> Is IBM an AI company?

That's how they've decided to brand themselves, at least (as of ~four months ago): http://adage.com/article/datadriven-marketing/ibm-replaces-s...

At Google, AI does seem to unite almost everything they do, from search, image recognition, self-driving cars, and ad placement. Of course all their revenue is from ads, so in revenue, they're an advertising company, but in products, they're an AI company.

But all that is true of Facebook and Amazon, say.

I'm not saying they don't do AI, I'm just saying it's not their unique focus that sets them apart from other companies. Search-and-ads sets them apart.

You could certainly identify very large datacenters, Big Data and now machine learning as tools that Google have pioneered. But they don't have an exclusive lock on those.

No, but I think Google goes a lot further with their research and application of AI than Facebook and Amazon. I don't see Facebook and Amazon developing self-driving cars or Deep Dreaming.

So what about Android?

(Said the guy whose work is related to Android...)

but serving appropriate ads can be well served by AI. There may be a question of the increased margin that can come from keyword-based to AI-based ads, but it is there.

Utilizing/developing AI doesn't define your company as an AI company though. All of that has consistently been second to the advertising. Almost everything they do ties back into their advertising business in someway. They're an advertising company with a lot of (awesome) side projects.