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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

#381

Post by 2OEH8eoCRo0 »

trentnix wrote: post #139
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…

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…

People have been incredibly shallow on the issue. ChatGPT is the harbinger. There will be many more and from different companies. Google awoke to find an enemy scouting party testing their perimeter.

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

#382

Post by arcanus »

alberth wrote: post #367
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…

> Also sounds like they really believe the whole founder-hero mythology It’s not that at all. Given that Larry + Sergey still control Google (>50% shareholder votes), seem prudent to meet with who controls the company to debrief them on current events & action plan.

^ this is correct.

As owners, they can provide cover for management to put more discretionary funding into combating this threat.

I think Sundar has yet to prove himself as a great CEO, but this is good leadership.

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

#383

Post by badwolf »

AlbertCory wrote: post #219
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…

> 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.

Having run "startup within the enterprise" business units ... this is such a frustrating thing, trying something new and different, but it doesn't become massively profitable in under a year, so the owner/founder shuts the project down. Not remembering it took the main business unit over a decade to get where they are :-/

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

#384

Post by broknbottle »

tirpen wrote: post #147
vanviegen wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The one that bothers me most is that background services are now management by some AI thingy, in order to 'optimize battery usage'. Ergo, background services are now unreliable.

As an example, Facebook Messenger has become almost completely unusable on Android phones because the OS keeps killing the process despite the user specifically telling it to don't. I'm not 100% convinced that this is by accident.

Somewhat ironic as this sort of issues started becoming more prevalent on the Linux desktop once distros started adopting sytemd-oomd and Facebook is the one that submitted portions of their oomd solution to systemd.

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

#385

Post by Gigachad »

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.

Proving statements reasonably true is a lot easier than coming up with them from scratch. ChatGPT finds the needle in a haystack, you're job is to check it is a needle. For some questions it mostly returns junk but it returns needles often enough to speed up whatever you were doing.

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

#386

Post by addandsubtract »

dinkumthinkum wrote: post #234
tasuki wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ChatGPT often makes up facts. As opposed to... Google? Your doctor? My doctor?

Absolutely as opposed to those things. With Google, if you use a reliable source like Mayo, NIH, even a WebMD, It is clearly more likely to have accurate information than something that proves even numbers are prime. Certainly all those things can be inaccurate but where in the world you think ChatGPT pattern matches it’s information from?

And how hard would it be for ChatGPT to be retrained on peer reviewed medical journals? ChatMD-GPT, if you will.

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

#387

Post by Gigachad »

tirpen wrote: post #147
vanviegen wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The one that bothers me most is that background services are now management by some AI thingy, in order to 'optimize battery usage'. Ergo, background services are now unreliable.

As an example, Facebook Messenger has become almost completely unusable on Android phones because the OS keeps killing the process despite the user specifically telling it to don't. I'm not 100% convinced that this is by accident.

Why does facebook need a background service? Isn't there one global notification service that is super reliable and gets messages for all apps using it?

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

#388

Post by WalterBright »

AlbertCory wrote: post #219
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…

> 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.

I never quite understood this. New tricks only have to have ROI better than 14% or so to be worthwhile.

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

#390

Post by echelon »

no_butterscotch wrote: post #376
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…

Does this not reflect badly on Sundar? To have this "surprise" freak-out catch them off guard? To bring in the old leadership so publicly?

In my frank opinion, Sundar is the worst performing of the FAANG leaders. He reminds me of Ballmer's flat growth, but perhaps much worse - we'll know the true scope of the damage soon.

His leadership has put Google's single biggest revenue stream in the cross hairs of competitors, and Sundar should have seen it coming. He's done nothing to secure Google's future or broaden the company's revenue sources.

Perhaps the biggest disappointment is that Google has been unable to move the needle on cloud. This despite the fact that Google had the best in the business once upon a time.

There's no innovation out of this company - only vanity projects, product cancellations, and in-fighting. Google's sparkle is decades in the rear view mirror. I'd describe them as the Walmart of computing, but even Walmart is formidable. Google is paper thin.

Microsoft's Nadella, by contrast, is a phenom. Developers (Github, VSCode), Cloud, and B2B (Office, LinkedIn) are kicking ass. I don't even think about their consumer-facing stuff much anymore, because the rest of their offerings are so good. Their choice to invest in OpenAI is really paying off too.

Google is fat. Fat, lethargic, and dumb. It's not somewhere worth working at until they axe the incumbent leadership. Their stock option-based comp is going to take a rough tumble, especially if they don't show a willingness to reverse course immediately.

Microsoft is going to eat Google's lunch.

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