Google CEO to employees: build a great product now

Google CEO to employees: build a great product now

San Francisco, 2/18/2023

Google CEO Sundar Pichai has asked employees to test Bard, the company’s new AI-powered chatbot, internally. In a company-wide memo sent out this week, Pichai urged employees to spend two to four hours trying out the technology before Google makes it available to the general public.

In the memo, Pichai acknowledged that some of Google’s „most successful products“ weren’t the first to hit the market. Pichai is now asking employees to „pressure test“ Bard so the company can make improvements before it is revealed to the public as part of its search engine.

„The most important thing we can do now is focus on building a great product and developing it responsibly,“ he said.

Last week, an executive at Google Bard briefly introduced and demonstrated how Google’s generative AI technology can aggregate web information into searches.

The demo came a day after Microsoft unveiled its new Bing search engine and AI-powered Edge browser.

Some employees have criticized Google’s comparative rollout of the technology, saying it was „hasty“.