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X, the moonshot factory

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Re: X, the moonshot factory

#131

Post by paulvnickerson »

NBJack wrote: post #103
paulvnickerson wrote: post #92

Is this another shot at Elon Musk? Not sure where all the hate for him came from. Was it the hardline free speech direction he took Twitter, reinstating conservative accounts? That seemed to be the downward turning point in his popularity.

Not sure what rock you've managed to find (please send me the address, BTW, I could use a break myself), but between being forced to buy the company, firing a vast swath of the staff, not paying his workers, and other terrible decisions on what was otherwise a floundering if beloved company, I think Elon has earned this fresh disdain.

Sorry buddy, I value the privacy of my rock.

Re: X, the moonshot factory

#132

Post by 23B1 »

Have worked (or attempted to work) on numerous projects with these guys, and each one has been an embarrassing mix of them throwing money at us and then disappearing and it going nowhere. Half the time the project sponsor just disappears into some other part of google.

Re: X, the moonshot factory

#133

Post by julianlam »

ke88y wrote: post #119
prepend wrote: post #83

How long do these “moonshots” have until they are considered failures? It seems like an anti pattern that some huge, futzy organization launches a “moonshot” to explain why they burn money on something without needing a return because it’s a “moonshot.” JFK gave his “to the moon” speech in 1962, targeting 1970 [0]. And the USG did it. So 8 years was the first one. It cost a ton of money and was successful and had mas…

> Google launched its X/moonshot org in 2010 [1]. 14 years later, have any “landed?” Waymo, Brain, and Chronicle

I haven't heard of the latter two, and Waymo is currently in development/testing and is not nearly as ubiquitous as it seems to be in the States.

Re: X, the moonshot factory

#134

Post by tehlike »

julianlam wrote: post #133
ke88y wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google launched its X/moonshot org in 2010 [1]. 14 years later, have any “landed?” Waymo, Brain, and Chronicle

I haven't heard of the latter two, and Waymo is currently in development/testing and is not nearly as ubiquitous as it seems to be in the States.

Brain is everything you know of today in GenAI space, and many more internally used products and technologies.

Re: X, the moonshot factory

#135

Post by tehlike »

rand1239 wrote: post #127
ke88y wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google launched its X/moonshot org in 2010 [1]. 14 years later, have any “landed?” Waymo, Brain, and Chronicle

Do any of them generate profit?

Brain is indirectly profitable in terms of AI backend for the whole company, which pays dividends in ads, mobile, etc.

Re: X, the moonshot factory

#138

Post by starkparker »

MontyCarloHall wrote: post #82

Also of note is that the stock ticker symbol "X" is, for whatever reason, US Steel [0]. If Elon ever takes his X Company public, I bet there will be a lot of erroneous buys of US Steel, similar to what happened when Twitter originally went public [1] (an unrelated penny stock with the ticker symbol TWTRQ surged), or when an unrelated company with the ticker symbol ZOOM surged when people started buying Zoom videoconf…

IIRC the X came from the 1980s when it branched out into energy, bought Marathon Oil, and reorganized into an umbrella company named "USX" in which the US Steel part became just a subsidiary. They exited that in 2001 but apparently? kept the symbol.

Re: X, the moonshot factory

#139

Post by sparrc »

tehlike wrote: post #134
julianlam wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't heard of the latter two, and Waymo is currently in development/testing and is not nearly as ubiquitous as it seems to be in the States.

Brain is everything you know of today in GenAI space, and many more internally used products and technologies.

How much of that was actually generated directly from "Google X"? Seems to me that most of it came out of DeepMind, which was just a run-of-the-mill big company buys innovative startup type of acquisition.

Re: X, the moonshot factory

#140

Post by starkparker »

apocalyptic0n3 wrote: post #110
andsoitis wrote: post #37

Have any of their projects gone anywhere? https://x.company/projects/

Hard to argue Waymo hasn't gone anywhere with the number of their Taxis I see driving around Scottsdale. I see multiple everyday and I only really drive along a single road as part of my commute. I don't think they've "made it" yet, but it's impressive tech I can actually use nonetheless.

Just like the moon landing: testing it out in Arizona before doing it for real. https://www.fs.usda.gov/detail/coconino/?cid=FSEPRD611864
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