Is this really a case of innovator's dilemma + slow moving megacorp? With all the talent they have?
Ask HN: How did Google lose so much ground to OpenAI?
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Re: Ask HN: How did Google lose so much ground to OpenAI?
#2Ad-dependent business model. A chatbot wouldn’t work with Google’s business model unless it was programmed to give the answer desired by the highest bidder.
Re: Ask HN: How did Google lose so much ground to OpenAI?
#3Large companies are often wary of creating products that would impact their core product - possibly with diminishing revenue with the new product.
Compare: https://www.imd.org/research-knowledge/articles/apples-dwind...
> Under Steve Jobs, Apple had a track record of cannibalizing its own products. In 2005, when the demand for the iPod Mini remained huge, the Nano was launched, effectively destroying the revenue stream of an existing product. And while iPod sales were still going through the roof, Jobs launched the iPhone which combined iPod, cell phone, and Internet access into a single device. Three years after the iPhone’s launch, iPad made its debut and raised the prospect of cutting into Mac desktop computer sales. So resolute was Apple’s determination in trading a highly profitable business for an unknown future that Jobs reportedly said “If you don’t cannibalize yourself, someone else will.”
https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-on-cannibalization-201...
> "The iPhone has to become so great that you don't know why you want an iPad," Schiller explained. "The iPad has to be so great that you don't know why you want a notebook. The notebook has to be so great that you don't know why you want a desktop. Each one's job is to compete with the other ones."
> Apple has shed light on this way of thinking before. During a quarterly earnings call with investors in early 2013, Apple CEO Tim Cook said the company's "base philosophy is to never fear cannibalization."
> "If we do, somebody else will just cannibalize it, and so we never fear it," Cook said. "We know that iPhone has cannibalized some iPod business. It doesn’t worry us, but it’s done that. We know that iPad will cannibalize some Macs. That doesn’t worry us."
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Meanwhile, Google is very cannibalization reluctant to the point of throwing away products that may impact its main revenue sources.
Re: Ask HN: How did Google lose so much ground to OpenAI?
#4Why was Google poised to compete with OpenAI in the first place? I don't get this take. I don't think they lost any more than Amazon did, which is to say they're indirectly profiting from it by selling compute hardware.
Re: Ask HN: How did Google lose so much ground to OpenAI?
#5[deleted]
Re: Ask HN: How did Google lose so much ground to OpenAI?
#6Google always had a problem of launching tons of of stuff and then killing them. I vaguely remember reading some articles from earlier days that pretty much everything gets killed or dismissed if it can't be justified by numbers. Some purely creative processes get killed very fast because of these rules. The days where you can come up with some shit and carry on for years ended very long time ago there.
Re: Ask HN: How did Google lose so much ground to OpenAI?
#7Google always had a problem of launching tons of of stuff and then killing them. I vaguely remember reading some articles from earlier days that pretty much everything gets killed or dismissed if it can't be justified by numbers. Some purely creative processes get killed very fast because of these rules. The days where you can come up with some shit and carry on for years ended very long time ago there.
Which AI projects at Google got released and killed prematurely?
Re: Ask HN: How did Google lose so much ground to OpenAI?
#8All large tech co's seem to be kind of the same more or less, having worked at most faang co's in my career. They become so big, especially after peaking on their core revenue-driving business (ads for FB, GOOG, and retail/cloud for AMZN/AWS, hardware devices for APPL) that you essentially regress towards some type of "mean" which seems to be a byproduct of scaling. Because exceptional people are several SDs above the mean, with every incremental hire you regress to the mean (unless you are really, really, really good at hiring).
Ultimately I think it is the illusion of a moat (we are too big to fail, we are the default search engine/browser/os etc.) Coupled with over hiring. Along with a fear of taking risk and willingness to disrupt yourself. Ultimately, they became too fearful and focused on building a wall around the kingdom than expanding the kingdom.
Also is it just me, or has the execution from GOOG just been really disappointing? Look at this talk [0] These are not innovators, these are business leaders. Google (and many big tech like AMZN/AWS) have become more packed with these "business leaders" types and not the core, quirky, unusual and strange innovator types. I think it is very much a regression to the "above average" which has killed the ability to launch / productize new technologies (vs. new businesses..)
Re: Ask HN: How did Google lose so much ground to OpenAI?
#9They own DeepMind so arguments like existing products and having a big slow moving corp sound like bad excuses.
Re: Ask HN: How did Google lose so much ground to OpenAI?
#10How much money does OpenAI make? They’re a threat but at the end of the day, it’s not like they’re losing substantial revenue or potential revenue