Google recently announced Android XR, co-designed with Samsung, right before the holiday break. However, more major announcements are expected soon, with Gemini taking the lead in most of them.
In mid-December, Google held a “2025 strategy meeting” where CEO Sundar Pichai and other executives outlined expectations for the coming years. Pichai emphasized the significance of 2025, stating that “the stakes are high” and it will be a critical year.
Despite facing legal challenges related to advertising practices and potential sales of Chrome and Android, Google is heavily investing in Gemini. Pichai highlighted that scaling Gemini on the consumer side will be a top priority next year.
Google has introduced several updates to Gemini in the past month, including the Deep Research feature and Gemini 2.0 Flash Experimental. Pichai aims to make Gemini the next app to reach half a billion users and recognizes the challenges ahead in achieving this goal.
Demis Hassabis, co-founder of DeepMind, predicts significant evolution in products over the next year or two. The goal is to create a universal assistant that operates across domains, modalities, and devices seamlessly.
Project Astra will receive updates in the first half of the year, according to Hassabis. Google opened sign-ups for the “trusted tester waitlist” in early December but has not fully opened it yet.
In addition to government scrutiny, Google faces competition from OpenAI. The AI giant introduced new features during its “12 days of ship-mas,” including Sora for creating AI-generated videos from text prompts.
OpenAI also introduced significant improvements to ChatGPT Search and new AI models o3 and o3 mini. Additionally, ChatGPT Pro, a subscription priced at $200 per month, provides access to advanced AI models and features.
There are concerns about potential pricing for accessing Gemini, similar to OpenAI’s subscription model. Hassabis stated that there are currently no plans for a subscription level like OpenAI’s. However, plans could change in the future, so it will be interesting to see how everything unfolds in the coming months.
Setting expectations for 2025 is just the beginning. The real challenge lies in meeting, and potentially exceeding, those goals. The next 12 months promise to be intriguing as we witness the developments in the AI space.