Throughout the meeting, Pichai kept reminding employees of the need to "stay scrappy." Google has gone through an extensive phase of cost cutting that included eliminating about 6% of its workforce in 2023 and a continued focus on efficiency.

As of the end of the third quarter, Alphabet had 181,269 employees, down about 5% from the end of 2022.

At one point, Pichai referenced Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who started the company 26 years ago, long before cloud computing or AI tools existed.