3 ms·
Even if you forget the whole "where does the money come from?" angle, they're still an ad company: their flagship products are AdWords and AdSense. OK, to be f
by iainmerrick 11y ago
Even if you forget the whole "where does the money come from?" angle, they're still an ad company: their flagship products are AdWords and AdSense.
OK, to be fair, search is still very important too (in fact the most important content provider for their ad business). So call them a "search and advertising company".
They use machine learning and are actively researching it, but that's true of a lot of companies. Is IBM an AI company?
- derefr 11y ago> Is IBM an AI company? That's how they've decided to brand themselves, at least (as of ~four months ago): http://adage.com/article/datadriven-marketing/ibm-replaces-smarter-planet-cognitive-business-strategy/300774/ http://adage.com/article/datadriven-marketing/ibm-replaces-s...
- cowsandmilk 11y agobut serving appropriate ads can be well served by AI. There may be a question of the increased margin that can come from keyword-based to AI-based ads, but it is there.
- toxican 11y agoUtilizing/developing AI doesn't define your company as an AI company though. All of that has consistently been second to the advertising. Almost everything they do ties back into their advertising business in someway. They're an advertising company with a lot of (awesome) side projects.
- mcv 11y agoAt Google, AI does seem to unite almost everything they do, from search, image recognition, self-driving cars, and ad placement. Of course all their revenue is from ads, so in revenue, they're an advertising company, but in products, they're an AI company.
- iainmerrick 11y agoBut all that is true of Facebook and Amazon, say. I'm not saying they don't do AI, I'm just saying it's not their unique focus that sets them apart from other companies. Search-and-ads sets them apart. You could certainly identify very large datacenters, Big Data and now machine learning as tools that Google have pioneered. But they don't have an exclusive lock on those.
- mcv 11y agoNo, but I think Google goes a lot further with their research and application of AI than Facebook and Amazon. I don't see Facebook and Amazon developing self-driving cars or Deep Dreaming.
- eli_gottlieb 11y agoSo what about Android? (Said the guy whose work is related to Android...)