The Google Machine continues to roll. Will it do to AI what it did to search?
- Amar Harolikar
- Nov 18
- 2 min read
A month ago, I posted that Google was back in the AI race. Earlier in the year, I wrote about the shift in their LLM quality.
Sanya Ojha's analysis this week confirms it from the strategy side. I'm seeing it from the execution side.
Google is shipping at a rate I haven't seen in years. Around 20% of my workflow now runs on Gemini. In January 2025, that was 0%.
Here's what I am using for my client projects
▸ gemini-2.5-flash-lite - my workhorse. first choice for automations. Fast, great quality, cheap.
▸ Google AI Studio (aistudio.google.com) - app builder for rapid prototypes before I move to Cursor or Claude Code. The interface improved massively. You can create a project right there without touching Google Cloud Console. Usage tracking is solid. Works for anyone - students, PMs, analysts - who need to prototype apps fast. And small apps - pretty much 90% can be built there.
▸ Gemini CLI - AI coder with a huge free tier. Part of my primary stack now, alongside Claude Code and Cursor. It's still far away from Claude Sonnet 4.5 or GPT-5, but great from many lighter tasks. Evolving fast and will only get better.
▸ MCP for Chrome DevTools - powerful for reviewing browser console logs and letting an AI coder use the browser directly.
▸ MCP toolbox for databases - launched earlier this year as a middleware layer for connecting AI/non-AI frontends to backend databases. I use a simpler custom-built layer, but this provides a robust framework. Testing it soon.
▸File Search API - just launched. Supports the full RAG pipeline: vector database, embeddings, chunking. You upload files, Google handles the backend, you send user queries to the API. Very basic right now, limited config options, but my sense is it will become a full-fledged RAG toolbox. Pricing is excellent with a generous free tier.
At the rate they're going - straddling the whole food chain from LLMs to hardware, to builder tools & enterprise integrations - there's a fair chance in a few years they'll do to AI what they did to search.
➜ But one big gap remains: Top tier LLM and AI coding. For high-intelligence work, Claude Sonnet 4.5 is still the leader, followed by OpenAI. Google sits at #3. They've won the workhorse tier - fast, cheap, reliable bulk work. They haven't won the frontier tier yet
Will they get there? Based on the way it is gaining grounds, odds are in favor of Google.
Read Sanya's full analysis
My original post from last month: Google - the old edge is back
