My outsider perspective is that DeepMind was the research arm and Brain was specifically tasked with making the company money through AI/ML applications. This appears to me that Google is combining the two to make sure that DeepMind starts turning a profit by adopting Brain's mission. Of course, DeepMind's brand is orders of magnitude more valuable so it makes sense to keep the name around. Would be happy to hear more knowledgeable takes on if this is an incorrect reading of the tea leaves.
This is not correct. Both DeepMind and Brain had/have separate applied groups. A lot of Brain research was/is not product focused at all. Transformers I'd say are more impactful than any other research innovation in the current AI boom and came from Brain not DM. DM does do great PR.
Google has (or until very recently had) some of the best researchers in the industry. Google's problem isn't developing new stuff, it's turning stuff they come up with into a viable product and then developing a market around it. All of their most successful products (search, gmail, maps, youtube) were developed at least a decade ago. They've come up with decent technology since then, but they seem to have developed a catastrophic inability to actually build a business around any of it. The failures of Google+, Duo/Allo, Inbox, Stadia have nothing to do with technology and everything to do with managerial incompetence.
Google could be sitting on the most advanced AI on the planet, but none of that matters as long as they're under the current leadership.
They made the enormous mistake of releasing bard with a lightweight model. It instantly made google look like they were way behind, and made bard largely irrelevant.
Bard should have been limited access and been the absolute most power model they had.
Now everyone is questioning if Google actually can compete with OpenAI at all, despite decades headstart and far more research and funding.
