🤖 Google's AI comeback pays off in 2025

Jason tech w=1.05 · n=56 · E209 (2025-01-04) · annual_prediction · strength 2 ▶ 29:02 SUPPORT · horizon 12mo

“I am just absolutely amazed at the comeback that Google has made with AI... Gemini deep research... blows anything else in the market out of the water, period, full stop. It is a step function higher... Google is going to come out with things people didn't anticipate.”

Chamath tech w=0.90 · n=83 · E214 (2025-02-07) · sentiment · strength 2 ▶ 1:10:39 SUPPORT

“I think I should stipulate that Google's models are probably the best of all the models across a broad base of capabilities if you test for them. And so, let's start there, which is whatever they're doing is working.”

Friedberg tech w=1.08 · n=65 · E214 (2025-02-07) · explicit_prediction · strength 3 ▶ 1:14:12 SUPPORT

“So I would view the $75 billion CapEx actually as a very positive signal for the company. I think that it means that they have a really strong line of sight on how they're going to have full utilization and great return on this.”

Jason tech w=1.05 · n=56 · E218 (2025-03-08) · positioning · strength 1 ▶ 1:24:30 SUPPORT

“I don't have equity in any of these companies. I own Google in the public markets, but I don't own the other two.”

Chamath tech w=0.90 · n=83 · E218 (2025-03-08) · sentiment · strength 1 ▶ 1:29:19 SUPPORT

“But also, I think Google just said that they're going to drop an AI button right into the front door core search page.”

Friedberg tech w=1.08 · n=65 · E225 (2025-04-26) · explicit_prediction · strength 3 ▶ 50:38 SUPPORT

“So it seems to me trading at 18 times free cash flow, which is where this thing's at right now, plus the 4% yield on dividends and buybacks, plus the kind of seemingly pretty significant gap between the downside and the upside here. It's just such a powerful business. It just seems like it highlighted that this is not a business that's in decline and is about to die, as everyone's been kind of proclaiming. There's enough growth engines here and there's enough resilience. And the price is so good. I feel quite good about the price.”

Chamath tech w=0.90 · n=83 · E225 (2025-04-26) · explicit_prediction · strength 2 ▶ 53:53 SUPPORT

“I think the Google business is profoundly amazing. I think they need to do something with the subscriptions that they have and put Gemini right in front and really do a head-on attack against ChatGPT.”

Sacks tech w=0.77 · n=53 · E225 (2025-04-26) · explicit_prediction · strength 3 ▶ 57:42 OPPOSE POLICY-ADJACENT

“I mean, I think the problem that Google has with respect to ChatGPT is that Gemini is not getting the usage, and ChatGPT is just growing like crazy. ... So I do think Google is in a really tough spot, and the longer they wait to make Gemini front and center, the worse this usage problem gets. I mean, what's basically happening right now is users are learning a new habit.”

Chamath tech w=0.90 · n=83 · E226 (2025-05-02) · positioning · strength 1 ▶ 1:25:06 SUPPORT

“I think the question was, what is the dimension? Like, you know, we use Gemini. So for many tasks at 80, 90, we use Gemini. It's incredible. But for most of our co-gen, we use Anthropic and Claude kicks ass.”

Friedberg tech w=1.08 · n=65 · E227 (2025-05-09) · explicit_prediction · strength 2 ▶ 34:14 SUPPORT

“They have the users. They have the models. They already have the product. So it's going to be a slow process of finding the optimal course for them to make the transition would be my guess on what they're doing.”

Jason tech w=1.05 · n=56 · E227 (2025-05-09) · explicit_prediction · strength 2 ▶ 44:56 SUPPORT

“I think Google is going to figure this out. If they cut their team size down, earnings are going to go massively up and they're spending $75 billion on infrastructure.”

Chamath tech w=0.90 · n=83 · E227 (2025-05-09) · explicit_prediction · strength 2 ▶ 54:17 OPPOSE

“All I'm saying is that the market will now start to price this decay in.”

