Sundar Pichai speaks on the Google I/O Developer’s Conference in Mountain View, California on May 10, 2023.
Courtesy: Google
Google employees paid particular attention to the corporate’s annual developer conference this week, in addition to the overwhelmingly positive response from Wall Street.
Regarding the credit for the 4.3% share increase that followed Google I/O, many employees preferred the corporate’s engineers over management, based on internal conversations viewed by CNBC.
On Google’s internal Memegen page, the preferred meme from the event showed images of the parent company side by side alphabet Share price. The slide that received hundreds of “up votes” on the left read “Management cuts costs and buys back shares” above a chart with a falling stock price. On the appropriate, there was a chart with rising stock prices under the words “Eng[ineers] running errands.”
Many employees agreed with the feedback within the comments section, praising their colleagues who worked to make primetime products as part of a company-wide effort to compete in AI.
The event got here shortly after employees slapped CEO Sundar Pichai for receiving a 2022 stock award of greater than $200 million while the corporate cuts staffing and costs. In addition they criticized the corporate for allowing a $70 billion buyout.
A well-liked meme amongst Google employees reacting to the corporate’s successful annual developer conference.
Alphabet’s stock rose to its highest level since August and was up 11% in per week after Google on Wednesday announced a recent large general-purpose language (LLM) model called PaLM 2, in addition to a number of improvements in AI technology driving Bard and Search, some of which CNBC previously reported.
Google has been under pressure to showcase its generative AI technology because the public release of ChatGPT Open AI late last 12 months. Supporting OpenAI Microsoft is embedding GPT-based technology into its Bing search engine and other products, raising fears that Google’s days of dominance within the mainstream search market could also be numbered.
After an event in February, during which Google promoted its AI chatbot Bard, the corporate’s share price fell by 7%. Google employees responded by describing Pichai’s announcement as “hurried” and “failed”.
Since then, Google has been working rapidly to bring its consumer AI services to market.
“Take an image when someone says AI”
After I/O, staff were enthusiastic about some of Bard’s updates, especially features geared toward developers corresponding to “dark mode” which makes Bard’s display dark as an alternative of light and is an option often favored by engineers. The gang roared with applause upon the announcement of dark mode.
One meme that received several hundred likes said “What I’ve learned from I/O” with the next text: “Google can still impress me.” It continued: “Great job to those that worked so hard” and added: “As someone who expected to make mean memes on a regular basis, it was nice to be delighted.”
In one other meme, employees praised Dave Burke, vice chairman of
Employees also made fun of the frequent use of the AI acronym during Wednesday’s two-hour speech. One highly regarded meme featured a cartoon character with the text “I/O 2023 increases GOOG share price” followed by “I just kept saying AI and it still works.”
One other meme said “let’s sprinkle some AI/ML on it” and showed a big pile of powder with the text “Google I/O 2023”.
Other staff selected cultural references. One of the memes that resulted was a play of the song “Old MacDonald” with the alternate words “Sundar Picha-AI said AIAII/O”. One other depicted the ’70s Pink character, Kitty Forman, reluctantly pouring alcohol with the text “Take an image when someone says AI on entry/exit.”
A Google spokesperson declined to comment.
Alphabet shares are up 33% this 12 months after losing nearly 40% of their value in 2022.
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