In an article reflecting on this week’s Google I/O event, Casey Newton calls out the search engine giant for a chaotic product line replete with confusing overlaps and unaesthetic naming conventions that must be simplified before users lose their minds, and possibly their custom.
The company is under pressure from OpenAI, Meta, and shareholders to rapidly ship AI offerings, and as a result, it’s possible that there’s not enough time for creative naming strategies.
In defence of Google, the tech giant did avoid making its chatbot the absurdly-named Bard that it was originally destined to be, folding it into Gemini instead, and making the sensible decision to ship it.
Some of the products announced at I/O include a new chatbot, Deep Think or Deep Search, and Search Live, all of which overlap in functionality with existing apps such as Gemini and Google Lens.
There’s also an expanded subscription plan, Google AI Ultra, flow, and Flow TV, plus Imagen, Vertex, Lyria, and all the variants of Gemini.
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google commented that the pace of new product releases is “relentless.