Dive Brief:

• Google announced Tuesday it’s creating a new Google Cloud Machine Learning group that will focus on delivering cloud-based machine learning solutions to businesses.
• The group will be led by prominent machine intelligence researchers Fei-Fei Li and Jia Li.
• Google Cloud Machine Learning is one of Google’s fastest growing product areas, Rob Craft, Group Lead for Google Cloud Machine Learning, said in a company blog. "Building a centralized team within Google Cloud will accelerate our ability to deliver machine learning products and services to enterprise customers in every industry."

Dive Insight: 

In September, Apple made a similar move, forming a new machine learning division following its acquisition of machine learning company Turi in August. Though most of Apple’s machine learning applications are currently consumer-based, it’s likely Apple will look to introduce machine learning into enterprise offerings soon in order to further differentiate itself in the enterprise market, especially now that Google has done so.

Google also announced Google Cloud Jobs API, an API designed to better match jobs to candidates using machine learning. Google said Jibe, Dice and CareerBuilder are already using Google Cloud Jobs API.

APIs are seen as an increasingly vital part of how business gets done today, and therefore viewed by Google as a critical investment. In September, Google bought API management company Apigee for $625 million. 

Companies are expected to spend $3 billion on API management by 2020, according to Forrester.