WGS 2025: Will ChatGPT challenge Google? Sundar Pichai answers

Dubai: Amid the rise of platforms like ChatGPT as a search alternative, Google is experiencing “strong growth,” its CEO Sundar Pichai said during an event in Dubai.

On the second day of the World Government Summit (WGS-2025), Pichai participated virtually from France in a 30-minute candid chat with Omar Sultan Al Olama, UAE’s Minister of State for Artificial Intelligence, Digital Economy, and Remote Work Applications. Asked by the Emirati minister if generative AI chatbots like ChatGPT and Grok were affecting Google, Pichai described the situation as “zero-sum,” implying that no competing entities have an advantage or equivalent loss.

“We’re in the business of providing information to people. People’s information needs are exploding. So, it feels very far from a zero-sum construct to me.”

He underlined that Google has been see “strong growth in search”.

“We have recently evolved search pretty profoundly with AI overviews. And we have found that people are engaging with it more. It’s leading to growth in search usage across all demographics.”

Pichai highlighted that AI will help expand the opportunity space for all players.

“With the kind of agentic capabilities it will have, you cannot only ask questions, you can get things done. I think it can help you be much more productive across a range of domains. That’s the opportunity ahead. Given how big the landscape is, I definitely expect us to be a leading player. But it’s natural that there will be others doing well in this space as well.”

What about DeepSeek?

Pichai noted that Chinese start-up DeepSeek’s breakthrough demonstrated how AI development has gone global.

“What caught people’s attention with DeepSeek was that you could have an efficient model, an open source and something everyone could immediately access. And I think that creates a lot of excitement,” Pichai said, and noted that the AI technology is going to be at everyone’s fingertips, and profoundly impact the world.

The Indian-origin CEO also shared his personal obsession with AI.

“I’m spending a lot of my time on AI. Even if I travel for a couple of weeks outside and I come back to the company, I go back to the teams working on AI to catch up on the progress that has just happened in the last two weeks.”

UAE welcomes Waymo

Al Olama gave a thumbs-up to the prospect of partnering and bringing Waymo self-driving cars to the UAE.

“We’re ready to partner. Let’s put the UAE on that list and on that road map,” the minister said as Pichai revealed plans to expand the ride-hailing service to 10 cities this year.

Pichai, also the CEO of Google subsidiary Alphabet, underlined that Waymo has driven more than 33 million rides with 78 per cent fewer injury-causing crashes compared to human drivers.

“Waymo served more than 4 million passenger trips, averaging more than 150,000 rides per week in the US. We’ll be doing our first international testing in Japan,” Pichai said.

‘Fortunate to work at Google’

In a light vein, Pichai, who hails from Tamil Nadu state, shared his childhood days and what made him join Google — to make information universally accessible.

“I was fortunate in some way. I had to wait a long time to get access to technology. Growing up, every moment was very vivid for me — waiting for a telephone for five years. I saw first-hand how it changed my life and the lives of people around me. I had this passion to get access to technology and to make sure I was working on things that would bring technology to as many people as possible. Maybe in some ways, I had a personal mission. I was fortunate to find a company like Google.”