Two specifics here that seem problematic for me and I am curious about
1) DeepMind was given very significant autonomy since day 1 it was acquired. I find it very hard to believe that any attempt to take that away won't result in huge internal problems and / or attrition
2) Sundar Pichai has been coming in for a lot of criticism in general because he seems to be constantly out-maneuvered by Microsoft and we have seen very little new emerge from Google under his watch. Putting himself at the helm of this is going to really accentuate this and actually seems high risk - if he is the the reason Google is struggling to deliver elsewhere then positioning himself at the apex of an existentially important effort could be lethal.
Added together, there seems like a high risk this could go catastrophically wrong for Google, and Pichai in particular. Maybe it will work, but the downside is enormous.
1) DeepMind was given very significant autonomy since day 1 it was acquired. I find it very hard to believe that any attempt to take that away won't result in huge internal problems and / or attrition
2) Sundar Pichai has been coming in for a lot of criticism in general because he seems to be constantly out-maneuvered by Microsoft and we have seen very little new emerge from Google under his watch. Putting himself at the helm of this is going to really accentuate this and actually seems high risk - if he is the the reason Google is struggling to deliver elsewhere then positioning himself at the apex of an existentially important effort could be lethal.
Added together, there seems like a high risk this could go catastrophically wrong for Google, and Pichai in particular. Maybe it will work, but the downside is enormous.