Poll shows Google’s AI era has been divisive

The tech industry has changed a lot over the past few years, and Google’s changed along with it. From Gmail to Android to Search, since 2023, all of Google’s popular products and services have been reworked to prominently feature AI functionality. Judging by a poll we ran this week, that change has been divisive among the Android enthusiast crowd.

Our poll asked readers how their Google ecosystem experience has changed since 2023, the year Google first introduced the AI that would become the Gemini we know now as a chatbot called Bard. There were three options to choose from: that your experience in the Google ecosystem has either gotten better, worse, or hasn’t changed. Of more than 6,000 respondents, the biggest share of readers said that their Google experience has gotten worse lately.

About 45% of the 6,000-plus people who responded to our poll feel that the Google ecosystem experience has gotten worse over the past few years. But it’s a divisive issue: almost 35% of respondents said the opposite, that their Google experience has improved since Bard hit the scene.

Just about one in five respondents said that their Google experience hasn’t changed since 2023. That’s a little surprising; the company’s changed direction pretty rapidly over the past few years. Still, it seems a large share of users are either unaffected or ambivalent about Google’s recent efforts.

Are you a fan of what Google’s been doing with Android, Search, and the rest of its products lately? Do you want Google to get back to basics, or would you like even more AI? Talk it out in the comments.