Once upon a time it would've been unthinkable for Google search to become awful and nearly worthless due, in large part, by Google's discretionary choices.
Related - interns these days don't seem to have any particular preference for using Google for finding information...
I think it's a bit inflated to label Gmail a "great tech for consumers". Maps certainly, YouTube mostly, Chrome & Android for loyalists, but Gmail hasn't been "great tech" for well over a decade.
Additionally these are all old products - even the company's more recent products such as Gemini feel stale and on unsteady ground.
Their entire business is predicated on search dominance, which is now on much shakier footing. Agreed that those comments were ridiculous pre-ChatGPT, but now they have a genuine challenger.
This take only makes sense if you don’t know what people use Google search for. If you’re looking for your local Ford dealership, or to book a Carnival cruise, or need a disability lawyer, or to refinance your credit card debt, you’re searching for an ad. You’re not using Chat-GPT for that. You’re asking Chat-GPT about a research project. It’s stealing away all the hard to monetize searches and leaving the incredibly lucrative searches.
Your narrative depressed Google’s stock price for years, and bears finally gave up since they kept coming out with huge earnings beats.
That’s over half of their business, but they do have some diversification with YouTube, Play Store, and cloud services.
Some of their newer efforts like Waymo and AI hosting for Apple could turn into large businesses to make up for any lost search revenue.
They also have significant costs to maintain their search revenue, such as $20B a year to Apple alone to make Google the default search engine in Safari.
If search becomes less lucrative, they would presumably pay less for such deals.
So yeah, definitely a time of disruption for Google and they need to keep moving fast on many fronts, but they are still well positioned in multiple markets to be successful.
A model serves a different purpose from a web crawler.
I'd prefer to be able to find source material over steering a model I have no control over while managing hallucinated outputs without the ability to fact check.
Just because it sourced some materials using RAG doesn't make its outputs valid, accurate, or factual.
Is it though? As far as I can tell they continue to maintain total domination of web search, and LLMs do not replace search engines, they work on top of them.
Not so much hardware these days, about half of IBM's revenue comes from software (Red Hat related stuff alone probably brings in a ton), and about 20% comes from consulting
People have been saying that for over a decade now, and their business is still going.
So is IBM.
There was a pretty interesting article in the Wall Street Journal a few weeks back about how IBM is flying under the radar, and doing well by not taking the hype bait.
It noted that 70% of all credit card transactions on the planet go through an IBM system.
It ought to be extremely easy now to use LLMs to transpile cobol and do the necessary reverse engineering to migrate off mainframes and aix servers.
I think IBM will lose many customers.
IBM had something of a downward blip last quarter, partly because of mainframe cycles. But it's actually done generally well the past few years and pays a pretty good dividend. $10B in net income for 2025 isn't shabby.
I dunno about going strong. $1,000 in Microsoft stock in 1990 would have made you a multi-millionaire today. $1,000 in IBM stock in 1990 would make you a ten-thousandaire today.
> Google will be considered "the new IBM" in 20 years.
They have plenty of great tech for consumers right now: Gmail, Maps, YouTube, Chrome, Android,..
You can perhaps argue that search might suffer because of AI but they've done a great job scaling horizontally into many verticals.
I don't think Google is going anywhere.
The newest of those are 20 years old.
Let’s be honest. Google was amazing back then, now they’re just an ad-business flailing around in other side quests.
GCP/Vertex, Firebase, Spanner, Waymo, Gemini + Nano Banana, Google Photos, TPUs, Pixel, Assistant, Google Fi, Taara...
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Gmail is going to be Google's System/390 mainframes.
People used to say the same thing about Microsoft with Windows you know...
Once upon a time it would've been unthinkable for Google search to become awful and nearly worthless due, in large part, by Google's discretionary choices.
Related - interns these days don't seem to have any particular preference for using Google for finding information...
Can you explain this behavior a little bit more. Where do they seek information - is it a consumer chat app, social media app’s search functions?
