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Google’s newly formed 'Platforms and Devices' team is all about AI

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Re: Google’s newly formed 'Platforms and Devices' team is all about AI

#31

Post by maximinus_thrax »

dheera wrote: post #27
rickdeckard wrote: post #17

So the team that is in charge of the OS which is licensed to Hardware vendors in the world is the same team that's in charge to create competing Hardware? I'd say that creates a huge conflict of interest. That's one of the big reasons why Nokia Series60 didn't take off as a licensed OS: Whatever Samsung or LG or Lenovo wanted to build on that platform to differentiate, they had to involve Nokia during the development…

Conflict of interest is a human invention, and not a law of the universe. There is no "conflict" unless you see it as one. You can play chess against yourself. AlphaGo can, because it wasn't brainwashed about this notion. ChatGPT can debate against itself. You can too, if you don't see it as a conflict. Humans might find it hard, only because they were brainwashed from a child that they need to pick sides. Your neura…

> Conflict of interest is a human invention, and not a law of the universe.

Lucky for us, we're discussing this in the context of humans building stuff for other humans to buy in a human society with human governments and markets, not in some metaphysical 'but what does meaning means' context.

Re: Google’s newly formed 'Platforms and Devices' team is all about AI

#32

Post by WillAdams »

blackeyeblitzar wrote: post #28

The world needs a third party software and hardware stack that isn’t controlled by big tech walled garden monopolists / authoritarians. Not just for phones but laptops and computers too. As far as phones go, unfortunately the best alternative I’ve heard of is Graphene and the best phone for Graphene is the Pixel series. And I assume using it as a daily driver is problematic without access to various apps or maybe if…

This is why my next tech purchase will be a Raspberry Pi 5 and a Wacom One 13" touch screen --- my testing with a Raspberry Pi 4 and Wacom One (gen 1, no touch) went well, so I'm hopeful that this will work as well.

Re: Google’s newly formed 'Platforms and Devices' team is all about AI

#33

Post by rezonant »

spankalee wrote: post #29
rickdeckard wrote: post #17

So the team that is in charge of the OS which is licensed to Hardware vendors in the world is the same team that's in charge to create competing Hardware? I'd say that creates a huge conflict of interest. That's one of the big reasons why Nokia Series60 didn't take off as a licensed OS: Whatever Samsung or LG or Lenovo wanted to build on that platform to differentiate, they had to involve Nokia during the development…

The first priority for Android is competing against iPhone. Any self-dealing to get Pixel to have more of the Android pie would be far down the list, and probably counter-productive. It was already possible under the previous structure anyway.

Correct, and it's clear that this isn't an outdated strategy from Google, just in the current cycle we saw Circle to Search launch on both Galaxy and Pixel, and most of the new AI stuff that differentiates Pixel is now coming to Galaxy as well. This might be a headscratcher if you think Google is trying to make Pixel the dominant Android phone, but that's not it. Google wants Android to be the dominant phone OS, and despite it being massively popular globally, in the US the numbers are dire, with 50-60% overall going to Apple, and as high as 80-90% of young people choosing iPhone. I love Pixel, but it accounts for approximately 5% of the market in the US, with Samsung at 22%. Those stats about young people nearly universally picking iPhone is a bad sign for Android and a bad sign for competition in the phone market as a whole.

Re: Google’s newly formed 'Platforms and Devices' team is all about AI

#34

Post by conradfr »

Mathnerd314 wrote: post #18

I guess it makes them more like Apple, having a vertically integrated division for making phones. TFA says it might make other phone manufacturers struggle. Although I get the impression they are already struggling with the Open Handset Alliance terms from Google that they don't like. Maybe the best outcome is that AOSP gets multiple active forks supported by manufacturers, Google apps stop being distributed by defau…

Would it be realistic for app developers?

