Google bets on invisibility as the means to win the AI war

A week after Alphabet announced a $2.8-billion operating profit for its cloud division and a Gemini-driven resurgence across its enterprise stack, Google South Africa took the AI fight to Cape Town.

Inside a Wonderland-themed venue filled with an uncomfortable number of Pep representatives — “We’ve gone full Google,” explained one when I asked why the retailer was out en masse — Google staged its latest rebuttal to the doomsayers who once prophesied the death of the search giant.

This was at the “AI in Action” roadshow, and Kabelo Makwane, Google’s country director for South Africa, was crystal clear about one thing: Google is not only still in the game, it has also changed it. Yes, he was wearing a large hat to complement this mad declaration.

“Mobile is super critical,” Makwane told Daily Maverick in an interview on the sidelines of the event. “Africa is a mobile-first continent. If your strategy doesn’t start with mobile, you’re missing the plot.”

The AI arms race is happening in your pocket 

Google is still recovering from the ChatGPT bomb that shook up the online search market. It was supposed to be the knockout blow for Google revenue, until it wasn’t.

The AI revolution, it turns out, isn’t being fought in data centres alone. It’s happening on screens barely larger than your palm. Google’s playbook, as Makwane describes it, is deeply tied to its mobile distribution muscle: Android, Chrome and now Gemini.

Where ChatGPT carved out a 2023 lead as the AI darling of desktop productivity, Google is making inroads on phones — and fast. “Circle to Search” is already rewriting how people engage with information, especially in populations where literacy is a barrier. “You can just circle anything on your screen and search it. You don’t need to type. That’s inclusion,” Makwane said.

And inclusion, in Google’s South African context, means entry-level smartphones under R1,000, partnerships with telcos, and the kind of integration that makes Gemini an invisible assistant across apps.

The proof? Apple’s iPhone still drives global mobile sales, $44.5-billion in Q3 2025, up by 13% year-on-year, with Google paying up to $20-billion a year to be the default search engine. Then, on the other side of the smartphone divide, Google is quietly powering much of the AI under the hood of Samsung’s latest models. As Makwane put it, “Gemini powers a lot of the Samsung AI capability in the back end.”

Following the enterprise at warp speed 

Google’s quarterly earnings call tells a story of transformation. Alphabet’s Q2 2025 revenue from Google Cloud hit $13.6-billion, up by 32% year-on-year. Gemini now has more than 100,000 enterprise users, from Capgemini to Target, all building with AI agents baked into Google Workspace.

Makwane’s message? Don’t underestimate Google in the enterprise space.

“We cover the full gamut of enterprise play,” he said. “From video conferencing at massive scale, to AI-enhanced threat intelligence and custom agent ecosystems, we’re not behind.”

And this isn’t a beta-release lab project. These tools are deployed, integrated, and, critically, monetised across Google’s mature platforms. While OpenAI may dominate headlines with its API-powered ecosystem, Alphabet’s real power lies in deploying Gemini across services people already use, whether they know it or not.

This gives Google a profitability advantage that OpenAI can’t yet match. The flashy ChatGPT Plus subscription model might bring in an estimated $13-billion annually, but Google is leveraging advertising, cloud infrastructure, and enterprise software to fund its AI push sustainably.

The media speedbump 

But it’s not all happy returns. Google is still facing tough questions over how AI affects the media industry, particularly in South Africa, where calls for class action lawsuits are growing louder.

Makwane acknowledged the friction. “We welcome and embrace engagement with the Competition Commission and media,” he said. “But the industry needs to transform. We’re committed to enabling that transition.”

Rather than fighting compensation claims outright, Google is betting on enablement over entrenchment — funding training for journalists and community radio stations, building tools like NotebookLM in isiZulu and Afrikaans, and expanding access to AI-powered summarisation and research.

Retrospective compensation? That’s trickier. Makwane’s take: it’s not always practical, especially when AI summary features may divert traffic from traditional outlets.

“You risk bringing the industry to a standstill,” he said, referring to the over-regulation he observed in Europe. “We want to help preserve credible sources of information. But innovation can’t be strangled.”

In the background, Google is preparing to appeal against a major antitrust ruling in the US, while facing fresh scrutiny from the European Commission under the Digital Markets Act. The consequences could reshape how AI models surface content, especially when those models are monetised via search.

Through the looking glass 

No matter how fancy Google’s events get, the facts remain. ChatGPT still owns the direct traffic game — with a share of more than 80%, according to Statcounter — but Gemini is embedded everywhere else.

Recent US surveys show Gemini usage catching up rapidly, especially among under-35s. In South Africa, a 2024 survey found that 31% of adults were regular ChatGPT users, with usage surging via mobile.

That’s where Makwane’s message hits hardest. “AI is no longer coming,” Makwane said from the stage at the AI in Action event. “It’s here. And it needs to work for us.”

Google is betting that the best way to win the AI war is to make AI invisible — embedded, intuitive and mobile-first. The era of passive search is over. Now, the algorithms come to you. DM 

Disclosure: Daily Maverick was one of 35 global recipients of JournalismAI innovation challenge grants supported by the Google News Initiative.