What's one major lesson Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella learnt from Google?

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella opened up to confess that Microsoft had failed to anticipate the dominance of ‘search’ as the web’s most successful business model that Google capitalised on and became successful.

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Value of tech trends

Nadella was interviewed on Indian YouTuber Dwarkesh Patel’s podcast and said that as soon as he joined Microsoft, the Netscape or Mosaic browser came out in 1993 making it a big game-changer. He said that although the browser was a new app model, Microsoft was able to embrace it with whatever they did.

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Nadella admitted that he did not anticipate that search would come out on top when it came to organising the web. He said that Microsoft assumed that the web was all about being distributed and missed out on a great opportunity.

He said, “So that's one lesson learned for me: you have to really not only get the tech trend right, you also have to get where the value is going to be created with that trend. These business model shifts are probably tougher than tech trend changes.”

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Technological evolutions with AI at helm

Nadella was on Patel’s podcast to discuss Microsoft’s AGI plan and quantum breakthrough. In response to a question posed by Patel asking where the value of AI is going to be created, Nadella said that hyperscalers are going to do well as, “if intelligence is log of compute, whoever can do lots of compute is a big winner”.

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AI needs to grow

Nadella said that AI needs to be grown at scale as the ‘infrastructural need for the world is going to be exponentially growing’ calling the usage of AI workloads as ‘manna from heaven’ as they are hungry for computing, not just for training but also during test time.

He later said that the AI agent is going to exponentially increase compute usage as it is not bound by a single programme, but is one person invoking programmes that invoke a lot more programmes.

This will eventually create a massive demand and scale for compute infrastructure making it a big thing for Microsoft’s hyperscale business, Azure business, and other hyperscalers, he added.