Google 如何開始贏得人工智能競賽（2/2）

Recently The New York Times reported the following:

How Google Is Starting to Win the A.I. Race (2/2)

Despite its early stumbles, Google’s Gemini has leapfrogged ChatGPT in relevance and usefulness. Soon, it will be ubiquitous.

TECH FIX - By Brian X. Chen - Brian X. Chen is The New York Times’s lead consumer technology writer and the author of Tech Fix, a column about the social implications of the tech we use.

May 19, 2026

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Google’s success with Gemini is a case study in how even a juggernaut can seemingly transform itself overnight to remain dominant. But past incumbents faced with similar existential threats did not have the same story.

About 15 years ago, Microsoft, whose leadership in personal computing was challenged by the rise of Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android ecosystems, failed to stay relevant in the mobile phone era even after releasing its Windows Phone devices and acquiring the handset maker Nokia for $7.2 billion. Microsoft remains extremely profitable thanks to business customers, and it has a large video game business, but it no longer leads the pack among consumers.

Instead of isolating Gemini, Google reinvented itself by blending A.I. into all of its most important products. To name a few: There is a team working on Gemini for Gmail, another working on Gemini inside Google Maps and yet another focused on the Gemini chatbot app.

Google is also in a position to use A.I. to capitalize on the travel industry. Gemini is the only chatbot with native access to Google Flights and Google Hotels for looking up airfare and lodging, which makes it a superior travel agent.

To put it another way: What Google has that other A.I. companies lack is cultural cachet. And with the Gemini model integrated into so many popular services that people rely on every day for work and play, Google has made it much more likely that people will interact with its A.I., said Carolina Milanesi, the president of Creative Strategies, a consumer technology research firm.

“It’s not about just how good the model is, but where it is and how easy it is for people to discover Gemini and then use it and get value,” Ms. Milanesi said.

Google clearly leaned into its advantages to improve its technology. It made A.I.-generated answers a permanent fixture on Google.com — still the most visited website in the world — without giving users the ability to opt out of seeing them.

Despite making glaring mistakes about the nutritional value of rocks, among other errors, in its early days, Google quickly honed the model. But there is still some work to do. A recent analysis from The Times concluded that Google’s A.I.-generated responses were correct 90 percent of the time. Google disputed the study and argued that its answers were more accurate.

“They just have this reach that few, if any, companies on Earth have,” Mr. Rivlin said. “Looking for the next Google? It’s probably Google.”

Translation

Google 如何開始贏得人工智能競賽（2/2）

儘管早期遭遇了一些挫折，Google的Gemini在相關性和實用性方面已經超越了ChatGPT。不久之後，它將無所不在

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谷歌憑藉Gemini的成功，展現了即使是產業巨頭也能在一夜之間完成轉型，從而保持其主導地位。但過去那些面臨類似生存威脅的巨頭，卻沒有同樣的成功案例。

大約15年前，微軟在個人電腦領域的領導地位受到蘋果iPhone和谷歌Android生態系統的挑戰，便即推出了Windows Phone設備並以72億美元收購了手機製造商諾基亞，也未能在手機時代保持競爭力。微軟憑藉企​​業客戶依然獲利頗豐，並且擁有龐大的電玩業務，但在消費者中，它已不再是領頭羊。

Google 沒有選擇將 Gemini 獨立化，而是將 AI 融入所有最重要的產品中，以此革新自己。。例如，Google有一個團隊在為Gmail開發Gemini，另一個團隊在Google地圖中開發Gemini，還有一個團隊專注於Gemini聊天機器人應用。

谷歌也擁有利用人工智能在旅遊業大展拳腳的優勢。 Gemini是唯一一款能夠原生訪問谷歌航班和谷歌酒店的聊天機器人，可以查詢機票和住宿信息，這使其成為一款卓越的旅行代理。

換句話說：Google擁有其他人工智能公司所缺乏的文化價值觀。消費者科技研究公司Creative Strategies總裁Carolina Milanesi表示，Google將Gemini模型整合到人們日常工作和娛樂所依賴的眾多熱門服務中，大大增加了人們與人工智能互動的可能性。

Milanesi女士說： “關鍵不僅在於模型本身有多好，還在於它在哪裡，人們有幾易發現Gemini、然後使用它並從中獲益。”

谷歌顯然充分利用自身優勢來改進技術。它將人工智能提供给答案的特點固定在Google.com上 - Google.com至今仍是全球讀取量最高的網站 - 並且沒有給用戶選擇退出查看這些答案的選項。

儘管谷歌早期在諸如岩石營養價值等方面犯了一些明顯的錯誤，但它很快就改進了模型。不過，谷歌仍有許多工作要做。 《泰晤士報》最近的一項分析得出結論，Google人工智能產生的答案有90%的正確率。谷歌對這項研究提出異議，並聲稱其答案是更加準確。

Rivlin先生說： “他們擁有的影響力，世界上幾乎沒有哪家公司能與之匹敵。想找下一個谷歌？那很可能就是谷歌。”

              So, Google has announced that the number of people regularly using its chatbot, Gemini had more than doubled to 900 million, on a par with OpenAI’s self-reported number of active users for ChatGPT and nearly 30 times the estimated web traffic of Anthropic’s Claude chatbot. The author of this article seems to be very sure that Google will win the AI competition, base on the fact that Google’s partnership with Apple will propel Gemini into all phones in the world.  My comment is that it is too early to tell who will be the winner in the competition in AI development.