Comment by brokencode
15 days ago
There was a point in time when basically every well known AI researcher worked at Google. They have been at the forefront of AI research and investing heavily for longer than anybody.
It’s kind of crazy that they have been slow to create real products and competitive large scale models from their research.
But they are in full gear now that there is real competition, and it’ll be cool to see what they release over the next few years.
>It’s kind of crazy that they have been slow to create real products and competitive large scale models from their research.
Not really. If Google released all of this first instead of companies that have never made a profit and perhaps never will, the case law would simply be the copyright holders suing them for infringement and winning.
It's not even that. It's way easier to do R&D when you don't have a customer base to support.
Also think of how LLMs are replacing web searches for most people - Google would have been cannibalising their Search profits for no good reason
> It’s kind of crazy that they have been slow to create real products and competitive large scale models from their research.
It’s not that crazy. Sometimes the rational move is to wait for a market to fully materialize before going after it. This isn’t a Xerox PARC situation, nor really the innovator’s dilemma, it’s about timing: turning research into profits when market conditions finally make it viable. Even mammoths like Google are limited in their ability to create entirely new markets.
This take makes even more sense when you consider the costs of making a move to create the market. The organizational energy and its necessary loss in focus and resources limits their ability to experiment. Arguably the best strategy for Google: (1) build foundational depth in research and infrastructure that would be impossible for competition to quickly replicate (2) wait for the market to present a clear new opportunity for you (3) capture it decisively by focusing and exploiting every foundational advantage Google was able to build.
I also think the presence of Sergey Brin has been making a difference in this.
Ex-googler: I doubt it, but am curious for rationale (i know there was a round of PR re: him “coming back to help with AI.” but just between you and me, the word on him internally, over years and multiple projects, was having him around caused chaos b/c he was a tourist flitting between teams, just spitting out ideas, but now you have unclear direction and multiple teams hearing the same “you should” and doing it)
the rebuke is that lack of chaos makes people feel more orderly and as if things are going better, but it doesn't increase your luck surface area, it just maximizes cozy vibes and self interested comfort.
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I'm in a similar position and generally agree with your take, but the plus side to his involvement is if he believed in your project or viewpoint he would act as the ultimate red tape cutter.
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That makes sense. A "secret shopper" might be a better way to avoid that but wouldn't give him the strokes of being the god in the room.
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Oh ffs, we have an external investor who behaves like that. Literally set us back a year on pet nonsense projects and ideas.
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Please, Google was terrible about using the tech the had long before Sundar, back when Brin was in charge.
Google Reader is a simple example: Googl had by far the most popular RSS reader, and they just threw it away. A single intern could have kept the whole thing running, and Google has literal billions, but they couldn't see the value in it.
I mean, it's not like being able to see what a good portion of America is reading every day could have any value for an AI company, right?
Google has always been terrible about turning tech into (viable, maintained) products.
Is there an equivalent to Godwin's law wrt threads about Google and Google Reader?
See also: any programming thread and Rust.
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I never get the moaning about killing Reader. It was never about popularity or user experience.
Reader had to be killed because it [was seen as] a suboptimal ad monetization engine. Page views were superior.
Was Google going to support minimizing ads in any way?
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How is this relevant? At best it’s tangentially related and low effort
Took a while but I got to the google reader post. Self host tt-rss, it's much better
Can you not vibe code it back into existence yet?
[dead]
Because after the death of Epstein he suddenly had a lot of free time?
https://www.wsj.com/finance/jeffrey-epstein-advised-sergey-b...
https://x.com/MarioNawfal/status/2017428928814588323
If this is true, this is disappointing :/
On a similar topic, it is worth mentioning the entrepreneurs that are forced into sex (or let’s say, very pushed) by VCs.
For those who feel safe or taking it as a joke, this affects women AND men.
Some people are going to be disappointed about their heroes.
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What's striking is the sheer scale of Epstein's and Maxwell's scheduling and access. The source material makes it hard to even imagine how two people could sustain that many meetings/parties/dinners/victims, across so many places, with such high-profile figures. And, how those figures consistently found the time to meet them.
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> It’s kind of crazy that they have been slow to create real products and competitive large scale models from their research.
I always thought they deliberately tried to contain the genie in the bottle as long as they could
Their unreleased LaMDA[1] famously caused one of their own engineers to have a public crashout in 2022, before ChatGPT dropped. Pre-ChatGPT they also showed it off in their research blog[2] and showed it doing very ChatGPT-like things and they alluded to 'risks,' but those were primarily around it using naughty language or spreading misinformation.
I think they were worried that releasing a product like ChatGPT only had downside risks for them, because it might mess up their money printing operation over in advertising by doing slurs and swears. Those sweet summer children: little did they know they could run an operation with a seig-heiling CEO who uses LLMs to manufacture and distribute CSAM worldwide, and it wouldn't make above-the-fold news.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LaMDA#Sentience_claims
[2] https://research.google/blog/lamda-towards-safe-grounded-and...
The front runner is not always the winner. If they were able to keep pace with openai while letting them take all the hits and miss steps, it could pay off.
Time will tell if LLM training becomes a race to the bottom or the release of the "open source" ones proves to be a spoiler. From the outside looking while ChatGPT has brand recognition for the average person who could not tell the difference between any two LLMs google offering Gemini in android phones could perhaps supplant them.
I swear the Tay incident caused tech companies to be unnecessarily risk averse with chatbots for years.
Attention is all you need was written by Googlers IIRC.
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