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Comment by rbrown

13 hours ago

They won't. It's the same data collection play as every other Google project

Just for clarity on this comment and a separate one, Niantic is a Google spin out company and appears to still be majority shareholder: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niantic,_Inc.#As_an_independen...

Google actually has released weights for some of their models, but judging by the fact that this model is potentially valuable, they likely will not allow Niantic for this

  • > Google actually has released weights for some of their models, but judging by the fact that this model is potentially valuable, they likely will not allow Niantic for this

    which is totally unfair, every niantic player should have access to all the stuff because they collectively made it

    • > which is totally unfair, every niantic player should have access to all the stuff because they collectively made it

      I don't understand this perspective. While all players may have collectively made this model possible, no individual player could make a model like it based on their contributions alone.

      Since no single player could replicate this outcome based on only their data, does it not imply that there's value created from collecting (and incentivizing collection of) the data, and subsequently processing it to create something?

      It actually seems more unfair to demand the collective result for yourself, when your own individual input is itself insufficient to have created it in the first place.

      I don't think producers of data are inherently entitled to all products produced from said data.

      Is a farmer entitled to the entirety of your work output because you ate a vegetable grown on their farm?

      17 replies →

    • They got to play the game for free, and I'm fairly sure what Google is doing here is within the terms and conditions that people agreed to.

      (And I don't even mean only that it complies with the exact wording of the fine print that nobody reads anyway, but also that everyone expects the terms-and-conditions to say that the company owns all the data. So no surprises to anyone.)

    • Welcome to the modern internet. While you're at it, please get me access to Google's captcha models facebook face directory Google's GPS location data hoard, (most every android phone on the planet 24/7 (!) and any iPhone navigating with gmaps) And so on and so on

      All of which I've directly contributed to and never (directly) recieved anything in return

      8 replies →

I kept wondering why a Google spinoff was named after a river and community in Connecticut, one of the least Googley locales in the country.

The connection is a ship, built in Connecticut, which brought gold rushers to San Francisco and was run aground and converted to a hotel there: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niantic_(whaling_vessel)

The company was named after the ship.