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Google AI Studio is now sponsoring Tailwind CSS

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Re: Google AI Studio is now sponsoring Tailwind CSS

#301

Post by mrgoldenbrown »

ricardobeat wrote: post #104
mdasen wrote: post #14

This is good, but it doesn't necessarily mean that Tailwind is out of the financial difficulty that we talked about yesterday. You can sponsor Tailwind for as little as $6,000/year. 29 companies were already sponsoring Tailwind including 16 companies at the $60,000/year level. Maybe Google AI Studio has decided to shell out a lot more, but it could also be a relatively small sponsorship compared to the $1.1M in spons…

No ill will towards the team, but isn’t it almost absurd that a CSS library is funded to the tune of 1m+ yearly and is still in financial difficulty? It is technically complete. There is no major research work or churn like in React, no monstruous complexity like Webpack.

CSS the standard is still getting updated, browsers are still updating and making their own slightly different interpretations of the standard, so a CSS library can't be "complete" except for a moment in time.

Re: Google AI Studio is now sponsoring Tailwind CSS

#302

Post by rapatel0 »

apublicfrog wrote: post #300
andruby wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question isn't "what is the lowest cost that a CSS library could be maintained for" The question is rather, how can the most popular UI system (especially for AI models) have a healthy business model? Think of the immense value that Tailwind is bringing to all the companies and developers using it. Surely there should be a way for the creators to capture a small slice of that in our economic system.

> The question is rather, how can the most popular UI system (especially for AI models) have a healthy business model? My question is why does it need one? Most web libraries I've used for the last few decades have not had any corporate structure and certainly haven't made a profit. They're done because someone wanted to showcase their skills and others got involved to help, or for fun or because a company who does s…

Profit is the life blood of a business. It’s what pays for, mistakes, new ideas, responding to changes in the market. It tells you your are doing good things and that you are doing them well

It’s the engineering tolerance that allows a company to operate and remain reliable.

It’s amazing to me that engineers don’t understand this concept.

(Clarification, not talking about excess profits)

Re: Google AI Studio is now sponsoring Tailwind CSS

#303

Post by galkk »

fooker wrote: post #66
Eridrus wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google is actually kind of infamous for not using much in the way of OSS software. The list of things I can think of is: * Linux * LLVM * Webkit/Chrome (which they have done the majority of contributions to for a long time) * Java & a little bit of Python

There's a whole lot more, check `third_party/` if you work at Google. (disclaimer, used to work at google a long time ago)

A lot of it also comes from acquired projects/companies, that are brought to google3, with plans to deprecate and get rid of eventually

Re: Google AI Studio is now sponsoring Tailwind CSS

#304

Post by reassess_blind »

AlecSchueler wrote: post #241
reassess_blind wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is. That’s why Tailwind had to lay off 75% of their staff.

But they're still struggling for money.

Yes, they’re struggling because a large part of their business was selling the pro product of pre-built themes, pages and components and whatever else.

Now, LLMs have all but killed that side of their business. The latest models are incredibly good at writing Tailwind, to the point where no one is buying the pre-builts.

Re: Google AI Studio is now sponsoring Tailwind CSS

#305

Post by josecodea »

codegeek wrote: post #132
mdasen wrote: post #14

This is good, but it doesn't necessarily mean that Tailwind is out of the financial difficulty that we talked about yesterday. You can sponsor Tailwind for as little as $6,000/year. 29 companies were already sponsoring Tailwind including 16 companies at the $60,000/year level. Maybe Google AI Studio has decided to shell out a lot more, but it could also be a relatively small sponsorship compared to the $1.1M in spons…

Not $6000/Year but $60,000/Year. Not sure if you missed a 0. Google AI is listed as a Partner sponsor which costs $5000/Month or $60,000/Year. Since Adam's audio and twitter post went viral, he has aded about 5 partner sponsors netting total of additional $300k/Year right there. And a few other smaller sponsors as well. Overall, this has been a win for Adam and Tailwind.

A huge win, especially because now he can pocket that money and doesn't have to spend it on any of the engineers that he just fired.

Re: Google AI Studio is now sponsoring Tailwind CSS

#306

Post by josecodea »

XCSme wrote: post #9
andy12_ wrote: post #3

This is probably related to this [1] if anyone is wondering. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46527950

Most likely, as Adam directly "credited" their revenue issues to AI (which makes sense, tailwind was making money by selling pre-made components, but now the AI can generate those for you).

