This needs to be called out anytime an AI benchmarking article with Google as one of its key comparisons is published: many of the outstanding AI researchers and innovators who gave Google the reputation it has today are no longer at the company.
Startups such as Essential AI, Ideogram, Character.ai were all founded by ex-Googlers. Plenty of engineers and researchers from Google Brain/Research have pivoted into these types of start-ups, not necessarily as founders but as individual contributors continuing their engineering and research work at these companies instead.
Google Ads: built from great many pieces, one of the largest was DoubleClick, acquired in 2008.
Google Docs: acquired in 2006 from Writely.
Google Sheets: acquired in 2006 from XL2Web.
Google Maps: acquired in 2004.
I'm not trying to say that Google acquired everything and hasn't built anything; not at all. But a few crown jewels were indeed acquisitions.
Startups such as Essential AI, Ideogram, Character.ai were all founded by ex-Googlers. Plenty of engineers and researchers from Google Brain/Research have pivoted into these types of start-ups, not necessarily as founders but as individual contributors continuing their engineering and research work at these companies instead.
Heck, Google is even considering investing into Character.ai (ex-Google founder) based on the news released a few days ago: https://www.reuters.com/technology/google-talks-invest-ai-st...
It's not surprising that Google isn't the leader of AI anymore. The people who put Google in that lead position are gone.