If Google isn't allowed to use search data to train LLMs, would the same apply to X and the tweets found there?
US weighs Google break-up in landmark antitrust case
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Re: US weighs Google break-up in landmark antitrust case
#82I think decentralized technologies should be part of the discussion when you it comes to replacing technology monopolies. For example, there might be some protocols for cooperative web indexing or search or to provide a common layer that companies can build on.
I'd love to see how something like this could handle the bad actor problem. It is what (IMO) is currently killing the web today.
How would you, for example, stop a rouge indexer from spewing an unlimited number of bad indexes to spam their garbage into the distributed protocol? Or how would you address just bad/misleading/faulty indexes?
Re: US weighs Google break-up in landmark antitrust case
#83If Google isn't allowed to use search data to train LLMs, would the same apply to X and the tweets found there?
> If Google isn't allowed to use search data to train LLMs, would the same apply to X and the tweets found there?
If a federal judge finds X/Twitter to have a monopoly on short-form nonsense, yes.
Re: US weighs Google break-up in landmark antitrust case
#84They biggest web advertising company definitely shouldn't control the world's most popular browser. Just like we all knew they would, they're blocking ad blockers, and this problem will only get worse. Tell your friends to use Firefox, people.
It's fascinating how "preventing web extensions from having full access to everything on every site you visit when there is a repeated history of extensions being bought by companies that turn them into spyware data miners" gets turned into "blocking ad blockers".
Because there were other ways to handle the ad blocker situation. For example, allowing the users to grant access to an extension.
The hard protocol ban is heavy handed.
Re: US weighs Google break-up in landmark antitrust case
#85There's side effect benefit of big kahuna companies mainly on the significant breakthrough and game changing research output because these excellent researchers are paid handsome money compared to conventional universities or research institutions. We saw this with AT&T Bell research labs with their inventions of transistor and Unix, among others. The same thing happened with Google research with (arguably) deep lear…
Drawing from own experience working with Harvard, MIT and Google researchers, I could not disagree more.
When you talk to a researcher, do they strike you as someone who chases handsome amounts of money, or someone who chases ideas?
You bring up research labs. I listened to Alan Kay's numerous talks over the years (as an example of a prominent CS researcher), not once does he mention that he joined for the money at Xerox PARC. Yes, he was paid, but the main advantage was being given free reign to conduct research with the best experts in their fields, i.e. to invent and pursue ideas.
The important part from a financial perspective, is to be able to have finances to back a research division, where you can spend billions on building a new type of technology, if need be, that may not pan out. You don't need a monopoly to accomplish that.
You know who does chase handsome amounts of money? Day traders and everyone gambling on the stock market.
Re: US weighs Google break-up in landmark antitrust case
#86They biggest web advertising company definitely shouldn't control the world's most popular browser. Just like we all knew they would, they're blocking ad blockers, and this problem will only get worse. Tell your friends to use Firefox, people.
> they're blocking ad blockers
I've tried uBlock Origin Lite on Chrome and it works... perfectly. I haven't noticed a single ad get through.
And isn't it supposed to be a lot more performant?
Before, I assumed Chrome really was trying to gradually stop ad-blocking. But now that I see it's had literally zero impact, at least on the sites I visit, I'm starting to wonder what all the fuss was about. Was manifest v3 really about performance and security all along, and not about eliminating ad blockers?
Meanwhile, you can't install adblocking on iOS Safari as an extension at all. But I never hear anybody bringing that up.
Re: US weighs Google break-up in landmark antitrust case
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
Clearly this model no longer works. Bell labs had 11 nobel prize winners. What did Google invent? Slightly better generative neural networks whose offsprings now pollute their search results?
You could interpret this the other way - Why has Jeff Dean been snubbed by the Nobel committee? Why hasn't Larry Page gotten a Nobel for inventing the search technology that half the planet now depends on? I don't know what category to put that one in, but there's some important results in lightspeed-limited communications in "The Datacenter as a Computer" that would be worth extending the Physics category for.
"search technology"
Google is an advertising company, search is a by-product and has been for a long time.
Re: US weighs Google break-up in landmark antitrust case
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wish this were a viable option, but it is not. US national labs are horribly, horribly mismanaged. For some slower-moving fields like particle physics where institutional knowledge is key, they hold up alright, but for fast moving fields like quantum they are very behind. They are stagnant bureaucracies. I could tell stories, but better to just compare the output of national labs in many fields to those of the top…
I think you need to better support the contention that the National Labs are “horribly, horribly mismanaged” [not even just horribly, but horribly, horribly]. I think many of us would like to hear your stories. But note that many in your audience here have decades of experience across both National Labs and leading industrial laboratories. Please, share your stories that span the contributions of tens of thousands of…
https://www.google.com/search?q=national+laboratory+mismanag.... it has been widely reported on. Search results are eye-opening.
Re: US weighs Google break-up in landmark antitrust case
#89I don't understand how Microsoft gets away with being a bigger monopoly for longer.
Arguably a duopoly with Apple, while ads and web browsing are just google?
Not sure just a guess.
Re: US weighs Google break-up in landmark antitrust case
#90It will be really ironic if this kills Mozilla / Firefox
Mozilla killed Firefox itself with its poor leadership. They have had nearly 20 years of Google writing them half a billion checks annually. If they can't come up with a better business plan than literal corporate welfare, maybe they don't deserve to exist?