Last updated Nov 29, 2025
Prediction
Friedberg
techscience
If Google continues progressing on its current quantum computing roadmap, within roughly 3–7 years from 2024 there will exist large‑scale quantum computers capable of running algorithms like Shor’s such that they can, in principle, break essentially all current classical encryption standards.
One of the things that this highlights is that in a couple of years, theoretically, if Google continues on this track and now they build a large scale qubit computer, they theoretically would be in a position to to start to run some of these quantum algorithms like Shor's algorithm. And so we're now kind of spitting distance or a couple of years. It's not really clear. Is it. Three years, five years, seven years, but a couple years away from having computers that theoretically could crack all encryption standards.
Explanation

As of November 30, 2025, no company (including Google) has demonstrated a large‑scale, fault‑tolerant quantum computer capable of practically running Shor’s algorithm at scales that would actually break standard public‑key cryptosystems (e.g., 2048‑bit RSA, standard ECC curves) used on the internet.

Relevant current facts:

  • Google’s major public milestones are still in the noisy intermediate‑scale quantum (NISQ) regime. After its 2019 “quantum supremacy” result with the 53‑qubit Sycamore processor, later work has focused on better qubits and error‑correction, not on a full‑scale, cryptography‑breaking device.
  • Research papers and Google blog posts since then describe progress on error-corrected logical qubits and improved fidelities, but they do not claim any machine that can run Shor’s algorithm at cryptographically relevant sizes.
  • Government and standards bodies are still operating under the assumption that cryptography‑breaking quantum computers do not yet exist, and are preparing via post‑quantum cryptography precisely because such machines are expected only in the future, on an uncertain timeline.

The prediction, however, explicitly allowed 3–7 years from around 2024 (i.e., roughly 2027–2031) for such a machine to exist in principle if Google continues on its trajectory. As of late 2025 we are only about 1–2 years into that window. There is not yet evidence that Google has achieved this, but there is also not yet enough time elapsed to say definitively that it won’t by 2027–2031.

Because the prediction is about capabilities by a future date that has not arrived yet, and current evidence doesn’t falsify the possibility that Google might get there within that 3–7 year window, the correct status today is “too early to tell.”