Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai has taken a swipe at Microsoft Chief Satya Nadella over his earlier remark over making Google dance. Pichai was speaking at the All-In podcast when he was asked him facing competition from the likes of Microsoft, Meta, xAI and ChatGPT in the AI arena.
Host of the All-In podcast, David Friedberg, asked Pichai, “Your competitors out there have active founders. OpenAI has Sam [Altman], xAI has Musk, Meta has Zuckerberg, and Microsoft has Satya [Nadella]. Are you willing to share your perspectives on those four competitors – both the companies and the leaders?” the CEO of Google was asked.
In reply, the Google CEO replied, “Obviously, by definition, it’s a very impressive group. I think you’re talking about some of the best companies, some of the best entrepreneurs. It shows how much progress we are going to see, because you’re basically talking about many people who are working hard to drive that progress,” replied Sundar Pichai.
“Look, each of them, they’re different people. I am fortunate to know all of them. I think maybe only one of them has invited me to a dance, not the others.” Pichai added.
When Satya Nadella wanted to make Google dance:
Microsoft had made the big announcement in 2023 where they said that the Bing Search engine – Google’s main rival in the search business – would use an AI model from OpenAI to get generate better results.
In an interview with The Verge immediaely afterwards, Nadella was asked about the evolving relationship between Google and Microsoft.
“I have the greatest of admirations for Google and what they’ve done. They’re an unbelievable company with great talent, and I have a lot of respect for Sundar [Pichai] and his team.” Nadella responded.
“But look, at the end of the day, they’re the 800-pound gorilla in this. That is what they are. And I hope that, with our innovation, they will definitely want to come out and show that they can dance. And I want people to know that we made them dance, and I think that’ll be a great day.” the Microsoft CEO added.
“Today’s announcement is all about rethinking the largest software category there is: search,” Nadella said in an interview with The Verge.
“At the end of the day, [Google is] the 800-pound gorilla in this,” Nadella said. “I hope that, with our innovation, they will definitely want to come out and show that they can dance. And I want people to know that we made them dance.”
Since that announcement Google has come a long way in the AI race with its latest Gemini 2.5 Pro language model consistently ranking on top of most benchmarks. Meanwhile, Microsoft is still majorly dependent on OpenAI for its foundation models to run the products and if reports are to be believed the Satya Nadella led company is currently having a round of negotiation to keep using OpenAI products beyond 2030.
