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Alphabet announces $80B equity capital raise to expand AI infra and compute

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Re: Alphabet announces $80B equity capital raise to expand AI infra and compute

#181
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They know Google has a ton of data to train LLMs on. Recently I have been asking YouTube's new AI about some videos ("when is Steam metrics mentioned in the video?" for example), which means they also index videos. This is an unthinkable amount of data. I'm actually impressed at how bad Alphabet is with LLMs since they invented the thing as we know AND have all the data to train on, yet OpenAI and Anthropic are eatin…

I wouldn't be surprised if Google's logs alone are a substantial portion of all data created daily...

Some of the stuff that turns up on Googlebot, you really have to think "where on earth did you find that? Absolutely nobody, nowhere had a hyperlink to that"

Re: Alphabet announces $80B equity capital raise to expand AI infra and compute

#183
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They know Google has a ton of data to train LLMs on. Recently I have been asking YouTube's new AI about some videos ("when is Steam metrics mentioned in the video?" for example), which means they also index videos. This is an unthinkable amount of data. I'm actually impressed at how bad Alphabet is with LLMs since they invented the thing as we know AND have all the data to train on, yet OpenAI and Anthropic are eatin…

My guess: The company culture means that the best people went to other companies.

Google has been diabolical with forming teams to develop a product, then disbanding the team, and then moonlighting the product right after deployment.

cries in Google Glass

Wild that Meta has that product now decades later, which isn't even half of what Google offered.

Re: Alphabet announces $80B equity capital raise to expand AI infra and compute

#184
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They know Google has a ton of data to train LLMs on. Recently I have been asking YouTube's new AI about some videos ("when is Steam metrics mentioned in the video?" for example), which means they also index videos. This is an unthinkable amount of data. I'm actually impressed at how bad Alphabet is with LLMs since they invented the thing as we know AND have all the data to train on, yet OpenAI and Anthropic are eatin…

How good is YT's data though? Have you seen their Auto Caption? It's utterly incapable of understanding speech. Auto Dubbing on the other hand is incredible, translating Russian/Ukranian speech with different voices and accents for each speaker, during a fire fight is wild.

That voice though is atrocious.

Re: Alphabet announces $80B equity capital raise to expand AI infra and compute

#185
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They know Google has a ton of data to train LLMs on. Recently I have been asking YouTube's new AI about some videos ("when is Steam metrics mentioned in the video?" for example), which means they also index videos. This is an unthinkable amount of data. I'm actually impressed at how bad Alphabet is with LLMs since they invented the thing as we know AND have all the data to train on, yet OpenAI and Anthropic are eatin…

Youtube has had AI generated transcripts with autotranslation for the subtitles for years, not to mention the forced AI dubbing on mobile phones. Doing a little bit of RAG on the transcript hardly sounds impressive.

Yet, Gemini can't even get YouTube URLs right half of the times.

Re: Alphabet announces $80B equity capital raise to expand AI infra and compute

#186
post #42
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They know Google has a ton of data to train LLMs on. Recently I have been asking YouTube's new AI about some videos ("when is Steam metrics mentioned in the video?" for example), which means they also index videos. This is an unthinkable amount of data. I'm actually impressed at how bad Alphabet is with LLMs since they invented the thing as we know AND have all the data to train on, yet OpenAI and Anthropic are eatin…

I don't think they 'index' videos, per se. They just point the model at the video's transcript on demand when you ask a question, I believe. Doesn't change any of your conclusions, though. You're absolutely right, they have an absolute ton of data.

> I don't think they 'index' videos, per se.

I'm pretty sure they do. They already index metadata (you can see it in the web search results) so indexing the transcript is relatively easy.

Re: Alphabet announces $80B equity capital raise to expand AI infra and compute

#187
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They know Google has a ton of data to train LLMs on. Recently I have been asking YouTube's new AI about some videos ("when is Steam metrics mentioned in the video?" for example), which means they also index videos. This is an unthinkable amount of data. I'm actually impressed at how bad Alphabet is with LLMs since they invented the thing as we know AND have all the data to train on, yet OpenAI and Anthropic are eatin…

How good is YT's data though? Have you seen their Auto Caption? It's utterly incapable of understanding speech. Auto Dubbing on the other hand is incredible, translating Russian/Ukranian speech with different voices and accents for each speaker, during a fire fight is wild.

> Have you seen their Auto Caption? It's utterly incapable of understanding speech.

How recently have you looked? I think nowadays it's quite good.

Re: Alphabet announces $80B equity capital raise to expand AI infra and compute

#188
post #111
post #6

Quoting: In addition, Alphabet has reached an agreement to sell $10 billion of stock to Berkshire Hathaway Inc. in a private placement, comprised of $5 billion in Class A Common Stock at a price of $351.81 per share and $5 billion in Class C Capital Stock at a price of $348.20 per share. This investment by Berkshire Hathaway adds to the position it has built since Q3 2025.

google stock is $376 a share rn. berkshire got a favorable discount here. is this... normal? they didnt have an obligation to offer it to the market to find the best price?

The deal might have been signed a month ago, just before earnings, when the stock was about that price.

Re: Alphabet announces $80B equity capital raise to expand AI infra and compute

#189
post #17
post #6

Quoting: In addition, Alphabet has reached an agreement to sell $10 billion of stock to Berkshire Hathaway Inc. in a private placement, comprised of $5 billion in Class A Common Stock at a price of $351.81 per share and $5 billion in Class C Capital Stock at a price of $348.20 per share. This investment by Berkshire Hathaway adds to the position it has built since Q3 2025.

They know Google has a ton of data to train LLMs on. Recently I have been asking YouTube's new AI about some videos ("when is Steam metrics mentioned in the video?" for example), which means they also index videos. This is an unthinkable amount of data. I'm actually impressed at how bad Alphabet is with LLMs since they invented the thing as we know AND have all the data to train on, yet OpenAI and Anthropic are eatin…

> I'm actually impressed at how bad Alphabet is with LLMs

Not my impression. Lately I think Gemini is superior to ChatGPT and Claude in coding (I'm mostly using it with scientific stuff in Python).

Re: Alphabet announces $80B equity capital raise to expand AI infra and compute

#190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kodak problem. Kodak invented the digital camera but their revenue came from making photographic film. They were unable to take advantage of their invention because it would cannibalise their revenue. That didn't stop other people and the revenue died anyway. Google's main revenue is ads based on search. LLMs are a competitor to search. Creating better LLMs will cut into search volumes. In any large organisation this…

LLMs still need a search API, and use it a lot. Google is well positioned to earn from this service, especially if they can prove that their search service is superior to competitors. While they lose some of their moat, they are well positioned to dominate the market, just like they did in the consumer space.

That’s not what claude code does… and that’s exactly the dilemma for Google.
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