I think this problem exists for any feature that needs to span multiple Google products, the organizational structure inherently makes it difficult for these features to be reliable and successful. Regarding the AI strategy, you can see it already causing challenges as each team is integrating Gemini technology into their products separately, instead of being a cohesive top-down vision and strategy. It's why Gemini can't access data from all the Google products, and each product that does support it has it's own integration.

I will caveat that though, I am bullish on Google and AI in general given the incredible talent and vast amount of data Google has access to. I think eventually they will make a technological breakthrough that puts them back in the leader position - they had it with transformers and just didn't know how to turn it into a product.

AI is a top priority company-wide at Google right now, so it’s relatively easy to get a ball rolling.