In November 2007, Google laid the groundwork to dominate the mobile market by releasing Android, an open ­source operating system for phones. Eight years later to the month, Android has an an 80 percent market share, and Google is using the same trick—this time with artificial intelligence.

Today Google is announcing TensorFlow, its open ­source platform for machine learning, giving anyone a computer and internet connection (and casual background in deep learning algorithms) access to one of the most powerful machine learning platforms ever created. More than 50 Google products have adopted TensorFlow to harness deep learning (machine learning using deep neural networks) as a tool, from identifying you and your friends in the Photos app to refining its core search engine. Google has become a machine learning company. Now they're taking what makes their services special, and giving it to the world.