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Google calls in help from Larry Page and Sergey Brin for A.I. fight

nytimes.com

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Re: Google calls in help from Larry Page and Sergey Brin for A.I. fight

#261

Post by fragmede »

AlbertCory wrote: post #212
pm90 wrote: post #118

Seems like Google leadership is freaking out. Also sounds like they really believe the whole founder-hero mythology if they think that Page-Brin can save the company. I don’t know how Google could be saved but perhaps having grateful and happy employees that would just build things in their 20% time might have been a better strategy. A truly revolutionary step would have been to buck the layoffs trend. But of course…

Former Googler here. 20% Time is a myth and always was. Yes, occasionally someone would talk about "their 20% time" but it was rare, and usually just meant "spending a few hours on something else." Admittedly, once in a while someone really did spend 20% of their time on something else, and management was not allowed to complain. Once, in about 2006-07, I was at a table with about 8 software engineers and asked for a…

By your own story, it's not a myth. Not everyone has one, and your boss had to be supportive of you working on it, but there are a bunch of internal systems that are supported by 20% time. It might be more appropriate to frame that 20% as giving 120% (aka working on it on Saturday instead of Friday) for some of the things, but it's a real thing that exists. Just because not everybody has such a project doesn't make it a myth.

Re: Google calls in help from Larry Page and Sergey Brin for A.I. fight

#262

Post by steveBK123 »

jbverschoor wrote: post #258
steveBK123 wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes this is the most insane thing about GOOG to me. Yes, search is basically monopoly moat of recurring growing revenue. On the other hand, they've spent not a decade, but about 25 years betting this would remain the case! I've met a lot of people who work at GOOG, and yet none of them could explain to me how the thing they work on makes any money for GOOG. In fact, most went out of their way to volunteer to me that…

ChatGPT would probably be a better search engine than google. ChatGPT and Reddit cover most of your info. What remains is shopping, but Amazon and even Instagram are better at that. Lastly, Google has no audience for creating awareness like fb / ig / tt

Well I'd say they both put all their eggs in one basket & let that basket deteriorate. Show of hands - people who feel google search has improved in the last 5/10 years vs people who feel it's gotten demonstrably worse?

So they have a monopoly product that is something like a 2 sided market (advertisers & search users) where both sides hate using it..

Re: Google calls in help from Larry Page and Sergey Brin for A.I. fight

#263

Post by hintymad »

pm90 wrote: post #118

Seems like Google leadership is freaking out. Also sounds like they really believe the whole founder-hero mythology if they think that Page-Brin can save the company. I don’t know how Google could be saved but perhaps having grateful and happy employees that would just build things in their 20% time might have been a better strategy. A truly revolutionary step would have been to buck the layoffs trend. But of course…

> I don’t know how Google could be saved but perhaps having grateful and happy employees that would just build things in their 20% time might have been a better strategy.

I'm not sure 20%-time is a better strategy. At least it was not proven yet. For starters, which successful products were initially Google employees' 20% projects? Google Search was certainly not. Google Search Ads was not per the book In the Plex. The product went through multiple iterations, and a math whiz from u of waterloo conceived the idea of using second-price auction system. Google Maps was not, per the book Never Lost Again. It was developed by the Lars project initially at Where 2. GSuite was not. It was from the startup Writely. Google Adsense was not. I was from DoubleClick. Google Chrome was not. It was a strategic product that multiple people drove, including the current Google CEO. Google's self-driving car was not. Page personally drove the project by working with leaders like Thrun.

On the other hand, breakthroughs like ChatGPT can't be from a 20% project. It requires full-time dedication of multiple world-class researchers and engineers to develop a series of models, to set up a massive infrastructure for training and data processing, to implement an efficient process for human input, and to invest many millions of dollars to buy GPU time and crawler time.

Re: Google calls in help from Larry Page and Sergey Brin for A.I. fight

#264

Post by AlbertCory »

steveBK123 wrote: post #259
AlbertCory wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> not bother to find some other ways to make money. Oh, they definitely tried, and still try. The problem is the same as many large companies: they want a new trick as lucrative as the old trick, and there aren't any.

did they try though? it seemed all scattershot, unfocussed, repetitive (how many chat/video apps) and quickly taken out back and shot.

it's not ALL scattershot. GMail and Docs for enterprises are a pretty sustained effort. Cloud is pretty sustained. YouTube is unkillable.

But in general you're right.

Re: Google calls in help from Larry Page and Sergey Brin for A.I. fight

#265

Post by fragmede »

hintymad wrote: post #263
pm90 wrote: post #118

Seems like Google leadership is freaking out. Also sounds like they really believe the whole founder-hero mythology if they think that Page-Brin can save the company. I don’t know how Google could be saved but perhaps having grateful and happy employees that would just build things in their 20% time might have been a better strategy. A truly revolutionary step would have been to buck the layoffs trend. But of course…

> I don’t know how Google could be saved but perhaps having grateful and happy employees that would just build things in their 20% time might have been a better strategy. I'm not sure 20%-time is a better strategy. At least it was not proven yet. For starters, which successful products were initially Google employees' 20% projects? Google Search was certainly not. Google Search Ads was not per the book In the Plex. T…

Gmail is the breakout hit that came from a 20% time project.

