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Changes at Google DeepMind: Demis Hassabis from CEO to Chair, Jeff Dean departs

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Re: Changes at Google DeepMind: Demis Hassabis from CEO to Chair, Jeff Dean departs

#521

Post by libria »

re-thc wrote: post #400
vjvjvjvjghv wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Losing Ive was probably a good thing for Apple. I often feel that after a few years these big guys have done what they could do and somebody else can take it from there. So far even losing Jobs didn’t hurt Apple as it looks.

> So far even losing Jobs didn’t hurt Apple as it looks. Who knows? Pure speculation? You can also say if Jobs was still around they could have 10x-ed it even further? Apple car could have been a thing? Apple could have been way ahead and actually competing in AI and data centers? Who knows what else Jobs could have came up with?

Not enough to make an obvious dent perhaps. Nobody says Cook-era the same way they say Ballmer-era.

Re: Changes at Google DeepMind: Demis Hassabis from CEO to Chair, Jeff Dean departs

#522

Post by nightshift1 »

reaperducer wrote: post #456
impulser_ wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People have been saying that for over a decade now, and their business is still going.

People have been saying that for over a decade now, and their business is still going. So is IBM. There was a pretty interesting article in the Wall Street Journal a few weeks back about how IBM is flying under the radar, and doing well by not taking the hype bait. It noted that 70% of all credit card transactions on the planet go through an IBM system.

It ought to be extremely easy now to use LLMs to transpile cobol and do the necessary reverse engineering to migrate off mainframes and aix servers. I think IBM will lose many customers.

Re: Changes at Google DeepMind: Demis Hassabis from CEO to Chair, Jeff Dean departs

#523

Post by killerstorm »

650 wrote: post #65

The first sentence is quite telling >We’ve got amazing talent, world-class compute and products… Products are third on the list. Google is an incubator for talent first and foremost. Products are an afterthought

Google's revenue is 10x up in the last 10 years.

Re: Changes at Google DeepMind: Demis Hassabis from CEO to Chair, Jeff Dean departs

#524

Post by underlipton »

paxys wrote: post #144

DeepMind had a generational run as a pure AI research lab. AlphaGo, AlphaZero, protein folding, tensor improvements, weather forecasting, GNoME and so much more. Google leadership saw all this and went “now go generate a multi trillion dollar commercial business and beat OpenAI and Anthropic” and the results were, predictably, failure. Such a shame.

Can you imagine if they'd skipped all of that and put the effort into keeping Search profitable without enshittifying it? Or even just skipped the second part?

Re: Changes at Google DeepMind: Demis Hassabis from CEO to Chair, Jeff Dean departs

#525

Post by thefourthchime »

swat535 wrote: post #502
oblio wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google will be considered "the new IBM" in 20 years.

> Google will be considered "the new IBM" in 20 years. They have plenty of great tech for consumers right now: Gmail, Maps, YouTube, Chrome, Android,.. You can perhaps argue that search might suffer because of AI but they've done a great job scaling horizontally into many verticals. I don't think Google is going anywhere.

The newest of those are 20 years old.

Let’s be honest. Google was amazing back then, now they’re just an ad-business flailing around in other side quests.

Re: Changes at Google DeepMind: Demis Hassabis from CEO to Chair, Jeff Dean departs

#526

Post by rockskon »

swat535 wrote: post #502
oblio wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google will be considered "the new IBM" in 20 years.

> Google will be considered "the new IBM" in 20 years. They have plenty of great tech for consumers right now: Gmail, Maps, YouTube, Chrome, Android,.. You can perhaps argue that search might suffer because of AI but they've done a great job scaling horizontally into many verticals. I don't think Google is going anywhere.

Once upon a time it would've been unthinkable for Google search to become awful and nearly worthless due, in large part, by Google's discretionary choices.

Related - interns these days don't seem to have any particular preference for using Google for finding information...

Re: Changes at Google DeepMind: Demis Hassabis from CEO to Chair, Jeff Dean departs

#527

Post by HarHarVeryFunny »

taurath wrote: post #424
HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems there's a big shake up on the underperforming Gemini side. Before there was Shazeer (already gone) and Vinyals as co-leads, reporting to Hassabis, now Gemini comes under Kavukcuoglu reporting direct to Pichai as SVP of DeepMind. Hassabis seems to have been pushed aside. He had been CEO of DeepMind, but that position no longer exists and it seems Kavukcuoglu is now leading DeepMind with a title of SVP. Hassab…

> Hassabis seems to have been pushed aside. Yeah he seemed too reasonable to me, relative to the fervor. Whoever ends up in charge needs to do a lot of frothing to catch up to the ferver that would justify their valuations and investments

> Whoever ends up in charge needs to do a lot of frothing

I don't get the impression from interviews that Kavukcuoglu is that guy - he seems like a safe pair of hands, but not someone that is on a mission.

OTOH I don't even think this is the right race to be in.

Re: Changes at Google DeepMind: Demis Hassabis from CEO to Chair, Jeff Dean departs

#528

Post by lazide »

jrflo wrote: post #412
impulser_ wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People have been saying that for over a decade now, and their business is still going.

Their entire business is predicated on search dominance, which is now on much shakier footing. Agreed that those comments were ridiculous pre-ChatGPT, but now they have a genuine challenger.

used to be. Cloud, Waymo, and some other bets have been paying off.

Re: Changes at Google DeepMind: Demis Hassabis from CEO to Chair, Jeff Dean departs

#530

Post by thefourthchime »

darkoob12 wrote: post #442
baron816 wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This take only makes sense if you don’t know what people use Google search for. If you’re looking for your local Ford dealership, or to book a Carnival cruise, or need a disability lawyer, or to refinance your credit card debt, you’re searching for an ad. You’re not using Chat-GPT for that. You’re asking Chat-GPT about a research project. It’s stealing away all the hard to monetize searches and leaving the incredibly…

I actually use Claude for finding stuff and recommendations. like "Find me a decent shoe with blah blah conditions" this query now goes to LLM Chat instead of google search. I use google search to find the url of something that i know exists like find the website of a company or finding address of a store.

Same I use models for nearly everything. Google only better at:

- fast, even the shitty AI results are nearly instant.

- some results like actors in a movie, or where to stream are useful

- instead of typing a url

But that’s it. I never use Google outside of that. It’s just ads, and most of the web is just ads or AI slop.

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