Google kills Earth AI generator after one day • Hacker News Board

Re: Google kills Earth AI generator after one day

#51

Post by cyanregiment » Sat, Aug 01, 2026, 1:57 PM UTC

threatripper wrote: post #21

VCFundedGenYer wrote: post #5

There seem to be very few adults in the room at Google as of the past few years. This also happened with Bard's (remember when they thought Bard was a good name?) racist image generator. Does nobody do QA, UAT, or UX testing anymore?

Do you get promoted for not launching a product? The interests of the individual and the institution do not always perfectly align.

People who want to destroy you at work (which I imagine is rampant at Google) will sometimes prevent you from doing something, but they might also encourage you to do it in such a way that you fail spectacularly.

Some of my favorites from my career:

1. PM enticing me to "volunteer" to build a PoC over the weekend, to have it ready by Monday morning – come Monday, PoC is shipped live to all international customers. It was nowhere near prod ready, it was just to demo 1 thing.

Naturally, endless tickets open asking about missing functionality, and changes to the dashboard, "Nothing works!".

I'm in Slack talking to customer support like "Sorry I don't know why they launched it, it's not even close to being done". I've had nightmares about this kinda thing before, and then it happened lol. Anyway it was easy to paint the image that I'm just trash, biting off more than I can chew, can't let me near anything, and I got fired for it. They want back to maintenance mode.

It was a simple dashboard that looked great (for investors) and solved problems for customers, but there was no way the other guys on the team were going to let me launch that thing. Rather than stop it, they just "helped" get it out early. Project dead, they never built that.

2. And on the other end where I was stopped from launching something, I've had 2 devs go in league to say that code I was writing was a huge security risk (front-end React) and kept saying in meetings "Yeah I saw some things" without pointing out exactly what.

At some point one of them just irreversibly deletes all the branches related to it, live in standup, and puffs his chest "Yeah sorry guys we're not releasing this stuff, I'm worried about code quality" basically got him promoted to CTO.

So yeah I imagine politics and mind games happen all the time at Google, and it's probably very confusing what is or is not a good idea, what will work and will not work, because of the massive distraction of everyone backstabbing and preparing to backstab.

Re: Google kills Earth AI generator after one day

#52

Post by BugsJustFindMe » Sat, Aug 01, 2026, 1:59 PM UTC

jstummbillig wrote: post #39

VCFundedGenYer wrote: post #5

There seem to be very few adults in the room at Google as of the past few years. This also happened with Bard's (remember when they thought Bard was a good name?) racist image generator. Does nobody do QA, UAT, or UX testing anymore?

Making bad mistakes is childish? Or correcting them?

Exercising zero political awareness or foresight or understanding of people. The problem isn't that this was a mistake. The problem is that this mistake was obvious from a mile away to anyone who pays any attention to the world.

Also, the given justification for the feature was absolutely silly.

Re: Google kills Earth AI generator after one day

#53

Post by zb3 » Sat, Aug 01, 2026, 1:59 PM UTC

vvbull wrote: post #30

This is predictable... they built a misinformation engine capable of generating things like falsified drone strikes, terrorist attacks, industrial accidents, and threatening images. Seems like no one paused and thought "what would the malicious internet do with this?"

But we can already generate these images via image editing models, so what's new here?

Re: Google kills Earth AI generator after one day

#54

Post by cryo32 » Sat, Aug 01, 2026, 1:59 PM UTC

I’d suggest anyone knee deep in AI reads the comments on this one. Then remember that they’re your market and customers.

It has got to the point it’s poison outside the niche tech bubble.

Re: Google kills Earth AI generator after one day

#55

Post by steveBK123 » Sat, Aug 01, 2026, 2:00 PM UTC

inigyou wrote: post #13

hidelooktropic wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like the AI overviews.

That's how they get you. They are trained to make you like them. They are not trained to convey true information.

Yes, they are at best misleading and often just present dangerously incomplete or misdirecting information. The more you know about a topic the more appalling the summary.

I check variations of this search every month and it still fails at a reasonably high rate https://imgur.com/a/tKSQuA3

Re: Google kills Earth AI generator after one day

#56

Post by coldpie » Sat, Aug 01, 2026, 2:01 PM UTC

Gigachad wrote: post #47

coldpie wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is all so fucking stupid.

Managers all have AI psychosis right now and the only way to get by is going along with their nonsense.

The bubble needs to burst already. Everyone so braindead that they actually build and ship a product like this fucking garbage needs to be out on the street.

Like, read that fucking prompt again. If that doesn't make you want to stick forks in your eyes, you're deep, deep in the psychosis.

Re: Google kills Earth AI generator after one day

#57

Post by j_maffe » Sat, Aug 01, 2026, 2:02 PM UTC

haunter wrote: post #28

rdtsc wrote: post #16

What did that even do. Generate imaginary buildings and structures? I am almost sure this was something for a performance or promotion: “Used AI effectively to…”

Oh nothing serious just traffic accident https://cdn.xcancel.com/video/9829FB6B34807/https%3A%2F%2Fvi... refugees on the streets https://cdn.xcancel.com/video/7631603BD54FB/https%3A%2F%2Fvi... a bomb crater near a hospital in Gaza https://pbs.twimg.com/media/HOgBJEcWQAA--zV?format=jpg&name=... a nuclear power plant in Iran https://pbs.twimg.com/media/HOgBP-OXAAATHWQ?format=jpg&name=... a plane hitting the One World T…

Such a brain-dead idea...

Re: Google kills Earth AI generator after one day

#58

Post by QuantumNomad_ » Sat, Aug 01, 2026, 2:02 PM UTC

toilet wrote: post #49

mikeweiss wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I preferred it to Gemini

I would have preferred "Bort"

What kind of a name is Bort?

Re: Google kills Earth AI generator after one day

#59

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Aug 01, 2026, 2:02 PM UTC

profsummergig wrote: post #44

VCFundedGenYer wrote: post #5

There seem to be very few adults in the room at Google as of the past few years. This also happened with Bard's (remember when they thought Bard was a good name?) racist image generator. Does nobody do QA, UAT, or UX testing anymore?

What red flags would the name "Bard" have raised for you if you were on that team?

[deleted]

Re: Google kills Earth AI generator after one day

#60

Post by zb3 » Sat, Aug 01, 2026, 2:02 PM UTC

They'll shove AI everywhere, whether it makes sense or not doesn't matter. Sundar said "AI" needs to be everywhere, so they hope integrating AI into X will get them promoted. And unfortunately, this might even work..