Jason tech w=1.05 · n=56 · E229 (2025-05-24) · sentiment · strength 1 ▶ 38:04 SUPPORT

“the stock ripped 5% on the day, which might be a turning point for Google”

Chamath tech w=0.90 · n=83 · E232 (2025-06-21) · sentiment · strength 2 ▶ 25:03 SUPPORT

“But again, I would tell you, as a user, Gemini models are exceptional, like absolutely just bar non-exceptional.”

Friedberg tech w=1.08 · n=65 · E232 (2025-06-21) · explicit_prediction · strength 3 ▶ 39:58 SUPPORT

“I think Google is in such a position. ... There's a pretty sizable family of models, including a lot of these graph-based models that are being used in really novel applications that no one else is even close to, no one's spending time on.”

Gavin Baker (regular guest ×1.0) tech w=1.46 · n=13 · E238 (2025-08-09) · sentiment · strength 1 ▶ 11:43 SUPPORT

“But you know, we are waiting on Gemini. I would expect there to be a very, you know, an impressive new Gemini model.”

Chamath tech w=0.90 · n=83 · E242 (2025-09-07) · sentiment · strength 2 ▶ 58:38 SUPPORT

“[On the antitrust ruling sparing Chrome/Android:] I thought this ruling was excellent... the great news for Google is that this takes an enormous risk off the table. And now I think that they probably have even more ambition and energy to just go for it and try to compete.”

Friedberg tech w=1.08 · n=65 · E248 (2025-10-24) · sentiment · strength 1 ▶ 30:46 SUPPORT

“Google Cloud is accelerating at 32% year over year. And some say getting closer to 40% growth rate... the outage that happened this week... will only accelerate the diversification of companies into the other clouds... a very beneficial situation for Microsoft and GCP... perhaps even Oracle.”

Chamath tech w=0.90 · n=83 · E250 (2025-11-07) · sentiment · strength 2 ▶ 6:37 SUPPORT

“Google's earnings were phenomenal. Their AI numbers were blazing hot... Apple is now in this really interesting place where it seems like they're going to cede their AI business to Google and pay them billions of dollars a year.”

Brad Gerstner (regular guest ×1.0) tech w=1.41 · n=17 · E250 (2025-11-07) · sentiment · strength 1 ▶ 32:44 SUPPORT

“I love the fact that Sundar is coming off the mat swinging. I think Gemini 3 is going to be great at Google. They may in fact make it free... I love seeing Apple pay Google to make Siri better.”

Chamath tech w=0.90 · n=83 · E252 (2025-11-22) · explicit_prediction · strength 2 ▶ 36:01 SUPPORT

“TPU is an incredible product... This latest spin is very profound... they went from like 8% share to like 16% share of the entire chat market as of like this last month... Google has done an absolutely incredible job in defending search.”

Jason tech w=1.05 · n=56 · E252 (2025-11-22) · explicit_prediction · strength 2 ▶ 38:04 SUPPORT

“I think the search franchise is going to grow and that Google is not going to lose to ChatGPT... the short in all of this, if you were going to put on the pair trade, is short OpenAI... And I would be long Google, Grok and Anthropic.”

Jason tech w=1.05 · n=56 · E253 (2025-12-06) · explicit_prediction · strength 2 ▶ 10:33 SUPPORT

“I think we're going to see OpenAI go down to about a third of the market... I think we're at peak OpenAI right now... They're going to make Gemini free for life for the best models... [OpenAI's] 80% of the revenue comes from $20 subscriptions. That's going to get decimated to zero.”

Chamath tech w=0.90 · n=83 · E253 (2025-12-06) · explicit_prediction · strength 2 ▶ 16:45 SUPPORT

“Just look at the last three weeks of Google's stock performance, it basically doubled once we thought that Gemini was incredible. And so if you want to make Gemini even more incredible, just pour another billion users into it. And if that costs you 50 billion, it's okay, because you'll make a trillion-a-market cap. It's like a no-brainer.”

Friedberg tech w=1.08 · n=65 · E253 (2025-12-06) · sentiment · strength 2 ▶ 23:04 SUPPORT

“Google's willingness to take risk has really highlighted the difference in posture in the last year. ChatGPT... has taken this defensive posture that I think has fundamentally damaged the product and the brand... In a way, no greater blessing has ever happened to Alphabet than OpenAI's rise.”