The end of one year and the start of another is the perfect opportunity to assess how the biggest names in tech are faring – and specifically in this case, Google. There are a lot of different departments that make up the company that is Google, and we saw new products and upgrades across most of those departments in 2024.
Here, we’re going to take a long look back at the year that’s just gone, and pick out the Google hits and the Google misses from everything that happened.
After that, we’ve got some pretty good ideas about what Google has planned for 2025 – and it’s possible that next year might be even busier for the company than this one was.
The Google hits of 2024
Google’s year really got underway, at least from a hardware point of view, with the launch of the Google Pixel 8a. As with earlier phones in this mid-range series, it did a very decent job of balancing price and performance, and we described it as our “favorite bargain phone” in our Google Pixel 8a review.
Since then we’ve had the launch of the Google Pixel 9 series of course, and we’d say the phones are mostly big successes across the board: solid designs, good performance, and lots of AI. The Google Pixel 9 Pro is especially impressive, and we had plenty of praise for it on the way to awarding it 4.5 stars out of 5 in our Google Pixel 9 Pro review.
The pick of Google’s hardware hits in 2024, however, may well be the Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold. Okay, it’s ridiculously expensive, but you can blame that on the form factor. Our Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold review tells it like it is: this is the first handset to really work as both a foldable and as a normal handset when it’s closed shut.
Another hit for Google: the sheer number of software updates it rolled out for its Pixel phones, including features like Circle to Search, Theft Detection Lock, and smart call screening, as well as the main Android 15 updates. We saw a consistent flurry of updates to Google’s key apps as well, such as incident alerts in Google Maps and filters in Gmail.
We’ve got all this way and not mentioned artificial intelligence yet. This was a huge year for Google AI, including the Gemini chatbot, the Gemini models, and the NotebookLM tool that creates AI-hosted podcasts from your material (it was even good enough to get into Spotify Wrapped 2024). Google made huge leaps forward in AI, pushed by rival offerings from Apple, Microsoft, OpenAI, and others.
As far as its biggest and most well-known devices and apps are concerned, it’s been a successful year for Google. Its best ever Pixels, plus apps and AI tools that are smarter and more helpful than ever. However, it’s not all been positive for Google this year – and we do have a few entries to put in the negative column.
The Google misses of 2024
We’ve mentioned the good aspects of Gemini AI in 2024, but there was plenty that was bad as well: early in the year Google had to pull image generating capabilities after inaccurate and offensive pictures were produced – and it’s something that’s still not fully fixed (it’s also a problem plenty of other AI companies are having as well, to be fair).
Then we had the AI Overviews introduced to Google Search that infamously recommended glue as a pizza topping, thanks to a jokey post on Reddit that was taken as a serious recommendation by Google’s AI. It led to many turning off AI Overviews, but the feature does now seem to be more reliable than it was.
Away from AI, the Pixel Watch 3 wasn’t the most overwhelming of upgrades, even though we were largely positive in our Google Pixel Watch 3 review. It’s disappointing to see the Pixel Watch series pushing out Fitbit watches and trackers after Google’s acquisition of Fitbit, and it feels as though Fitbit fans are being hard done by. Considering how strong the Fitbit brand used to be, that’s definitely a miss for Google.
Then there are the products Google has killed or canceled this year – something it does far too often. Google Podcasts has gone, the fantastic Google Chromecast series has been retired (although the new Google TV Streamer is pretty decent), and on top of that it looks like we’re not getting any more Google Pixel tablets (which is a shame).
What to expect from Google in 2025
It’s likely to be more of the same, but even better, for Google in 2025. AI will of course be taking center stage again: we’ve already seen early demos of tools such as Project Astra, and it is unlikely to be too long before Google pushes out its own AI agents that can take over multiple computing tasks for you.
Expect faster, more capable AI, integrated more deeply into the Google apps and services you rely on. We know that the likes of OpenAI, Apple, and Microsoft aren’t going to let up with their own AI endeavors, and there’s no way Google will want to be left behind – so expect Gemini on Android 16 to get even more control over apps, for example.
Speaking of Android 16, we know it’ll arrive on phones somewhere between April and June – earlier than normal for an Android launch – and the developer preview is already available. No major new features have been announced yet, but no doubt several are in the pipeline, as well as further Pixel Drops.
When it comes to hardware, the Google Pixel 10 is almost certain to be landing around the middle of the year (the speculation has already started), though it’s not clear yet whether we’ll see four different handsets as we did this year. There should also be another mid-ranger in the form of the Google Pixel 9a, though if early leaks are to be believed, then it’ll look significantly different to its predecessor.
It’s less certain whether we’ll see a Pixel Watch 4 during 2025, or anything from the Google Nest smart home series, even though updates are overdue. While there were plenty of hardware launches from Google during the course of 2024, it seems as though products such as the Google Nest Hub have been forgotten about.
Add in the usual updates to Google’s apps and services, which happen on a monthly or even weekly basis, and there’s plenty in store for 2025. Keep an eye out for Google I/O 2025 sometime in May, where we should hear a lot more about Google’s plans for the rest of the year – here’s everything announced at Google I/O 2024.
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