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> Calling someone an "X company" means that they make their money from X. There are aspects of AI in targeted advertising, but not enough to call them an AI com
by magicalist 11y ago
> Calling someone an "X company" means that they make their money from X. There are aspects of AI in targeted advertising, but not enough to call them an AI company rather than an advertising company.
eh, either way Google is described it's just trying to be a cute soundbite with next to no information.
You can call them an advertising company, but they create the products that most of their ads are seen in, so really they're an advertising company and a software company. They build the data centers all that software runs on or comes from, so they're also a data center company. And if they're using AI in most of their products these days (no idea), you could fairly add AI company on there too.
So what is the X in "they're an X company"? A better question is why does it matter what the X is? You don't gain any insight by filling it in.
Instead we could go crazy and use like two, even three sentences to describe what a company does, what its incentives are and where its constrained.
- stcredzero 11y agoInstead we could go crazy and use like two, even three sentences to describe what a company does, what its incentives are and where its constrained. What would be your "crazy" characterization of Google?
- TheOtherHobbes 11y agoData centers are just the modern version of what used to be called plant and machinery, and Google is just an updated industrial corp in the tradition of other former and current household names, but with a slightly more colourful logo. The business focus matters because the ad market is in trouble, and unless Alphabet has something in the pipeline to replace ads, five to ten years from now the company is going to be where Yahoo is today. This seems hard to imagine now, but no one expected DEC to fail, or HP to turn into that thing it turned into, or Microsoft to sit on a grenade labelled "Windows", or IBM to drift off to the margins of the web - and so on.
- jonknee 11y ago> The business focus matters because the ad market is in trouble, and unless Alphabet has something in the pipeline to replace ads, five to ten years from now the company is going to be where Yahoo is today. What evidence shows the ad business in trouble? Alphabet recorded revenue and profit in the quarter.
- magicalist 11y ago> This seems hard to imagine now, but no one expected DEC to fail, or HP to turn into that thing it turned into, or Microsoft to sit on a grenade labelled "Windows", or IBM to drift off to the margins of the web - and so on. Sure, but for every unexpected floundering there are many more predictions of failure that never occurred. I'm not sure how unexpected failures in general give any insight beyond that they exist.