Re: Google’s newly formed 'Platforms and Devices' team is all about AI

#35

Post by rurp »

I recently got a new Pixel phone and Google's much hyped new AI features just seem so... gimmicky. One of the setup examples shows how you can circle a tent on the left side of a picture and move it more to the center. Neat, I guess? It's kind of a fun toy but I'm not sure what problem this is actually solving. I'm sure there are some usecases for this out there, but it's not a capability I have ever found myself wishing for.

Meanwhile the rest of the phone is surprisingly buggy and annoying. Basic functionality I use every day is worse than on any other recent phone.

Google has never been a great product org, but this desperate need to be seen as one of the cool kids in AI is making things worse. Granted I think of phones/computers more as a tool than a toy and put much higher value on usability and reliability versus novelty; perhaps I'm outlier in that.

Re: Google’s newly formed 'Platforms and Devices' team is all about AI

#38

Post by rickdeckard »

dheera wrote: post #27
rickdeckard wrote: post #17

So the team that is in charge of the OS which is licensed to Hardware vendors in the world is the same team that's in charge to create competing Hardware? I'd say that creates a huge conflict of interest. That's one of the big reasons why Nokia Series60 didn't take off as a licensed OS: Whatever Samsung or LG or Lenovo wanted to build on that platform to differentiate, they had to involve Nokia during the development…

Conflict of interest is a human invention, and not a law of the universe. There is no "conflict" unless you see it as one. You can play chess against yourself. AlphaGo can, because it wasn't brainwashed about this notion. ChatGPT can debate against itself. You can too, if you don't see it as a conflict. Humans might find it hard, only because they were brainwashed from a child that they need to pick sides. Your neura…

> The market is big enough for Google to create hardware AND other companies to create hardware.

You obviously didn't read the comment you're replying to. No one is challenging that.

Having the same TEAM in charge of the OS and in-house hardware is an entirely different story.

It's a conflict of interest because the person Samsung is talking to to have a feature implemented into the OS baseline may be the same person in charge of defining the competitive featureset for the next Google hardware.

Now this person knows that the product he and his team is designing will compete with a yet-to-be-announced Samsung-product with a new feature.

So his interest to support a licensee being successful with his product is in conflict with his interest to create a more successful competing product.

And even if he isn't, for SAMSUNG just the potential of this situation to happen can be enough to NOT cooperate with this team and scale back communications with the Android team as a whole.

Re: Google’s newly formed 'Platforms and Devices' team is all about AI

#39

Post by bsimpson »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #7
ur-whale wrote: post #6

How is a reorg at Google any kind of news ? Last I spoke to folks working there, these seem to happen every y-ending day.

A reorg at this scale? It doesn't even happen annually. A reorg of two teams of 10 people? Sure. Google is a ~180k person company.

There's also a buried lede:

Hiroshi, who's been an Android lead since before it shipped, is no longer leading Android.

When Jony Ive and Scott Forstall and the other big Apple execs left, that was news. Hiroshi may not have Jony's profile, but it's still a major change in how Android is governed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiroshi_Lockheimer

Re: Google’s newly formed 'Platforms and Devices' team is all about AI

#40

Post by Rinzler89 »

rurp wrote: post #35

I recently got a new Pixel phone and Google's much hyped new AI features just seem so... gimmicky. One of the setup examples shows how you can circle a tent on the left side of a picture and move it more to the center. Neat, I guess? It's kind of a fun toy but I'm not sure what problem this is actually solving. I'm sure there are some usecases for this out there, but it's not a capability I have ever found myself wis…

>I recently got a new Pixel phone and Google's much hyped new AI features just seem so... gimmicky

Not just that, but their biggest crime is that almost none of those fancy AI features Google paraded at the Pixel launch even actually run on-device but need to be sent to their cloud for processing, despite all the gloating about their new Tensor 3 chip's AI capabilities being the most important (since that chip sucks at CPU and GPU benchmarks compared to Apple and Qualcomm). Also, their Tensor 3 can't even run Google's smallest LLM. Absolutely embarrassing.

They REALLY need to unify the HW and SW development efforts to create a coherent and functional product, instead of designing them separately bazaar style then jerry rigging them together like some underfunded start-up making products for Kickstarter.

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