^FTFY “interns these days don’t seem to have any particular preference for finding information”
I think it's a bit inflated to label Gmail a "great tech for consumers". Maps certainly, YouTube mostly, Chrome & Android for loyalists, but Gmail hasn't been "great tech" for well over a decade.
Additionally these are all old products - even the company's more recent products such as Gemini feel stale and on unsteady ground.
People have been saying that for over a decade now, and their business is still going.
Their entire business is predicated on search dominance, which is now on much shakier footing. Agreed that those comments were ridiculous pre-ChatGPT, but now they have a genuine challenger.
This take only makes sense if you don’t know what people use Google search for. If you’re looking for your local Ford dealership, or to book a Carnival cruise, or need a disability lawyer, or to refinance your credit card debt, you’re searching for an ad. You’re not using Chat-GPT for that. You’re asking Chat-GPT about a research project. It’s stealing away all the hard to monetize searches and leaving the incredibly lucrative searches.
Your narrative depressed Google’s stock price for years, and bears finally gave up since they kept coming out with huge earnings beats.
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Search is now only 50% of the revenue. But sure keep the myth going.
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That’s over half of their business, but they do have some diversification with YouTube, Play Store, and cloud services.
Some of their newer efforts like Waymo and AI hosting for Apple could turn into large businesses to make up for any lost search revenue.
They also have significant costs to maintain their search revenue, such as $20B a year to Apple alone to make Google the default search engine in Safari.
If search becomes less lucrative, they would presumably pay less for such deals.
So yeah, definitely a time of disruption for Google and they need to keep moving fast on many fronts, but they are still well positioned in multiple markets to be successful.
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If by "shakier footing" you mean accelerating growth in query volume, ad impressions, revenue and earnings, I'll take it.
I disagree
A model serves a different purpose from a web crawler.
I'd prefer to be able to find source material over steering a model I have no control over while managing hallucinated outputs without the ability to fact check.
Just because it sourced some materials using RAG doesn't make its outputs valid, accurate, or factual.
> which is now on much shakier footing
Is it though? As far as I can tell they continue to maintain total domination of web search, and LLMs do not replace search engines, they work on top of them.
used to be. Cloud, Waymo, and some other bets have been paying off.
And yet, their search engine is enshittified beyond all belief.
IBM is also still going, believe it or not. 260k employees, 200 billion market cap, $67 billion revenue.
I'm not sure what they do these days - it's about 20 years since I used an IBM Thinkpad to connect to an IBM pSeries.
Not so much hardware these days, about half of IBM's revenue comes from software (Red Hat related stuff alone probably brings in a ton), and about 20% comes from consulting
It’s a trustworthy name for enterprises. Many executives are old enough that IBM was the Google of their time when they started their careers.
People have been saying that for over a decade now, and their business is still going.
So is IBM.
There was a pretty interesting article in the Wall Street Journal a few weeks back about how IBM is flying under the radar, and doing well by not taking the hype bait.
It noted that 70% of all credit card transactions on the planet go through an IBM system.
Yeah, I should have said growing not going. That's what I meant.
It ought to be extremely easy now to use LLMs to transpile cobol and do the necessary reverse engineering to migrate off mainframes and aix servers. I think IBM will lose many customers.
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So is IBM.
Isn't IBM still going?
IBM had something of a downward blip last quarter, partly because of mainframe cycles. But it's actually done generally well the past few years and pays a pretty good dividend. $10B in net income for 2025 isn't shabby.
I dunno about going strong. $1,000 in Microsoft stock in 1990 would have made you a multi-millionaire today. $1,000 in IBM stock in 1990 would make you a ten-thousandaire today.
apples to oranges comparison. 1990 is early days for MS. 1990 is gorilla days for IBM.
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IBM's business is still going so I dunno what your point is
Who knows what will happen in 20 years. Right now, it's not the case.