Google on the Brink

The definitive account of how America’s greatest tech company almost fumbled the era's most promising technology, from the nationally bestselling authors of The Google Story On the eve of the AI revolution, Google had strayed far from its roots. No longer a scrappy startup, Google increasingly focused on share price above innovation. It bullied competitors, drew scrutiny from regulators in the United States and abroad, and all but abandoned its famous motto “Don’t Be Evil.” And then, in 2022, ChatGPT launched. Within hours, tech insiders were openly proclaiming the death of Google on X. Google employees were both worried and incensed. They had developed a remarkably similar AI chatbot technology, only for executives to waffle and eventually quash it. But how did a company once synonymous with freewheeling inventiveness become a sclerotic bureaucracy mired in red tape? Twenty years after its founder noted that "artificial intelligence would be the ultimate version of Google," the company was caught completely off guard. In Google on the Brink, Vise and Malseed track the full story of Google’s engagement with AI, from its early recruitment of top AI scientists to its acquisition of Demis Hassabis’ DeepMind to its development of driverless Waymo cars. Along the way, we see the company evolve, as founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin entrust it to CEO Sundar Pichai, and we see tensions mount between the old Google and the new. As Google contends with rivals like Microsoft and OpenAI over the future of artificial intelligence, it also faces an internal battle for the soul of the company. Ultimately, it would take the return of Brin—and the risk-taking and engineering brilliance that made the early Google what it was—for the company to prevail against its competitors. Written by two expert authors with unparalleled access within the company, Google on the Brink is one of the most consequential business stories of near-failure and dramatic recovery in the age of AI.