Google did a major overhaul of their organization this morning with the aim of giving more focus to the development of artificial intelligence (AI). The first change is that the hardware development division is merged with the software development division under the “Platforms and Devices” team.
Platform and Devices will develop all Pixel hardware as well as Android software, Chrome, ChromeOS, Photos and more. The team will be led by Rock Osterloh who previously held the position of senior vice president of hardware and services at Google. Hiroshi Lockheimer who previously led the development of software such as Android, Chrome, and ChromeOS was assigned to another division at Google.
The merging of hardware and software is done to speed up the integration of AI on various products that will be produced later. This year saw the Gemini Nano given to Pixel devices which allows some of the AI capabilities to run directly on Pixel and even Galaxy devices.
Like Microsoft and Meta, Google is making big investments and changing the company's direction towards AI development.