Google (GOOG. O) CEO Richard Pichai told employees last week that 2025 was "high stakes, high stakes" as the company faced increasing competition, regulatory hurdles and rapid advances in artificial intelligence. Pichai said "building big new businesses" was a top priority, and that included the Gemini app. Executives said they believed Gemini would be Google's next app to reach 500 million users. The company currently has 15 apps that have reached that milestone. "Gemini apps have had a lot of momentum, especially in the last few months," Pichai said. "But we still need to do some work in 2025 to close the gap and establish a leadership position in the space." He later added: "Next year, promoting Gemini on the consumer side will be our top priority." In addition, Pichai showed a big language model chart in which Gemini 1.5 is ahead of OpenAI's GPT and other competitors. "I expect some back and forth in 2025," Pichai said. "I think we're going to get to the state of the art." He said: "Historically, you don't always need the first one, but you have to execute well and be the best in congeneric products. I think that's what 2025 is all about." (Golden Ten)