Google on the Brink: Turmoil and Triumph on the Road to Superintelligence
About this ebook
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.
Discover more
About the author
David A. Vise is a Pulitzer Prize winner and bestselling author of five books including The Google Story, the first major biography of the search giant. David spent 23 years as a reporter at The Washington Post and got started in journalism as a copy boy at The Tennessean in Nashville, where he was born and raised. David was named one of the 125 most influential graduates of The Wharton School and was founding Executive Director of Modern States Freshman Year for Free, the nation's largest free-college-for-credit program. A first-generation American, David has been married for 44 years to Lori Vise, an independent college consultant. They live in Bethesda, MD.
Mark Malseed is a journalist and the bestselling coauthor of The Google Story. Previously the researcher for Bob Woodward on two books about the presidency and national security, he has contributed to The Washington Post and South China Morning Post and been featured in Bloomberg TV and National Geographic Channel documentary series. The founder of several media and technology ventures, today Mark runs Seed Consulting and speaks internationally on information and influence. He lives in Alexandria, Virginia, with his wife and two sons.
