A reminder that Google's revenues come almost completely from ad technology that they bought (from Doubleclick, IIRC). Google has stuck its fingers into hundreds of pies since then, to its credit, and has found that innovation is difficult, unpredictable, and expensive.
Search, Maps, Ads and Android are Google's most successful product. Android was bought at well.
Ex-Google boss Eric Schmidt: US 'dropped the ball' on innovation
201–210 of 562 posts
Re: Ex-Google boss Eric Schmidt: US 'dropped the ball' on innovation
#202Eric Schmidt is a household name around here. Doesn’t mean I give a damn about what he thinks. > Dr Schmidt, who is currently the Chair of the US Department of Defense's innovation board, said he thinks the US is still ahead of China in tech innovation, for now. “Invest in my next project now, before it’s too late!” is what I read it as. Edit: let me clarify. Innovation isn't zero-sum. I believe America is the most f…
Re: Ex-Google boss Eric Schmidt: US 'dropped the ball' on innovation
#203Earlier quoted context omitted.
Public education spending as a percentage of GDP is at an all time high. I dont think people appreciate the cost of public schooling in the US. According to data provided by the federal government, public schools in the US spend on average $15,500 per child per year. That is an enormous amount of money and it is only climbing ever higher year after year.
It depends on the area. It's been particularly divested in California, which falls short of the average per child spend despite having the highest GDP. In CA, per child spend has fallen 15% from 1970-1997. https://www.kqed.org/news/11701044/how-proposition-13-transf...
Where did you get that? From the graph in your article it looks like it grew by almost 20%
Re: Ex-Google boss Eric Schmidt: US 'dropped the ball' on innovation
#204Drumming up a scary vision of global war against China using flying AI-killer robots in outer space while your companies are siphoning billions of dollars out of defense budgets and you get your competition (Huawei, TikTok etc.) banned on national security grounds.
Innovation comes from a functioning global market place of "ideas". It is a 1+1=3 game, not a zero-sum one.
Drop the new cold war and get back to doing business.
Re: Ex-Google boss Eric Schmidt: US 'dropped the ball' on innovation
#205Eric Schmidt is a household name around here. Doesn’t mean I give a damn about what he thinks. > Dr Schmidt, who is currently the Chair of the US Department of Defense's innovation board, said he thinks the US is still ahead of China in tech innovation, for now. “Invest in my next project now, before it’s too late!” is what I read it as. Edit: let me clarify. Innovation isn't zero-sum. I believe America is the most f…
The United States balances innovation with ethics ? The people of Hiroshima or the victims of agent orange might have something to say about that.
And wouldn't stop doing so until destroyed, whether with conventional or nuclear bombs.
Re: Ex-Google boss Eric Schmidt: US 'dropped the ball' on innovation
#206"This high skills immigration is crucial to American competitiveness, global competitiveness, building these new companies and so forth," he said. "America does not have enough people with those skills." Translation -- US software engineer salaries are still too high for his liking, so he wants to dilute the market with more to lower the overall cost.
I do not mind a little competition if we bring people who might improve our technological edge. China is going to surpass the US eventually and oh lord, we are in denial!.
This is my opinion, I am not claiming to know the absolute truth or facts.
Re: Ex-Google boss Eric Schmidt: US 'dropped the ball' on innovation
#207Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have a BS in CS. 90% of the concurrency I know is self taught, 98% of the I/O I know is self taught , 85% of the networking I know is self taught. I went to RPI, which is not an ivy school but it is a good engineering school.
Is some of this a failure to distinguish between software engineering and computer science? Some famous CS person quipped that "CS is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes." That's fine for studying applied information theory and whatnot, but it seems like maybe the time has come for a formal bifurcation of the fields.
Re: Ex-Google boss Eric Schmidt: US 'dropped the ball' on innovation
#208It certainly doesn't sound very insightful and he should know better. China has perfected the schooling system and employee discipline, this gives them a considerable advantage. US schools and colleges are a politicized mess, kids are distracted by "diversity" and other decadent but useless ideas. Perhaps it's hard to see through the eyes of someone who hired only from top universities (though they are messed up too), but I don't believe his statement was actually honest.
Re: Ex-Google boss Eric Schmidt: US 'dropped the ball' on innovation
#209"This high skills immigration is crucial to American competitiveness, global competitiveness, building these new companies and so forth," he said. "America does not have enough people with those skills." Translation -- US software engineer salaries are still too high for his liking, so he wants to dilute the market with more to lower the overall cost.
The flip side is that the US has traditionally attracted the best talent in the world. This class has gone on to win the most Nobel prizes and create the most valuable companies in the world. Focusing on a real negative externality (labor arbitrage) fails to recognize the immense benefits skilled immigrants bring to this country.
I’m a son if one of them. My dad came this country in the 60s to get his masters in math at BYU. Probably the only South Asian in the entire class. He overcame extreme poverty,(half of his siblings died in childhood), disabilities to go on and achieve so much. I benefit from his achievements and being a US citizen.
That being said, we’re losing our preeminence due to growing xenophobia and a strident “might is right” worldview. But it doesn’t have to be this way - we can embrace our shared humanity while still competing on the global stage for talent.
Re: Ex-Google boss Eric Schmidt: US 'dropped the ball' on innovation
#210Tangential, since this article is about the US and China. But if the US has dropped the ball, then Europe (or the EU specifically) didn't even bother to go to the game. The only thing we're innovative at is coming up with regulations. And I say this as someone who thinks the US tech sector should be under much heavier regulatory scrutiny.
But the issue I see is that innovation is a bit like herding cats. You can't really push for it. And even in the US, most of it is located on 2 cities. And of course, being on SV it is much easier to get you a check for 10Mi dollars for a worse idea than 1Mi or even 100k in Europe
I don't see China's "innovation" as being much that (maybe except in AI and maybe ByteDance is a new thing, still) but more scaling up known solutions (ecommerce, fb on steroids in the form of wechat, etc) and market protection.