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> However, the chances that they will be able to beat Google seems vanishingly small. I'm not sure about that, for one main reason: Google's acquisitiveness re

> However, the chances that they will be able to beat Google seems vanishingly small. I'm not sure about that, for one main reason: Google's acquisitiveness regarding data is even more notorious than its habit of losing interest in products and dropping them suddenly. Both are major turnoffs for business customers, to put it mildly. Amazon, while it does have a habit of vigorously competing with its own customers (in the retail "marketplace" space, and in others - I find the whole Amazon vs. Netflix dynamic absolutely fascinating) is at least reliable in provision of services and transparent about the exchange of cash for value. In other words, Amazon is, at heart, a ruthless retailer, where Google is at heart an intelligence agency with occult motives. Google usually has the better tech, but Amazon's the company people are comfortable doing business with. Edit: I should also say, this listicle of an article is mostly bunk. Lab126 is not a great hardware design shop. The Echo/Alexa "ecosystem" is mostly a bunch of (to be fair, well-considered) first-party integration deals to support popular home automation products - "skills" are a joke for discoverability and usability reasons, even if there were a market for them, which there isn't. I do agree that logistics (and operations more generally) is an enormous strength. Probably the key one, because Amazon doesn't usually come with the firstest or the mostest - it just executes relentlessly at complex, labor intensive tasks. It is at its strongest in places where it is not primarily competing on tech or features but on consistent execution and the customer reputation that comes from that.

curun1r 9y ago
> where Google is at heart an intelligence agency with occult motives That seems off to me. Google is, at heart, an advertiser. This leads to Amazon being more customer centric because most Google customers are actually the product Google is selling and most Google "products" are just the lures they use to attract their actual product. Google never loses interest in their products, but they frequently choose to switch their method of attracting the eyeballs they sell. No cloak and dagger explanations needed.
- straightforward 9y ago
  Google BECAME an advertiser. Some of us remember the pre-advertising, and later pre-Doubleclick-acquisition Google. I'm not implying Google's motives are "cloak and dagger," just that they are not transparent beyond "index all the world's knowledge" (with all that implies.) This is the mission it started with, which isn't in and of itself a complete business model. It's the model of an intelligence agency, and that's what I meant by my statement. Right now, advertising brings in the money, but it'd be a breathtaking failure of imagination and intellect for that to be the "best and highest use" of Google's corpus. An optimist would say "advertising subsidized google's mission which is essentially one of public service." A pessimist would say "who knows WHAT google will do (or may already be doing) with what it knows - but it's probably evil." I'm neither, valuing the services Google provides while distrusting the power it has based on its data and reach.
- justicezyx 9y ago
  Ads is the business. You need the tech to build it. And Gooogle is not an AI company. Google is definitely more of a computing company than anything else. DeepMind will not reach its current stage without Google's computing capability, and Google's computing capability is literally no where else to be found. Disclaimer: I work at Google.
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    [deleted]

curun1r 9y ago

> where Google is at heart an intelligence agency with occult motives That seems off to me. Google is, at heart, an advertiser. This leads to Amazon being more customer centric because most Google customers are actually the product Google is selling and most Google "products" are just the lures they use to attract their actual product. Google never loses interest in their products, but they frequently choose to switch their method of attracting the eyeballs they sell. No cloak and dagger explanations needed.

straightforward 9y ago
Google BECAME an advertiser. Some of us remember the pre-advertising, and later pre-Doubleclick-acquisition Google. I'm not implying Google's motives are "cloak and dagger," just that they are not transparent beyond "index all the world's knowledge" (with all that implies.) This is the mission it started with, which isn't in and of itself a complete business model. It's the model of an intelligence agency, and that's what I meant by my statement. Right now, advertising brings in the money, but it'd be a breathtaking failure of imagination and intellect for that to be the "best and highest use" of Google's corpus. An optimist would say "advertising subsidized google's mission which is essentially one of public service." A pessimist would say "who knows WHAT google will do (or may already be doing) with what it knows - but it's probably evil." I'm neither, valuing the services Google provides while distrusting the power it has based on its data and reach.
justicezyx 9y ago
Ads is the business. You need the tech to build it. And Gooogle is not an AI company. Google is definitely more of a computing company than anything else. DeepMind will not reach its current stage without Google's computing capability, and Google's computing capability is literally no where else to be found. Disclaimer: I work at Google.
- deleted 9y ago
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