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Google's live from Paris event private/deleted immediately

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Re: Google's live from Paris event private/deleted immediately

#51

I hope Google is not pulling a Blackberry moment. I remember when the iPhone was first announced, BB scrambled to put out press releases saying they have competing products in development. 2 years later the Bold(EDIT: Storm) was released and everyone realized it's just a hastily designed iPhone clone. That marks the end of BB's dominance. >Used to work for BB/RIM

Don't you mean the Storm? The Bold was pretty solid, and the original didn't have a touch screen. It was the storm that had a crappy touchscreen that physically moved to touch, and it sucked.

It was the Storm. I had one... for like a week before I returned it. What a stinking pile of crap that thing was.

Re: Google's live from Paris event private/deleted immediately

#52
post #28

Google is finished. The market has been ripe for disruption and it has finally come. It’s just amazing they never saw it coming. Or maybe they did and underestimated the threat. Too late now, they just fired a bunch of people and have bred a culture of laziness funded by their cash cow advertising products. They don’t know how to innovate anymore.

i was at google half a decade ago. Multiple SVPs expressed in private a concern of search revenue growth and search being disrupted. That was likely the reason for all the now dead products, to attempt to diversify revenue.

Meanwhile the company was focusing on DEI vs skill, and thoughtfulness over delivery. They preached 10x but refused to pursue 10x ideas. They tried to create an accelerator, a120 which focused too much on me too products.

It was clear to me then that google was repeating the same mistakes of Yahoo, IBM, HP and other prior tech giants. When it was brought up, nobody listened.

I can only think that the reason for this was Sundar, Urs and other executive leadership. They need to be replaced if google is to excel in the future.

Re: Google's live from Paris event private/deleted immediately

#53
post #13

ChatGPT as a search engine sounds amazing but also really quite problematic. It's an extension of the issue with Google's "instant answers" (or whatever they're called): right now the creators of the content Google/ChatGPT scrapes are usually paid via the advertisements on their pages. When no-one clicks though any more, no-one gets paid. I know, I know, the ad banner-funded web is a mess and I wouldn't mourn its dem…

At least the Prometheus model used by Bing is aware of its sources and displays them as links below the result. That could help driving traffic and monetisation. This is something that Google Bard seemed to lack for now.

Re: Google's live from Paris event private/deleted immediately

#54
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 2 years later the Bold was released and everyone realized it's just a hastily designed iPhone clone. That marks the end of BB's dominance. I feel like Google is going to bleed credibility for every month that they don't have a lamda/llm enabled search integrated into the home page. You can talk all you want about the foundational models and how advanced they are, but the search product itself will require a ton of…

Google can’t compete with Microsoft without having a huge revenue hit. The large majority of Google’s revenue comes from search ads. Chat gpt doesn’t have search results, per se. So how do you keep the high ad revenue linking to other sites? I’m not sure they can compete within their existing brand/company structure.

You know, I think the contrary is true. Google works well because of the "search signal", how accurately Google knows what you're wanting to buy, essentially.

ChatGPT style conversations would give Google a much better idea of exactly what you want to buy. It must be possible to use this signal to sell more ads, not just match what they currently have. Essentially, make sure ChatGPT gets asked the same question Google currently answers: "how do I get the person searching to buy something from this (loooong) list of ads?".

Having people help Google (not just in one search, but a potentially long list of refinements) to find exactly what they would buy should make Google ads perform much better yet again.

Re: Google's live from Paris event private/deleted immediately

#55
post #27

Why wouldn't Google be able to compete with their own version of ChatGPT ? I don't understand this underlying assumption behind all comments here

Having the technology or know how is still miles away from a product that is live. Google have the former, Microsoft handed over bags of cash for the latter.

It's especially awkward for them because as market leader in search they can't really afford to fumble this, which anecdotally they seem to be.

Re: Google's live from Paris event private/deleted immediately

#56

Here's a mirror of the event https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npV4Kix7Td0

Seems like a disjointed attempt to convince that Google is already an AI provider, which probably isn't wrong. Here's kind of the "touchstones" from the 4 or 5 speakers.

- Highlighting the bleedover between search and conversational AI.

- Highlighting the widespread deployment of Translate across Google services.

