Mobile-first to AI-first: Google's quest to dominate artificial intelligence arena

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the latest frontier for Google as it moves away from a mobile-first approach. Many of Google's offerings will change with this direction which relies on machine learning and deep learning.

“In an AI-first world, we are rethinking all our products,” Google CEO Sundar Pichai said at the company's annual developers conference Google I/O 2017 last week.

The announcements made at the conference suggest that nifty additions to Google's existing products will be driven by machine learning. Take, for example, Google Photos. The company is developing new features for the app that will rely on machine learning and prompt users to share photos with people who appear in them.

Next, Google Home is being empowered to suggest users about road conditions, traffic, nearby restaurants, hands-free call, meeting schedules, etc.

While Pichai announced the AI-first strategy last week, the signs of change of approach were visible quite earlier. Google intensified its search for acquisitions and as a result it leads the race for AI domination now — it bought out 11 firms in the past five years.

In 2013, Google acquired University of Toronto-led deep learning and neural network startup startup DNNresearch. The pick-up helped Google revamp its image search feature, according to market researcher CB Insights. Next year, Google shelled out USD 600 million for British firm DeepMind Technologies and in 2016, it bpought visual search startup Moodstock and Api.ai — a bot-based platform. Predictive analytics company Kaggle is one of Google's latest acquisitions.

Tech giants like Apple, Microsoft, IBM, Yahoo and Intel, and more recently, Samsung, Ford and Uber, too, are vying for a slice of the AI pie. "Over 200 private companies using AI algorithms across different verticals have been acquired since 2012, with over 30 acquisitions taking place in the first quarter if 2017, according to the CB Insights report.

Apple trails Google with 7 AI acquisitions in the past five years. Facebook, which has been gung-ho about virtual reality, augmented reality and messaging has gobbled up five during the same period. Microsoft is slowly, but steadily, aiming to increase its AI kitty — it made five acquisitions since 2012.