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Google “We have no moat, and neither does OpenAI”

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Re: Google “We have no moat, and neither does OpenAI”

#271

Post by digging »

hgomersall wrote: post #218
CSMastermind wrote: post #192

I remember I was at Microsoft more than a decade ago now and at the time there was a lot of concern about search and how far Bing lagged behind Google in geospatial (maps). After some initial investment in the area I was at a presentation where one of the higher ups explained that they'd be abandoning their investment because Google Maps would inevitably fall behind crowdsourcing and OpenStreetMap. Just like Encarta…

In terms of data, OSM is so far ahead of Google maps in my experience. The rendering is much better too. What's not there is obvious and easy to use tooling that anyone can interact with. I mean, there might be, but I don't know about it.

I don't have google maps on my phone at all unless I visit in the browser, and I use OSM through Magic Earth. I wouldn't go back, but it is a huge pain and sometimes I do have to just open google maps in a browser window. It doesn't usually have hours of operation, doesn't usually have links to websites. It can't find businesses by name easily (it often seems to require the exact name to by typed in), and it definitely can't find businesses by service (searching for "sandwiches" will not show you a list of local sandwich shops, it will do something like teleport you to a street called "Sandwiches" in Ireland). And even if I have the exact address, I will still sometimes end of thousands of miles away or with no hits because the street name was written differently. Honestly, it's of very little use to me because it can rarely take me to a new place.

Re: Google “We have no moat, and neither does OpenAI”

#272

Post by RajT88 »

wilkystyle wrote: post #252
IIAOPSW wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been using osm more and more recently. Google just makes a bunch of frustrating decisions that really pushed me to look elsewhere. Especially in the public transport layer, but more generally in being really bad at deciding when to hide details with no way to override it and say "TELL ME THE NAME OF THIS CROSS STREET DAMNIT THATS THE ONLY REASON I KEEP ZOOMING IN HERE!!!".

> generally in being really bad at deciding when to hide details with no way to override it and say "TELL ME THE NAME OF THIS CROSS STREET DAMNIT THATS THE ONLY REASON I KEEP ZOOMING IN HERE!!!". Stuff like this is the main reason I end up switching to Apple Maps on the occasions that I do so. Another example is refusing to tell me the number of the upcoming exit I'm taking. In general I would say Google Maps is stil…

Google maps is at least getting better about screen real estate. I have an android head unit, and Maps clearly assumed you'd always be using Maps in portrait mode, because the bottom bar would clutter up the bottom of the screen with "local stuff near by you might be interested in" if you weren't actively navigating.

Eventually switched to Waze, which is now also cluttering things up with (basically) ads.

Re: Google “We have no moat, and neither does OpenAI”

#273

Post by samstave »

cube2222 wrote: post #83

Some snippets for folks who come just for the comments: > While our models still hold a slight edge in terms of quality, the gap is closing astonishingly quickly. Open-source models are faster, more customizable, more private, and pound-for-pound more capable. They are doing things with $100 and 13B params that we struggle with at $10M and 540B. And they are doing so in weeks, not months. > A tremendous outpouring of…

>>”T ey have effectively garnered an entire planet’s worth of free labor.”

-

THIS IS WHY WE NEED DATA FUCKING OWNERSHIP.

Users should be able to have a recourse to the use of their data in both of terms utility (for the parent company) and in terms of financial value to the parent company to the financial extraction of that value.

Let me use cannabis as an example…

When multiple cannabis cultivators (growers) combine their product for extraction into a singular product we have to figure out how to divide and pay the taxes..

Same thing (I’ll edit this later because I’m at the dentist

Re: Google “We have no moat, and neither does OpenAI”

#274

Post by oiejrlskjadf »

hospitalJail wrote: post #171

I find it strange people are saying facebook's leak was the 'Stable Diffusion' moment for LLMs. The license is awful and basically means it can't be used in anything involving money legally. Facebook has a terrible reputation, and if they can open source their model, it would transform their reputation at least among techies. https://github.com/facebookresearch/llama/pull/184

> Facebook has a terrible reputation, and if they can open source their model, it would transform their reputation at least among techies.

Have you ever heard of PyTorch? React? Jest? Docusaurus?

