Comment by williamDafoe

7 hours ago

Google X is a complete failure. Maybe they had fei-fei on staff for a short while but most of her work was done elsewhere.

2 comments

williamDafoe

godelski 5 hours ago

  > Google X is a complete failure

  - Google Brain
  - Google Watch/Wear OS
  - Gcam/Pixel Camera
  - Insight (indoor GMaps)
  - Waymo
  - Verily

It is a moonshot factory after all, not a "we're only going to do things that are likely to succeed" factory. It's an internal startup space, which comes with high failure rates. But these successes seem pretty successful. Even the failed Google Glass seems to have led to learning, though they probably should have kept the team going considering the success of Meta Raybands and with things like Snap's glasses.

https://x.company/projects/#graduate

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_Development#Graduated_projec...

aatd86 6 hours ago

Didn't the current LLMs stem from this...? Or it might be Google Brain instead. For Google X, there is Waymo? I know a lot of stuff didn't pan out. This is expected. These were 'moonshots'.

But the principle is there. I think that when a company sits on a load of cash, that's what they should do. Either that or become a kind of alternative investments allocator. These are risky bets. But they should be incentivized to take those risks. From a fiscal policy standpoint for instance. Well it probably is the case already via lower taxation of capital gains and so on. But there should probably exist a more streamlined framework to make sure incentives are aligned.

And/or assigned government projects? Besides implementing their Cloud infrastructure that is...