Former Google CEO: Google is losing the AI race as employees work from home

Remote work has hurt Google’s competitiveness in the artificial intelligence race, says the company’s former CEO and chairman Eric Schmidt.

In April, Schmidt was speaking to students at Stanford University during a lecture when he was asked about the advantage that startups like OpenAI and Anthropic currently have over Google when it comes to artificial intelligence.

“Google decided that work-life balance, getting home early and working remotely were more important than winning,” Schmidt said. “And the reason startups work is because people work like hell.”

“I’m sorry to be so blunt, but the fact is that if you all leave university and start a company, you’re not going to let people work from home and only come in one day a week if you want to compete with other startups.”

Google representatives did not immediately respond to Business Insider’s request for comment, sent outside business hours.

Schmidt served as CEO and chairman of Google from 2001 to 2011 before handing the reins to the search giant’s co-founder Larry Page.

He then served as executive chairman and technical advisor to Google before ultimately leaving the company in early 2020.

Schmidt isn’t the only executive who believes remote work has hurt companies. JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon, for example, has been outspoken in favor of returning workers to the office.

“It doesn’t work for younger kids on internships, it doesn’t work for creativity and spontaneity, it doesn’t work for management teams,” Dimon said in an interview with The Economist that aired in July 2023.

There is no doubt that from 2022, Google will gradually move away from the obligation for employees to work completely remotely.

Google employees currently work in a hybrid model in which they “spend approximately three days in the office and two days where they work best — whether that’s in the office or at home,” according to the company’s 2022 Annual Diversity Report.

As CNBC reported in June 2023, citing internal memos, Google also began tracking employee attendance on badges and using it as a metric in performance reviews.

“Of course, not everyone believes in ‘magic hallway conversations,’ but there’s no doubt that working together in the same room makes a positive difference,” Fiona Cicconi, Google’s chief people officer, wrote in an employee email obtained by CNBC.