Changes at Google DeepMind: Demis Hassabis from CEO to Chair, Jeff Dean departs

Post by vasco » Thu, Aug 06, 2026, 5:34 AM UTC

sheeshkebab wrote: post #653

solenoid0937 wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a friend at Google DeepMind who tells me that Google believes in AGI/superintelligence just as much as HN does, which is probably why no one with conviction wants to work there.

What’s with fascination with agi/superintelligence? It seems people working on it never had kids and just want to compensate for that. It’s a really horrible thing to try to “solve”.

Post by vintermann » Thu, Aug 06, 2026, 5:37 AM UTC

frollogaston wrote: post #294

GodelNumbering wrote: post #199

So, in last several months, all the prominent names Google lost: Demis Hassabis (technically still with google but these things are usually presented with a spin), Jeff Dean, Sanjay Ghemawat, Oriol Vinyals, Quoc Le, Noam Shazeer, John Jumper, Jonas Adler, Alexander Pritzel, David Silver, Denny Zhou, Fernando Pereira, Alex Turner And all the prominent names Google gained: NULL Combined with no gemini frontier GA relea…

Part of me thinks Google's entire problem is crappy internal tooling, not really an anti-innovation environment. Just making a dev take 2x as long to get something done has a bigger effect than you'd think. With LLMs it's more like 10x now because even Gemini doesn't understand Google-internal tooling.

Post by frollogaston » Thu, Aug 06, 2026, 5:45 AM UTC

vintermann wrote: post #673

frollogaston wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of me thinks Google's entire problem is crappy internal tooling, not really an anti-innovation environment. Just making a dev take 2x as long to get something done has a bigger effect than you'd think. With LLMs it's more like 10x now because even Gemini doesn't understand Google-internal tooling.

Internal tooling? Didn't Jeff Dean write their internal tooling?

Post by ttul » Thu, Aug 06, 2026, 5:52 AM UTC

treis wrote: post #631

losvedir wrote: post #462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still think Google is the only one who has a shot of coming out of this on top. Open AI and Anthropic's whole existence is predicated on some sort of moat, which I don't really see them having long term. They've got a bit of a headstart, but that's it. Conversely, AI is just a means to an end for Google - they don't need for their model to be the one to succeed. But, in contrast to the other major company in their…

I hardly use Google search anymore in favor of ChatGPT. It's surely an existential threat. Google has a lot of layers of defense in Android, Chrome, Gmail/Accounts, and a stranglehold on internet ads. But at the center of that is search and search is being replaced by LLMs.

Post by bmitc » Thu, Aug 06, 2026, 6:08 AM UTC

vjvjvjvjghv wrote: post #378

brandall10 wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, a bit surprised that the top comments aren't discussing losing Dean, he's been a figurehead for the company for decades. It's like Apple losing Ive in a way. EDIT: "figurehead" - that's all I meant. A notable, public figure from the company who is credited with having a significant impact on its evolution. I'm not making a judgement call on his departure, or Ive's, being good or bad. That said... just give it a…

Losing Ive was probably a good thing for Apple. I often feel that after a few years these big guys have done what they could do and somebody else can take it from there. So far even losing Jobs didn’t hurt Apple as it looks.