Ruth Porat, the Chief Financial Officer of Google’s parent company Alphabet, has highlighted the need to continuously innovate in order to keep the tech giant relevant and successful. According to Porat, the company’s main focus at this point is to develop new technologies and services that will transform certain aspects of our daily lives. These new technologies is seen mainly through the evolution of user experience, with the tech giant recently doubling-down on virtual assistants like the Google Assistant and smart home devices like Google Home. All of these devices, along with other new services that Google is pushing, were developed with an emphasis on machine learning and artificial intelligence.
The Alphabet’s CFO also stated how they are pushing machine learning to other fields like healthcare, life sciences, and job markets. Recently, the tech giant collaborated with medical institutions around the world in order to develop machine learning tools for diagnosis and monitoring of cancer metastasis. In the job market, machine learning has also been used to develop a service that will match companies with potential employees that satisfies the job requirements. In its continuing pursuit of innovation and growth, the tech giant has been involved in the acquisition of numerous companies over the years. Some of the companies Google acquired in the past has been instrumental in ensuring the dominance of the tech giant. A successful acquisition Porat highlighted is YouTube, with the video platform currently contributing a substantial portion of the company’s advertising revenue.
Given the company’s focus on services that transform user experience, Google has sacrificed some of its projects that do not contribute substantially to the goal. One of the more high-profile sacrifices is the Google Fiber, which recently saw a slowdown in roll-out across the United States. Porat stated that Google Fiber did not provide the transformative impact it was initially expected to deliver and instead was put on hold to reassess its strategy. Alphabet’s CFO also emphasized the need to protect its intellectual property, which is a key issue bundled with its transformative efforts. An example that comes to mind is the recent court case filed by its subsidiary Waymo against Uber over the issue of stealing intellectual property related to self-driving vehicles. Porat mentioned that filing lawsuits will only be done when the company has no other options available.