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Comment by jfrbfbreudh

11 hours ago

Google’s moat:

Try “@gmail” in Gemini

Google’s surface area to apply AI is larger than any other company’s. And they have arguably the best multimodal model and indisputably the best flash model?

11 comments

jfrbfbreudh

Reply
avalys  11 hours ago

If the “moat” is not AI technology itself but merely sufficient other lines of business to deploy it well, then that’s further evidence that venture investments in AI startups will yield very poor returns.

  • tjwebbnorfolk  6 hours ago

    It's funny that a decade ago the exit strategy of many of these startups would have been to get acquired by MSFT / META / GOOG. Now, the regulators have made a lot of these acquisitions effectively impossible for antitrust reasons.

    Is it better for society for promising startups to die on the open market, or get acquired by a monopoly? The third option -- taking down the established players -- appears increasingly unlikely.

    • maeln  5 hours ago

      > Now, the regulators have made a lot of these acquisitions effectively impossible for antitrust reasons.

      Is there any evidence that this is the case ? For very big merger (like nvdia and Arm tried) sure, but I can't think of a single time regulator stop a big player from buying a start up.

onion2k  8 hours ago

Try “@gmail” in Gemini

I think this is a problem for Google. Most users aren't going to do that unless they're told it's possible. 99% of users are working to a mental model of AI that they learned when they first encountered ChatGPT - the idea that AI is a separate app, that they can talk to and prompt to get outputs, and that's it. They're probably starting to learn that they can select models, and use different modes, but the idea of connecting to other apps isn't something they've grokked yet (and they won't until it's very obvious).

What people see as the featureset of AI is what OpenAI is delivering, not Google. Google are going to struggle to leverage their position as custodians of everyone's data if they can't get users to break out of that way of thinking. And honestly, right now, Google are delivering lots of disparate AI interfaces (Gemini, Opal, Nano Banana, etc) which isn't really teaching users that it's all just facets of the same system.

  • troupo  4 hours ago

    > I think this is a problem for Google. Most users aren't going to do that unless they're told it's possible.

    Google is telling this in about a hundred different popups and inline hints when you use any of its products

    • onion2k  4 hours ago

      I've use the Gemini app on my phone a fair bit recently and I've not seen it. That said, I don't think I've seen any popups either. Maybe I've blocked them...

edaemon  10 hours ago

That kind of makes it sound like AI is a feature and not a product, which supports avalys' point.

venusenvy47  10 hours ago

I tried it, but nothing happened. It said that it sent an email but didn't. What is supposed to happen?