Pichai said, "AI will be the greatest technological change in our lifetime, and technology will be redesigned by AI, sparking human creativity in astonishing ways. As a new era approaches, Google has a new mission to act boldly and responsibly to improve the lives of as many people as possible and to continue asking big questions. Google's efforts to find answers will lead to remarkable technological advancements over the next 25 years."