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Google calls in help from Larry Page and Sergey Brin for A.I. fight
311–320 of 518 posts
Re: Google calls in help from Larry Page and Sergey Brin for A.I. fight
#312> Google’s approach to AI in recent years has been conservative compared to some rivals
Well yes of course. They are the incumbent and they've been in cash generating mode for a while. With a large lead over "competitors", if we can even call them that, and a virtual monopoly status in the both the ad space and search space, it's perfectly normal for Google to move at a glacial pace. They have no external need or intrinsic motivation to do otherwise at this point in time.
That is, until an actual threat shows up..
I honestly don't think ChatGPT is a real threat except they are getting a lot of attention and they are the new David to Google's Goliath so they are a psychological threat more than a technical one
Re: Google calls in help from Larry Page and Sergey Brin for A.I. fight
#313Earlier quoted context omitted.
it's not ALL scattershot. GMail and Docs for enterprises are a pretty sustained effort. Cloud is pretty sustained. YouTube is unkillable. But in general you're right.
GSuite is either underpriced or underfeatured. Most real enterprise still happens on Office, and lots of consumers happy give Apple $100/year for iCloud. Cloud services - aren't they basically 3rd behind AMZN/MSFT now, by A LOT? They are basically competing for 3rd against IBM/Oracle/etc, and some quarters they are #4.
Their api offerings are a hot mess to setup.
Re: Google calls in help from Larry Page and Sergey Brin for A.I. fight
#314Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well I'd say they both put all their eggs in one basket & let that basket deteriorate. Show of hands - people who feel google search has improved in the last 5/10 years vs people who feel it's gotten demonstrably worse? So they have a monopoly product that is something like a 2 sided market (advertisers & search users) where both sides hate using it..
Show of hands - people who feel google search has improved in the last 5/10 years vs people who feel it's gotten demonstrably worse? Google's unwillingness to show any results older than Taylor Swift' last breakup song made me switch to DuckDuckGo. It was a bit rough at first, but in time Duck turned out to be just as good as Google, and sometimes better for the sorts of thing I search for. Then, about four or five m…
Yes, have noticed duck duck go result quality get worse.
Anecdotally it seems they do more fuzzy match and adhere less to exact matches even when keywords or phrases are quoted.
It's been frustrating to see specificity of results decline.
Re: Google calls in help from Larry Page and Sergey Brin for A.I. fight
#315Earlier quoted context omitted.
Actually at the start the founders didn’t think search would be continue to be as dominant as it has been (will have to find the source and update…)
That's right- Larry wanted a question-answering machine. Larry and Sergey "got bored of search" (I heard this from the engs who were going to weekly presentations to show new search features) when they felt it was just chasing a larger index and showing people what they wanted to click on.
That would certainly be an improvement over their current strat (ignoring what I want to click on, showing me what's most profitable for them instead)
Re: Google calls in help from Larry Page and Sergey Brin for A.I. fight
#316Earlier quoted context omitted.
Google didn’t “succeed” in mobile financially. Android historical doesn’t bring that much of a profit in mobile compared to its popularity (that came out in the Oracle trial) and has to pay Apple close to $20 billion a year to be the default search engine on iOS devices. Google Play Services is not that much of a money maker and it sells about as many phones in a year as Apple sells in a couple of weeks
yeah but imagine if they didn't support Android, they would have been at complete mercy of apple! but currently Apple can't touch 70% of the phones, and it's an enormous financial incentive.
I’m not saying that it wasn’t a decent defensive move. But the 70% of people who are buying Androids aren’t statistically the most desirable customers with the highest income and Google is completely absent in mobile in the worlds largest market - China.
Re: Google calls in help from Larry Page and Sergey Brin for A.I. fight
#317Earlier quoted context omitted.
GSuite is either underpriced or underfeatured. Most real enterprise still happens on Office, and lots of consumers happy give Apple $100/year for iCloud. Cloud services - aren't they basically 3rd behind AMZN/MSFT now, by A LOT? They are basically competing for 3rd against IBM/Oracle/etc, and some quarters they are #4.
No arguments there. They're still trying; just not hard enough.
I mean, once you are past the free tier.. GSuite is close to the monthly cost of Office365, and Google sheets is not even close to Excel. You can basically program mini applications in Excel vs a basic spreadsheet app for medium sized spreadsheets that multiple people can edit in their browser with version tracking.
Re: Google calls in help from Larry Page and Sergey Brin for A.I. fight
#318Earlier quoted context omitted.
They should be freaking out. Google is overwhelmingly dependent on a single revenue stream and AI like ChatGPT is a serious threat to their dominant position. Not to mention, Google has spent a decade using their defacto monopoly as leverage and optimizing for ads and clicks, often exploiting their own users in the process. The bar for better was lower than it should have been, and the market is hungry for an alterna…
Yes this is the most insane thing about GOOG to me. Yes, search is basically monopoly moat of recurring growing revenue. On the other hand, they've spent not a decade, but about 25 years betting this would remain the case! I've met a lot of people who work at GOOG, and yet none of them could explain to me how the thing they work on makes any money for GOOG. In fact, most went out of their way to volunteer to me that…
If the "Google other" revenue is $25 billions, how many unicorns is that?
As for what googlers told you, keep in mind that they are pretty loyal - they have that Lamda chatbot as if an employee perk, and only one of them leaked a sample.
Re: Google calls in help from Larry Page and Sergey Brin for A.I. fight
#319Earlier quoted context omitted.
Other people invented pagerank and used it for pageranking before Google. It's just a centrality metric.
Actually Google got a patent for the concept of Pagerank, number US9165040B1.
You mean stanford. Getting a patent in no way means you were first.
Re: Google calls in help from Larry Page and Sergey Brin for A.I. fight
#320I think the OpenAI argument is overblown. While I do agree that AI is going to bring a huge shake up to the search market, I still believe that Google is in the best position to fight this battle. Realistically, given how fast the AI field improves month after month, do we think it will take long for Google to replicate a product similar to ChatGPT? I don't think so. And then they are the company that's best suited t…
This iteration of shake-up is not strictly about tech superiority, though. Google probably already has a repro of ChatGPT running in their datacenters. Fundamentally, it's about product, and expectation shift. I am presently routinely having conversations, and for the first time in the history of the Internet, getting straight answers to moderately complex questions, and their follow-ups , in real time, from ChatGPT.…
How do you verify that ChatGPT’s answer is accurate (it often enough isn’t), if not by googling?