A year ago, Sundar Pichai was on the hot seat.
Google had fumbled the ChatGPT moment. Bard was a punchline. The company that invented the transformer was getting lapped by a startup in San Francisco.
Wall Street was nervous. The media smelled blood. And inside Google? Panic mode.
Fast forward to today:
Alphabet's market cap hit $3.6 trillion, surpassing Microsoft. Stock up 56% in 2025.
Gemini 3 is topping leaderboards. Developers are overloading servers trying to get access.
And here's the kicker: OpenAI's Sam Altman is privately telling colleagues that Google has "surpassed OpenAI in some areas" and warning them about "rough vibes ahead."
Read that again. The company that created ChatGPT is now playing defense.
What changed?
Not what you think.
This wasn't about throwing more GPUs at the problem or poaching talent from competitors.
In 2023, Pichai made a bold move: he merged Google Brain and DeepMind into one unified AI powerhouse. Hundreds of engineers were pulled from Search and other products. Turf wars ended. Decisions accelerated.
The result? A lagging chatbot became Gemini. A defensive posture became an offensive.
But here's what really matters:
While everyone was obsessing over who had the best chatbot, Google quietly built an end-to-end AI empire.
Their new image model (Nano Banana Pro) generates graphics with perfect text – no typos, flawless logos, enterprise-ready infographics. One developer called it "absolutely bonkers."
Veo 3 generates 1080p video WITH native audio – sound effects, dialogue, music, all generated on the fly.
One click takes you from static image to animated video. Text → image → video, all in one ecosystem.
They launched Antigravity, an AI-native IDE that's forcing dev teams to reconsider their entire toolchain.
And the cherry on top? OpenAI and Anthropic are both paying Google Cloud for compute power. Google's competitors are literally funding their AI development.
The narrative has flipped completely.
The Wall Street Journal: "The giant has revived."
Tech media: Google isn't lagging – it's leading.
Investors: All-in.
The lesson here isn't about AI models.
It's about this: Never confuse a slow start with inability to finish.
Google had the research talent, the infrastructure, the data centers, and the distribution. They just needed to get out of their own way.
One organizational restructuring. One year of relentless execution. And suddenly, the "doomed" incumbent is setting the pace.
In tech, yesterday's obituary can become tomorrow's comeback story faster than you think.
The question now isn't whether Google can compete in AI.
It's whether anyone else can keep up.
What do you think – is this a temporary surge or a genuine power shift in AI? Drop your take below.