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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

#31

Post by majormajor »

parineum wrote: post #11
bigyabai wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AdSense is the one that people underestimate. It's a piranha pool of liquid cash, billions-scale impressions and near global outreach. Any sane nation would have banned it decades ago, unless it was propping up a global influence campaign for their government.

> Any sane nation would have banned it decades ago Why?

"Possibility for abuse" seems like the right reason here. Does the benefiting of reducing a specific possibility of abuse outweigh the cost of an intervention? And here in particular, is there much cost to the intervention other than just shifting the money distribution from a zero-sum advertising arms race from one player to several?

I frequently see calls to not intervene if there's not bulletproof evidence of existing abuse, but why wait? Would you want Google to own a bunch of nuclear missiles just because they might not have misused them yet?

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

#32

Post by bryanlarsen »

cyberax wrote: post #20
jeffbee wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "picks and shovels" people from the dotcom days all went broke. The stuff they had convinced themselves and their investors was crucial turned out to be not important.

Cisco is doing great. Sun got acquired by Oracle. Oracle itself is also fine (apart from it is Oracle). Akamai is doing fine. From the pure software side, Macromedia got acquired. RedHat was doing fine before IBM gobbled it up. But I honestly can't remember any other "picks and shovels" software companies from pre-dotcom.

> Cisco is doing great.

https://totalrealreturns.com/s/CSCO

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

#33

Post by jfrbfbreudh »

SilverElfin wrote: post #21
ViktorRay wrote: post #2

Whenever I read about how powerful these companies are, it sends chills down my spine.

Yep. They can make every mistake imaginable and not work as hard but still win. It’s the power of concentrated capital and monopolistic behavior and what people call “moats” but really is just an unfair advantage. Why should Google or Apple be allowed to copy everyone’s AI tech and just win because of distribution through Chrome or iPhones? We need new antitrust laws and heavy taxes just on the megacorps worth $500B…

You mean, the inventor of the transformer technology that made ChatGPT possible, is copying ChatGPT’s technology?

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

#34

Post by shellwizard »

cyberax wrote: post #20
jeffbee wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "picks and shovels" people from the dotcom days all went broke. The stuff they had convinced themselves and their investors was crucial turned out to be not important.

Cisco is doing great. Sun got acquired by Oracle. Oracle itself is also fine (apart from it is Oracle). Akamai is doing fine. From the pure software side, Macromedia got acquired. RedHat was doing fine before IBM gobbled it up. But I honestly can't remember any other "picks and shovels" software companies from pre-dotcom.

3Com / US Robotics - dead

Nortel - dead

Global crossing - dead

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

#35

Post by fragmede »

jeffbee wrote: post #29
cyberax wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cisco is doing great. Sun got acquired by Oracle. Oracle itself is also fine (apart from it is Oracle). Akamai is doing fine. From the pure software side, Macromedia got acquired. RedHat was doing fine before IBM gobbled it up. But I honestly can't remember any other "picks and shovels" software companies from pre-dotcom.

The glass-in-the-ground people went spectacularly broke. I also suggest you look up the stock price chart for JDSU. On the software side, Ariba and Commerce One.

Qwest

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

#36

Post by tt24 »

ViktorRay wrote: post #2

Whenever I read about how powerful these companies are, it sends chills down my spine.

Saying this about a compute rental service is hilarious

They have the power to do what exactly? Sell you some EC2 instances at reasonable prices? lol

There’s organizations that have the power to openly kidnap and execute people and we’re being melodramatic about a few buildings with computers in them

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

#37

Post by siliconc0w »

tt24 wrote: post #36
ViktorRay wrote: post #2

Whenever I read about how powerful these companies are, it sends chills down my spine.

Saying this about a compute rental service is hilarious They have the power to do what exactly? Sell you some EC2 instances at reasonable prices? lol There’s organizations that have the power to openly kidnap and execute people and we’re being melodramatic about a few buildings with computers in them

They'll buy your politicians who will give them zero checks on raising energy prices or poisoning your children's minds

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

#38

Post by Aerroon »

echelon wrote: post #19
parineum wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Any sane nation would have banned it decades ago Why?

Google owns 92% of all "URL bars". They turned this into "search". Every brand or product has to competitively bid for its own identity in a monopoly competitive bidding market. It's downright evil. Look at Google's AI rivals having to spend hundreds of millions just so customers can find them. Google Anthropic or OpenAI and see what you get. The next admin needs to break Google up horizontally (not vertically) into…

>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 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.

Also, on the topic of AI: didn't the transformers research paper come from Google? In an alternate world that would've been a trade secret locked away inside Google.

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

#39

Post by kirubakaran »

irishcoffee wrote: post #6

I’ve always thought “man it would have been a great job selling shovels and pickaxes during the gold rush” back in the day.” I know, I know, it’s really hard having these insights. We all have our crosses to bear.

Even the original gold rush pickaxe guy Sam Brannan went broke, and he practically had a monopoly on pickaxes by buying up the entire supply: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Brannan

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

#40

Post by ivewonyoung »

IncreasePosts wrote: post #23
SilverElfin wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. They can make every mistake imaginable and not work as hard but still win. It’s the power of concentrated capital and monopolistic behavior and what people call “moats” but really is just an unfair advantage. Why should Google or Apple be allowed to copy everyone’s AI tech and just win because of distribution through Chrome or iPhones? We need new antitrust laws and heavy taxes just on the megacorps worth $500B…

What AI tech did Google just copy?

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

/s

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