Sundar Pichai: preference

Transcript context

…You need to throw an ROIC— It's a good question. I feel it today more than ever, ironically, because of TPU allocation. In some ways, I feel it even Waymo needs TPUs. Computers made the question, ironically, much more front of mind. By the way, of all the things I do, I'm really looking forward to how AI, as a companion, at least, gives inputs to this task. I think once we can actually get all the data connected and flowing through. I think models are already capable. It's more of getting all the data unlocked, I think it will be helpful. I feel it there. Historically, I think at Google, one of the advantages we have had is sometimes we make these decisions very early in the cycle. It's almost like going back to that roots as a deep technology orientation. We actually think about the question you were asking Elad a bit ago about what are those longer-term things. Thinking at that stage, it's easier because your initial funding amounts can be smaller. But then you stay committed for the long term, but you're making sure you're making progress in a deep way. As long as you're seeing that underlying tech... Take Quantum, for example. How do we judge it? We're judging the underlying... You have goals around what logical qubit error, correct, a large stable logical qubit threshold by when you're going to get to, and is the team able to do that? I think you assess it that way. One of the, I wouldn't say advantages... I think one of the ways we have thought about it and we've been disciplined about, or at least to me, matters a lot, is to make those early technology bets in a deep way. That's helped. On a constant basis, look, I've always viewed it as you have to assess the long-term value of these things. It's almost like in some intuitive way, you're thinking about the option value and the TAM of something 5–10 years down the line, and you assume a crazy growth and think through whether those decisions make sense. The TPU investments have been great that way. We've steadily invested in that. Waymo was a great example where I think we increased our investment two to three years ago when the rest of the world got pessimistic on it. When others, some of the people were backing off. It's very magical. It's such a magical experience. I take Waymo now every day to work when I can.…

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