WHY ALPHABET/GOOGLE WILL WIN

ESTIMATED 2017 REVENUE

$109 billion

MARKET CAP*

$650 billion

EARLY INTEREST IN AI

The company acknowledged in 1999 that it was using AI to improve its flagship Search product’s results.

PHILOSOPHY

Make machines intelligent, improve people’s lives.

REVEALING QUOTE

“Technology is now on the cusp of taking us into a magical age,” Alphabet chairman Eric Schmidt wrote in January, “in which machine learning can prevent blindness, translate any language with expert skill, or even save endangered species from extinction.”

KEY ACQUISITION

Deepmind ($500 million, 2014). The company is best known for its software defeating the world’s best Go player, but its focus is advancing what’s possible in AI and applying it to Google products from health to shopping.

NOTABLE ACHIEVEMENT

Alphabet-owned Youtube turned to Google Brain (another of the company’s R&D arms) to tune its video recommendations and has increased average watch time by 50% each of the past three years.

WHY IT IS AHEAD

No company has more data or more machine-learning resources, which are being put to work in services that billions use every day.