If none of those changed their reputation among "techies" I doubt awesome contribution open source project X + 1 would.

Re: Google “We have no moat, and neither does OpenAI”

#275

Post by kerkeslager »

CSMastermind wrote: post #192

I remember I was at Microsoft more than a decade ago now and at the time there was a lot of concern about search and how far Bing lagged behind Google in geospatial (maps). After some initial investment in the area I was at a presentation where one of the higher ups explained that they'd be abandoning their investment because Google Maps would inevitably fall behind crowdsourcing and OpenStreetMap. Just like Encarta…

The difference being, in this case, the author is giving examples of places where their product is clearly behind.

This isn't a prediction, it's an observation. There's no moat because the castle has already been taken.

Re: Google “We have no moat, and neither does OpenAI”

#276

Post by thepasswordis »

IIAOPSW wrote: post #237
CSMastermind wrote: post #192

I remember I was at Microsoft more than a decade ago now and at the time there was a lot of concern about search and how far Bing lagged behind Google in geospatial (maps). After some initial investment in the area I was at a presentation where one of the higher ups explained that they'd be abandoning their investment because Google Maps would inevitably fall behind crowdsourcing and OpenStreetMap. Just like Encarta…

I've been using osm more and more recently. Google just makes a bunch of frustrating decisions that really pushed me to look elsewhere. Especially in the public transport layer, but more generally in being really bad at deciding when to hide details with no way to override it and say "TELL ME THE NAME OF THIS CROSS STREET DAMNIT THATS THE ONLY REASON I KEEP ZOOMING IN HERE!!!".

One unbelievably annoying thing about seemingly every map provider is that they don’t like showing state or national boundaries.

On google maps, these national boundaries have the same line weight and a similar style to highways. It’s really annoying.

Re: Google “We have no moat, and neither does OpenAI”

#277

Post by icyfox »

deanc wrote: post #262
visarga wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been saying the same things for weeks, right here and in the usual places. Basically - OpenAI will not be able to continue to commercialise chatGPT-3.5, they will have to move to GPT-4 because the open source alternatives will catch up. Their island of exclusivity is shrinking fast. In a few months nobody will want to pay for GPT-4 either when they can have private, cheap equivalents. So GPT-5 it is for OpenAI.…

And where are these open source models where I can go to a url and do all the things I can do in ChatGPT or through api keys for OpenAI? I googled a couple of weeks ago to find hosted versions of these open source models to try, and every one was either down or woefully poor. OpenAI and MS are going to win because they have a package to go and it’s ready and available and working well - they have set the benchmark. I…

One issue with the current generation of open source models is most have been based on some llama core architecture, and that's not licensed for commercial use. Once you get to the point of spinning up a full and easy API, and selling API credentials, you're entering into the commercial clause. Once we have a llama alternative (or a more permissively licensed separate architecture) I guarantee hosting providers like Render or Model are going to come in with an API offering. Just waiting on those core models to improve licensing, would be my guess.

Re: Google “We have no moat, and neither does OpenAI”

#278

Post by aidenn0 »

hgomersall wrote: post #218
CSMastermind wrote: post #192

I remember I was at Microsoft more than a decade ago now and at the time there was a lot of concern about search and how far Bing lagged behind Google in geospatial (maps). After some initial investment in the area I was at a presentation where one of the higher ups explained that they'd be abandoning their investment because Google Maps would inevitably fall behind crowdsourcing and OpenStreetMap. Just like Encarta…

In terms of data, OSM is so far ahead of Google maps in my experience. The rendering is much better too. What's not there is obvious and easy to use tooling that anyone can interact with. I mean, there might be, but I don't know about it.

Fairly regularly an address I'm searching for just won't be in OSM, but it is in Google. This happens often enough to be a well-known issue.

Re: Google “We have no moat, and neither does OpenAI”

#279

Post by danielmarkbruce »

akhayam wrote: post #78

The real moats in this field will come from the hardware industry. It's way too expensive to train these models on general purpose compute. Vertically designed silicon that brings down the unit economics of training and inference workloads are already being designed, in industry and in academia.

NVIDIA already has a big moat in this area. It might not last forever, but at least for a good while they have a big one.
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