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Google's True Moonshot

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Re: Google's True Moonshot

#121

Post by wslh »

hattmall wrote: post #92
wslh wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone is in AI now and we are just finishing 2023. The next innovation(s) (dilemma(s)) could happen everywhere. Rephrasing Andreessen's quote: "AI is eating the world". This does not mean that we are close (or not) to AGI, it means that capital is flowing towards AI and AI has REAL applications. Just see what happened in Web3 with not so real applications (but uses). In the cybersecurity space I now see cybersecur…

What, in your opinion / experience happened with web3?

Web3 saw an incredible gold rush in multiple cycles and gigant amounts of money flew to the sector. The Web3 also experienced a gold rush because many incumbents went "magically" rich.

Re: Google's True Moonshot

#122

Post by SXX »

amadeuspagel wrote: post #110
acdha wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google does have non-ad revenue but it doesn’t seem to be enough to affect the culture: Drive customers get the same level of support as ad-supported search users. I’d like that to change but having used GCP I’m not sure that can happen before they have a better CEO.

How does Drive customer support compare to Dropbox?

Imagine you lose access to your account, with what company do you think have better chances recovering it?

Now imagine you get some very bad data loss bug affecting just your company account. What chances are there you will ever have your problem looked at by Google? I totally believe it's 0% unless you get to HN frontpage.

It's not like Dropbox have best support ever, but I totally believe that getting a living human to look at your problem would be so much easier with them. With Google it's just impossible.

Re: Google's True Moonshot

#123

Post by hightrix »

lelanthran wrote: post #118
rdsubhas wrote: post #86

Big companies drag themselves down – not because they can't innovate – but because they can't go "all in" into innovations which compete against their real cash cow. An AI assistant fundamentally hits at Google's gut: Search ad revenue. Yeah, Google can make dozens of AI demos. Are they truly ready to put Gemini as the default interaction model, pitting it against their search? Can they give super accurate answers to…

> An AI assistant fundamentally hits at Google's gut: Search ad revenue. I understand this argument, having made it multiple times in the past - any development at google that threatens the cash cow will, ultimately, go nowhere. Why, after all, would they spend money developing something that reduces their income. After a little bit of thinking about it, I offer an alternate future for google+AI: the AI improves thei…

> the AI improves their ad relevancy to such a degree that it makes google search more valuable, not less.

More valuable to who? In this case it seems like more relevant ads increases the value of Google Search to advertisers but not necessarily users.

If, as a user, I see ads that are more directly targeted at me, that is a negative value in a search engine. I never want targeted ads. I only want to see what I searched for.

That said, for the small minority of users like me, Google may never be able to overcome their “advertising company” label. And that label is an instant black list.

Re: Google's True Moonshot

#124

Post by nextworddev »

acdha wrote: post #120
nextworddev wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

S3 was actual innovation that AWS led the market in. Apples to oranges comparison.

EC2 was innovation, but many people didn’t see it. S3 was more distinctly new although still not the first object store or even object store over HTTP as a service, but if you were there a LOT of people did not share that perception and said it cost too much, would never scale, or required too much software to be modified. I’m not saying that to diminish the importance of S3 but simply that we often wildly overstate…

Ok we can both agree tho that AWS isn’t the platform leading LLM innovation. That said I’m not disputing that AWS will make money with Bedrock and enterprise contracts

Re: Google's True Moonshot

#125

Post by mycall »

netcan wrote: post #79
ben_w wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only way competition in this space can be described as "dead" with all the free-license models bouncing about is that there's only one model (or company with models) that's actually worth paying for. That would be the one that MS invested in. Well, for now at least. At some point one of those free models will best it.

> there's only one model (or company with models) that's actually worth paying for. Yes. Perhaps. That said "the model currently worth paying for" isn't the only possible business model or approach to "winning AI." It was a pretty incidental business model that unexpectedly got big. I'm not convinced this is the final state. AI models need users. There's having the most users. But, there's also having the right users…

> AI models need users

Not when AI agents start doing their own thing, synthesizing their own data to go beyond what humans have conversed. The main thing keeping this from happening is data corruption. I don't know how that will be solved.

Re: Google's True Moonshot

#126

Post by lelanthran »

hightrix wrote: post #123
lelanthran wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> An AI assistant fundamentally hits at Google's gut: Search ad revenue. I understand this argument, having made it multiple times in the past - any development at google that threatens the cash cow will, ultimately, go nowhere. Why, after all, would they spend money developing something that reduces their income. After a little bit of thinking about it, I offer an alternate future for google+AI: the AI improves thei…

> the AI improves their ad relevancy to such a degree that it makes google search more valuable, not less. More valuable to who? In this case it seems like more relevant ads increases the value of Google Search to advertisers but not necessarily users. If, as a user, I see ads that are more directly targeted at me, that is a negative value in a search engine. I never want targeted ads. I only want to see what I searc…

> > the AI improves their ad relevancy to such a degree that it makes google search more valuable, not less.

> More valuable to who?

To the paying customers - advertisers.

> In this case it seems like more relevant ads increases the value of Google Search to advertisers but not necessarily users.

So? Google doesn't care about its users, and hasn't for a very long time now.

Google became profitable purely because they delivered the most value to advertisers, by way of having the most eyeballs. More relevant advertisements are not going to reduce the number of eyeballs that google sells.

> If, as a user, I see ads that are more directly targeted at me, that is a negative value in a search engine.

And those users will be lost in the noise, a statistical rounding error, if that. Losing unprofitable users helps Google become even more profitable.

Re: Google's True Moonshot

#127

Post by kolinko »

hef19898 wrote: post #98
gwicks56 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it will be more like: "Pixie, reply to that email for me" "Pixie, book that car service for me and remind them they promised a free brake fluid replacement" "Pixie order all the ingredients I need to make my wife her favourite dish" "Pixel, buy everyone in my family birthday presents" I will 100% pay for that capability, and as someone that uses GPT4 to basically do my job for me, it really does not seem that…

I won't let any AI read my e-mails, let alone reply to them. I discuss car services when I drop of the car at the workshop, and the workshop confirms the details. I don't want an AI to know anyones favorite dish, and delivery services suck for fresh ingredients anyway. And I think about presents before buying them, that is a crucial bit of gifting things to people, especially if you care about them. By the way, if I…

Replying to email is one thing - a pita to implement securely.

But reading? On-premise? You already allow basic algorithms to read your mail, for spam control and whenever you search through your messages. Having a better algorithm (as long as it's still on device) has no difference in terms of safety.

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