Re: Google calls in help from Larry Page and Sergey Brin for A.I. fight

#266

Post by fragmede »

steveBK123 wrote: post #155
trentnix wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They should be freaking out. Google is overwhelmingly dependent on a single revenue stream and AI like ChatGPT is a serious threat to their dominant position. Not to mention, Google has spent a decade using their defacto monopoly as leverage and optimizing for ads and clicks, often exploiting their own users in the process. The bar for better was lower than it should have been, and the market is hungry for an alterna…

Yes this is the most insane thing about GOOG to me. Yes, search is basically monopoly moat of recurring growing revenue. On the other hand, they've spent not a decade, but about 25 years betting this would remain the case! I've met a lot of people who work at GOOG, and yet none of them could explain to me how the thing they work on makes any money for GOOG. In fact, most went out of their way to volunteer to me that…

The non-ad moat that I see them losing is if slack gets into the office app game. so instead of editing a Google doc and sending the link in slack, you just edit it inside slack.

Re: Google calls in help from Larry Page and Sergey Brin for A.I. fight

#267

Post by v3ss0n »

trentnix wrote: post #240
pelasaco wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

they spent years as well polishing their tools like google mail, docs, search and etc.. so i guess they still have a lot of enterprise or paid users, paying for their services. Actually the numbers are quite impressive[0]: "The global G suite business software market is expected to grow from US$ 2,224.76 million in 2021 to US$ 3,903.72 million by 2028; it is estimated to grow at a CAGR of 8.4% during 2021-2028. G sui…

Not only are the numbers impressive, the tools are impressive too. But that doesn't change the reality that ad revenue related to search is the lion's share of Google's revenue. That makes them exceptionally vulnerable for a company of their size and breadth. And in that vulnerable area, anecdotally at least, the search quality feels as if it has regressed over the years. Google was once the gateway to the web. Now t…

>Maybe I'm just nostalgic

You're not. It was so much better up until 2018. Now it only indexing spam blogs And ai generated contents? Search quality is so bad today that duckduckgo is performing actually better in many cases, especially software development related queries

Re: Google calls in help from Larry Page and Sergey Brin for A.I. fight

#268

Post by fragmede »

steveBK123 wrote: post #262
jbverschoor wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ChatGPT would probably be a better search engine than google. ChatGPT and Reddit cover most of your info. What remains is shopping, but Amazon and even Instagram are better at that. Lastly, Google has no audience for creating awareness like fb / ig / tt

Well I'd say they both put all their eggs in one basket & let that basket deteriorate. Show of hands - people who feel google search has improved in the last 5/10 years vs people who feel it's gotten demonstrably worse? So they have a monopoly product that is something like a 2 sided market (advertisers & search users) where both sides hate using it..

It autosuggests and I don't even have to click on links half the time anymore. I'd call that progress. Not ground shaking like ChatGPT but half the time I get the (right) answer to my question just by typing some related words into the search bar.

I don't know how many Google searches I did yesterday, but it feels like a lot.

It does has problems with certain queries beyond a certain depth, which I also get frustrated with, but I can go from having forgotten calculus to integrating by parts with the help of Google.

Re: Google calls in help from Larry Page and Sergey Brin for A.I. fight

#269

Post by v3ss0n »

archagon wrote: post #188
datavirtue wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before it got choked off I had started using chatGPT for all of my searches. For code examples it blows google out of the water. For learning esoteric things (like congressional procedures etc.) quickly, it is without peer. I think Google's founders offered their take years ago...no one listened then.

ChatGPT is only "truthy", however. The algorithm will happily give you information that sounds true, but is actually wrong. And if it's wrong even 1% of time, you will still need some way to verify its claims.

In Any advance topic the error rate is closed to 60%

Re: Google calls in help from Larry Page and Sergey Brin for A.I. fight

#270

Post by granshaw »

steveBK123 wrote: post #155
trentnix wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They should be freaking out. Google is overwhelmingly dependent on a single revenue stream and AI like ChatGPT is a serious threat to their dominant position. Not to mention, Google has spent a decade using their defacto monopoly as leverage and optimizing for ads and clicks, often exploiting their own users in the process. The bar for better was lower than it should have been, and the market is hungry for an alterna…

Yes this is the most insane thing about GOOG to me. Yes, search is basically monopoly moat of recurring growing revenue. On the other hand, they've spent not a decade, but about 25 years betting this would remain the case! I've met a lot of people who work at GOOG, and yet none of them could explain to me how the thing they work on makes any money for GOOG. In fact, most went out of their way to volunteer to me that…

Actually at the start the founders didn’t think search would be continue to be as dominant as it has been (will have to find the source and update…)
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