In which case one has to wonder if we need tailwind at all anymore. To me, years ago, tailwind was a great sell as a tool to work faster by typing less. The tradeoff is that the "inline styles" look awful and become a mess real quickly when too many of them are placed together (so and so has precedence or whatever, a media query for each single property, constantly translating between CSS and tailwind equivalent, etc).

Now? Well, AI solves the entire issue of time taken typing. Classnames always looked cleaner too. Additionally CSS doesn't lag behind Browser features and comes with the full power of the language.

Why bother with Tailwind anymore whatsoever?

They were extremely lucky that AI picked up tailwind to keep it relevant, they should be keeping up with the times if they want to stay relevant. Instead their actions are those of someone that is cowering in fear, making sure that they can put the last of the revenue into the coffer. (reject PR because they don't want AI to do better with tailwind while firing engineers, not to mention the big tantrum).

Lets go back to actual CSS, it is easier to read anyway, it's now a modern tool with variables and all that, there's no longer a need to dumb it down.

Besides, if I wanted to pay for pre-made components, I would go with DaisyUI which is agnostic to the frontend framework, unlike the paid components from tailwindLabs, which strictly require you use one of the javascript frameworks.

Re: Google AI Studio is now sponsoring Tailwind CSS

#307

Post by josecodea »

lagniappe wrote: post #6

Will this change the situation of the 75% of engineers who just got laid off, or is this just to fund the framework, rather than the Tailwind Plus team?

And refuse the extra cash? I bet they haven't felt as successful in the past two years as they do right now.

Re: Google AI Studio is now sponsoring Tailwind CSS

#308

Post by whatevaa »

AlecSchueler wrote: post #220
tpmoney wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's say you're paying your devs $100k / year. All in costs on those devs are probably $150k or so. That means your $1m / year will fund 6 full time developers with a little left over. This podcast from the CEO[1] says their engineering team was 4 people and the remaining staff is the 3 owners, the 1 remaining engineer, and one part time customer support person. So assuming every full time person was costing $150k i…

The question is still why you need multiple devs worth 150-250kpa to maintain a CSS library.

You have one developer. He gets hit by a bus. Now you are fucked.

Having at least several people in critical role helps protect against busses.

Re: Google AI Studio is now sponsoring Tailwind CSS

#309

Post by doodlesdev »

mexicocitinluez wrote: post #282
doodlesdev wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We're not going back to writing hand-crafted CSS with or without LLMs. A lot of us have never stopped writing hand-crafted CSS. Also, in my experience, Gemini 3 Pro is an absolute monster at writing layouts and styling in pure CSS with very basic descriptions of what I want (tested it while I was experimenting with vibe coding in some sleepless night LOL). There are still a lot of developers who loathe using Tailwi…

I apologize, I was being a bit hyperbolic. I spent a decent amount of time working in marketing and ad agencies, and there are absolutely still needs for custom CSS in that area, so I agree. I was more pushing back against the idea that Tailwind will be replaced by vanilla CSS because of LLMs.

That I can agree with hahaha. Even though I'm not a fan of Tailwind, there's absolutely no reason developers who like utility libraries will abandon them because of LLMs.

Re: Google AI Studio is now sponsoring Tailwind CSS

#310

Post by apublicfrog »

rapatel0 wrote: post #302
apublicfrog wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The question is rather, how can the most popular UI system (especially for AI models) have a healthy business model? My question is why does it need one? Most web libraries I've used for the last few decades have not had any corporate structure and certainly haven't made a profit. They're done because someone wanted to showcase their skills and others got involved to help, or for fun or because a company who does s…

Profit is the life blood of a business. It’s what pays for, mistakes, new ideas, responding to changes in the market. It tells you your are doing good things and that you are doing them well It’s the engineering tolerance that allows a company to operate and remain reliable. It’s amazing to me that engineers don’t understand this concept. (Clarification, not talking about excess profits)

I think you've missed my point. Most of the libraries I'm talking about are not part of a business. And they didn't need anything to pay for mistakes, new ideas, etc.

I understand companies needing to profit, my question is why does an open source library need a company?

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