Google's search for an AI future as it turns 25 - BBC News

The tech giant celebrates its 25th birthday this month, but faces new threats to its dominance.

15 hours agoShareclose panelShare pageCopy linkAbout sharingImage source, Getty ImagesBy Zoe KleinmanTechnology editorThe tech giant Google and I almost share the same birthday... give or take a few years.

Google turns 25 this month (I'll have a few more candles on my cake) - and finds itself in a tech landscape that has changed dramatically since founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin started it in 1998.

Back then Google was only a search engine, and it lived for its first few months in the garage of Susan Wojcicki - the future boss of YouTube.

You do not need me to tell you how well that search engine worked out. It has been 17 years since the word Google officially entered the dictionary. I remember a BBC discussion about whether we should use it as a verb on-air because of its potential to be a free advert for the firm.

That company - now part of a larger parent group called Alphabet - has since diversified into pretty much every area of tech and dominates some of them to an extent which sometimes troubles anti-competition regulators. Right now it is trying to Google itself into pole position in the AI race - but some say it has already fallen behind.