- Highlighting "Google Lens" (coming soon? I thought this has been integrated for a decade?).

- Feature announcement, "multisearch" multi-modal search such as with an image and associated text.

- Feature announcement, "Bard" -> "But" -> "Further conditions..."

- Upgrades to the "expert answer recommendations" that is actually enabled by "Generative AI" -- (what were they doing before throwing darts?! when the hell was "do dogs dream?" https://www.popisms.com/TelevisionCommercial/101945/Google-A...)

- Feature announcement, "Next month", Generative Language APIs "onboarding developers, creators, and enterprises"

- "Responsible AI/ AI Principles" (https://ai.google/principles)

-Feature tease, Google Maps eye-candy / novel interface overlays using NeRF

- Google Maps AR demonstration that also looks like something from a decade ago that didn't get adopted / basically what Glass did

- Proper EV charging stations support (it doesn't already do this?)

- "Project Air View" to collect data about infrastructure's effect on air quality to benefit city planning? No idea what this is about.

- Google Arts and Culture (chrome experiments) / the blobs from 8 years ago revisited, I guess "Google Books" archival is just "arts and culture" now, AR application for an image viewer still very 2012,

It abruptly ends. This was all very out-of-touch.

Re: Google's live from Paris event private/deleted immediately

#57
post #49
post #13

ChatGPT as a search engine sounds amazing but also really quite problematic. It's an extension of the issue with Google's "instant answers" (or whatever they're called): right now the creators of the content Google/ChatGPT scrapes are usually paid via the advertisements on their pages. When no-one clicks though any more, no-one gets paid. I know, I know, the ad banner-funded web is a mess and I wouldn't mourn its dem…

In general, generative models are taking publicly available content from creators and are monetizing them for big tech. Same with stable diffusion, AI art. And it'll be the same with LLMs. Eventually the whole internet would be flooded with cheap AI generated content and clearly AIs need human generated content to train on so it'll be the snake eats itself.

There are parallels in manufacturing and product. People who sell with high quality control, better methods. And everything else gets cheaper more common and lower (good enough) quality.

Re: Google's live from Paris event private/deleted immediately

#58

I hope Google is not pulling a Blackberry moment. I remember when the iPhone was first announced, BB scrambled to put out press releases saying they have competing products in development. 2 years later the Bold(EDIT: Storm) was released and everyone realized it's just a hastily designed iPhone clone. That marks the end of BB's dominance. >Used to work for BB/RIM

Don't you mean the Storm? The Bold was pretty solid, and the original didn't have a touch screen. It was the storm that had a crappy touchscreen that physically moved to touch, and it sucked.

Yeah you are right. It's the Storm with the clicky screen.

Fun trivia- Most of the BB employees in my department switched from Storm to Bold when the Bold was released. As a result I had a pile of Storm in my drawer as my test devices.

Re: Google's live from Paris event private/deleted immediately

#59

I hope Google is not pulling a Blackberry moment. I remember when the iPhone was first announced, BB scrambled to put out press releases saying they have competing products in development. 2 years later the Bold(EDIT: Storm) was released and everyone realized it's just a hastily designed iPhone clone. That marks the end of BB's dominance. >Used to work for BB/RIM

> I hope Google is not pulling a Blackberry moment.

It would be awesome, actually. Demonopolization of search space is long due. We need some breath of fresh air there.

Re: Google's live from Paris event private/deleted immediately

#60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google can’t compete with Microsoft without having a huge revenue hit. The large majority of Google’s revenue comes from search ads. Chat gpt doesn’t have search results, per se. So how do you keep the high ad revenue linking to other sites? I’m not sure they can compete within their existing brand/company structure.

If you search for a personal injury lawyer (which IIRC a single click on an ad would fetch google a thousand bucks), a chatGPTesque answer could be more convincing in leading you to a paid resource than a list of options with an ad. Imagine an AI half as smart as chatGPT who’s primary goal is to not just give you the answer but also convince you in a legally acceptable way to click a sponsored result.

But that blurs editorial and advertising even worse than Google does now. It would make them a laughingstock, and the reputational damage plus competition from companies who have different revenue models would cause loss of market share anyway.

If Google is going to survive this, they need to find a way to get back to prioritizing user value while also making money.

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