Google, which trails behind Amazon’s AWS and Microsoft in the cloud business, has made a strong pitch to businesses and enterprises, saying that its expertise in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) makes it a better bet in the segment.

Google top brass, including Alphabet Inc (Google’s holding company) Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt and Google CEO Sundar Pichai, threw their weight behind Google Cloud leadership. Google Cloud Head, Diane B Greene, presented the firm’s roadmap at the inaugural of the three-day Google Next 2017 on March 8.

Thousands of developers and partners in the cloud ecosystem attended the event, which has lined up 200 sessions covering a variety of issues related to cloud, AI, ML and Deep Learning.

Analysing videos

Machines can now identify and analyse objects in a video and can help firms make sense of vast piles of video data. A technology launched by Google can not only identify, say, a dog, but can also tell its breed.

Demonstrating features of Video Intelligence APIs, Fei-Fei Li, Google’s Chief Scientist (Cloud Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning), terms videos as the dark matter of the digital universe and said the firm now throws light on this, solving an important problem.

Companies can now vet vast piles of videos to analyse and cull out meaningful data.

She says it was important to democratise AI and lower entry barriers to AI by making it available to developers and enterprises.

Besides launching the Video Intelligence APIs, Google announced a collaboration agreement with SAP, which announced the availability of SAP HANA on GCP.

Sundar Pichai spoke briefly, leaving the stage for Diane B Greene, Senior Vice-President of Google Cloud, to do the talking on the company’s cloud roadmap. He said customers could benefit from Google’s work on AI and ML over the last few years.

Greene presented the experiences of Colgate-Palmolive, Verizon, eBay and SAP to drive home the message that Google Cloud has strengths to increase its share in the global cloud business.

Schmidt said companies saved money as they used Google’s cloud. “Leave the (responsibility of providing) infrastructure to us. You need not replicate the investments that it made on cloud infrastructure,” he said. Citing the examples of Snapchat and Pokemon Go, he said the two could leverage on Google’s cloud infrastructure, while focusing their resources on the core business.

Kaggle acquisition

Google Cloud has announced the acquisition of Kaggle, the six-year-old community of data scientists and those interested in machine learning. The platform lets members explore, analyse and update themselves on the latest trends in machine learning and data analytics.

“Google Cloud and Kaggle will continue to support machine training and deployment services,” Fei-Fei Li said.

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