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Google banks on AI edge to catch up to cloud rivals Amazon and Microsoft

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Re: Google banks on AI edge to catch up to cloud rivals Amazon and Microsoft

#111

Post by keeda »

georgemcbay wrote: post #70
keeda wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will preface by saying that someone with Lina Khan is sorely needed; Big Tech and other monopolies have gotten way too Big and seriously need to be reined in. That said, from all the informed takes I've seen, Lina Khan was seriously... flawed (putting it charitably) in her strategy and tactics. To the extent that some observers wondered if she was deliberately sabotaging the agency just to highlight the need for ne…

Her lack of political support from certain factions on the Democratic side was obviously because the big donors involved in the VC world want the option to continue to unload the startups they've invested in off as acquisitions to google, microsoft, et al. Nothing noble about that stance, that's continuing to feed the Big Tech monster. They are very much part of the problem that needs to be solved and they didn't lik…

If you look into how she ran the agency, there were a lot of parallels with how the current US adminstration is being run. (Ask any AI for an overview and see the parallels pop up.) Regardless of your political leaning, I think generally we agree that is not how government institutions should be run. Even if the donor class hadn't made any noise, the Democrats were right in not supporting her tactics.

Re: Google banks on AI edge to catch up to cloud rivals Amazon and Microsoft

#112

Post by applfanboysbgon »

victorbjorklund wrote: post #98
applfanboysbgon wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He is politically accountable. The majority of the voting populace voted him back in and also voted for a majority of legislators whose central policy was worshipping the ground on which he stands. America is getting exactly what its people voted for, if you have a problem with that you have a problem with democracy itself.

In what way? What will happen to him? As far as I know, he is not standing for a re-election anyway, so exactly zero consequences for him.

To be clear, political accountability doesn't mean "you, one person out of over 300 million, get your desired outcome". It means the over 300 million people collectively decide what he is accountable for and what happens to him.

He can be removed from office by Congress after the midterms if the population shows up to vote for that happening. They won't, of course, because the American people as a whole do not want him removed from office, but the mechanism is there.

He will also probably stand for re-election, and if he does he probably will win despite it being in violation of the constitution, because by all accounts the American people collectively prefer the concept of Supreme Leader Trump to the scrap of toilet paper that is their constitution. That is the nature of democracy. It gives the people what they want, even if what they want is very stupid and harmful to themselves.

Re: Google banks on AI edge to catch up to cloud rivals Amazon and Microsoft

#113

Post by Aerroon »

echelon wrote: post #110
Aerroon wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The next admin needs to break Google up horizontally (not vertically) into competing browsers, clouds, and search products. They all need to fight. Healthy capitalism is fiercely competitive. Not whatever this invasive species that preys on everything else is. That sounds great if you're rich and can afford to pay for all the million subscriptions that will pop up to replace what Google offers. Google offers an ins…

> Google offers an insane amount of value to people for free: YouTube, Android, Google Search, Trends, Scholar, Maps, Chrome, Translate, Gmail. These would all be paid subscription products without adsense (or some equivalent). And as paid products they would get the typical subscription enshittification over time. That's false. There are hundreds of free offerings in this and many other spaces offered by lots of oth…

What are the great phone OSes that aren't Android based? Can you run Android-specific apps on then?

There definitely isn't a YouTube replacement. You might say that there are video sites and that's true, but there aren't any that also offer 55% of the revenue to the creator, let alone that being enough to really have a creator economy.

Most browsers these days are Chromium based or are essentially funded by these big tech companies (eg Mozilla).

Google search and translate do have alternatives, especially these days with LLMs doing a lot of the latter.

What are some of the free email providers? I'm genuinely curious, because I know some exist, but I'm unfamiliar with most of them.

Are the free Maps alternatives good?

