The AI brand fragmentation at Google is not yet a problem because everyone is pretending:

x There are so-called “SOTA” or “frontier” models that are more effective than the other ones (independent of harnessing and routing)

x OpenAI and Anthropic have all the SOTA models and lead all the innovation

x Google’s moat is its search bread/butter (it’s the only reason they’re relevant)

All 3 operating assumptions are - I think - false.

What Google has done that the “cuter products” (Claude, ChatGPT) haven’t is connected relatively standard LLMs to an externally valuable live service.

As more companies realize that is where all the value is (the service) and not in the AI capability, then products (and humans) become important again.

Google should just be Google again, and Gemini should be Gemini, off to the side. Omni confuses everyone (and angers some iykyk), they should resolve “AI mode”, rename Gemma? and consolidate the brand overall so it’s clear what Google is.

Google is search.

It helps people on all sides of the market find what they’re looking for.

I don’t really see how repeatedly reinventing and rebranding the same AI chat UX is accomplishing anything toward that goal.

> Google is search.

Implicit to that is "find". Their AI integration into search has really hit its stride for me. They have that search box (or speech prompt) hard wired into people and they are finally iterating and crafting AI into that experience. They really failed hard initially.

I know others have worse experiences than me but Google knows a lot about me so maybe that affects my results. YMMV