Meet Josh Woodward—Google's VP behind Gemini's big AI comeback
Josh Woodward, now leading Google Labs and the Gemini app, has quietly shaped Google's AI journey since starting as an intern back in 2009.
At 42, he's become a driving force behind some of Google's most talked-about tech.
Why is everyone talking about him now?
When Woodward took over Gemini in April 2024, it was trailing ChatGPT.
But after launching Gemini 3 in November—which outperformed OpenAI's flagship models on several industry benchmarks—Google saw a huge boost: monthly users jumped from 350 million to 650 million between March and October.
This win even made OpenAI call an internal "code red."
How did he pull it off?
Woodward kept things fresh with features like "Block" (to flag team roadblocks) and "Papercuts" (for user feedback on Reddit and X).
He also launched Nano Banana in August—a creative tool that generated billions of images and shot up the App Store charts.