Re: Google banks on AI edge to catch up to cloud rivals Amazon and Microsoft

#114

Post by tt24 »

delbronski wrote: post #109
tt24 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Palantir makes dashboards haha, if anything they’re the least scary one on the list > Wasn’t it just a few months ago that a big tech CEO used his powers to gain access to all the US government data he wanted You’re so close! The organization you want to criticize here is the government. Hope that helps :)

I see. So your brilliant logic is to reduce the actions and impact of multi billion dollar institutions down to simplified versions of the technical solutions they offer. “You don’t need to worry bout them Palantir boys, they just make simple harmless dashboards. Don’t worry about the deep involvement in government surveillance, military targeting, and immigration enforcement.” “Amazon just provides simple VMs. Ain’t…

They treat their workers super well, they pay a shocking amount

Everyone practices tax avoidance, there’s nothing wrong with it. If you don’t like it then adjust the tax code

Re: Google banks on AI edge to catch up to cloud rivals Amazon and Microsoft

#115

Post by echelon »

Aerroon wrote: post #113
echelon wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google offers an insane amount of value to people for free: YouTube, Android, Google Search, Trends, Scholar, Maps, Chrome, Translate, Gmail. These would all be paid subscription products without adsense (or some equivalent). And as paid products they would get the typical subscription enshittification over time. That's false. There are hundreds of free offerings in this and many other spaces offered by lots of oth…

What are the great phone OSes that aren't Android based? Can you run Android-specific apps on then? There definitely isn't a YouTube replacement. You might say that there are video sites and that's true, but there aren't any that also offer 55% of the revenue to the creator, let alone that being enough to really have a creator economy. Most browsers these days are Chromium based or are essentially funded by these big…

> What are the great phone OSes that aren't Android based? Can you run Android-specific apps on then?

Make Google give up Android (which is Linux based) and watch an entire industry pop up.

> There definitely isn't a YouTube replacement. You might say that there are video sites and that's true, but there aren't any that also offer 55% of the revenue to the creator, let alone that being enough to really have a creator economy.

TikTok creators earn 70-90%

Twitch creators make 50-70%.

Split YouTube into ten video websites and watch a robust, de-consolidated economy sprout.

> Most browsers these days are Chromium based or are essentially funded by these big tech companies (eg Mozilla).

This is the most heinous of all because it's the insidious linchpin behind Google's evil empire. It's the starting point of the funnel Google makes all of its "search" revenue from. (I say "search" because when I type in "openai", I know what I want, but Google gives me something different and forces that player into an expensive bidding war.)

Google didn't build the browser. That was originally KHTML and then taken over by Apple. They lifted it, used Embrace-Extend-Extinguish, and launched a tracking/search ad funnel/anti-adblock empire.

Every google search result compels you to download Chrome if you aren't using it. It's the default on Android. They warn you if you're using Firefox.

When you can spend billions to dump on the browser market you can do things like this. It's especially heinous since they reinvested their ill-gotten ad dragnet gains back into the engine that powered their empire.

Google needs to have Chrome stripped from them. Period. They cannot have a browser now or ever.

Firefox is their antitrust litigation sponge. They happily pay the stooges there to chug along and waste money.

Brave can and will easily fill this void when Google is forced out.

> What are some of the free email providers? I'm genuinely curious, because I know some exist, but I'm unfamiliar with most of them.

Microsoft, Yahoo. You used to be able to run your own before Google platformized email.

> Are the free Maps alternatives good?

Yes. Apple Maps is shockingly good. Turns out competition is good.

If Google is forced out, there will be lots of competition.

I don't expect consumers to understand this, but I do expect regulators to get it. And I want more regulators to take up the mantle against Google.

Google is highly anti-competitive and drastic measures need to be taken to restore a cutthroat capitalist environment that is maximally beneficial to the economy.

Re: Google banks on AI edge to catch up to cloud rivals Amazon and Microsoft

#116

Post by bitpush »

pixelbro wrote: post #94
abenga wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use Google products. Between YouTube premium and uBlock origin, I don't really see any ads at all.

Google Analytics has >80% market share. Most of the websites you visit are helping them build a profile of everything you do on the internet with the goal of selling targeted advertisement. That is their business, it's what pays for everything else they do. I think that is what is meant by surveillance capitalism.

So?

Every iPhone that people buy gives direct money to Apple, centralizing their power. This means, they get to dictate what apps can / cannot run on the device.

So what? Nobody is forcing anyone to buy iPhones. Similarly, nobody is forcing anyone to install Google Analytics, or go to that website.

Re: Google banks on AI edge to catch up to cloud rivals Amazon and Microsoft

#117

Post by siren2026 »

bitpush wrote: post #116
pixelbro wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google Analytics has >80% market share. Most of the websites you visit are helping them build a profile of everything you do on the internet with the goal of selling targeted advertisement. That is their business, it's what pays for everything else they do. I think that is what is meant by surveillance capitalism.

So? Every iPhone that people buy gives direct money to Apple, centralizing their power. This means, they get to dictate what apps can / cannot run on the device. So what? Nobody is forcing anyone to buy iPhones. Similarly, nobody is forcing anyone to install Google Analytics, or go to that website.

Nobody is forcing people to do Heroin or Cocaine. We should start giving it for free to people in the street. Everyone can then decide if they want to take it or not. Oh yes and once you are hooked we should definitely never keep the dealer accountable. It's the users who always decides to use it! They are the ones to blame, never the giga corporation making money on your back!

That surely would work very very well in society. Literally the same thing is happening with Google, Facebook, TikTok etc.

You probably work for bigtech and your salary depends on people losing their braincells so I don't expect you to suddenly get some ethics and understand all of this.

Re: Google banks on AI edge to catch up to cloud rivals Amazon and Microsoft

#118

Post by cindyllm »

siren2026 wrote: post #117
bitpush wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So? Every iPhone that people buy gives direct money to Apple, centralizing their power. This means, they get to dictate what apps can / cannot run on the device. So what? Nobody is forcing anyone to buy iPhones. Similarly, nobody is forcing anyone to install Google Analytics, or go to that website.

Nobody is forcing people to do Heroin or Cocaine. We should start giving it for free to people in the street. Everyone can then decide if they want to take it or not. Oh yes and once you are hooked we should definitely never keep the dealer accountable. It's the users who always decides to use it! They are the ones to blame, never the giga corporation making money on your back! That surely would work very very well i…

[dead]

Re: Google banks on AI edge to catch up to cloud rivals Amazon and Microsoft

#119

Post by jojobas »

pjmlp wrote: post #82
jojobas wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Office, Windows and SQL server get some hate now and then but are nowhere near as buggy as Azure.

All cloud vendors are buggy, and if you aren't paying enough there are only bots to talk to.

It would appear that GCP and aws are in a different league of bugginess compared to Azure.

Azure seems to be relying on constant human intervention, the other 2 didn't get a special mention from Pentagon. There was a recent insider article cycle on just how broken and misguided the whole Azure department is.

Re: Google banks on AI edge to catch up to cloud rivals Amazon and Microsoft

#120

Post by pjmlp »

jojobas wrote: post #119
pjmlp wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All cloud vendors are buggy, and if you aren't paying enough there are only bots to talk to.

It would appear that GCP and aws are in a different league of bugginess compared to Azure. Azure seems to be relying on constant human intervention, the other 2 didn't get a special mention from Pentagon. There was a recent insider article cycle on just how broken and misguided the whole Azure department is.

Yes, GCP is really bad, I would not use it ever again, if given the option.

Just like every Google service only bots, and the most expensive to actually get humans to talk to.

AWS, it is a maze of products, IAM a pain to deal with, tooling for doing serverless directly from Webshell relatively painfull,....

I bet insider articles from AWS and GCP would be quite similar in quality, especially given how much they do in offshoring.

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