4 ms·

I doubt Google will cut back any time soon, but as a former Google engineer, I find this an entertaining definition of business value ;) How much money does Go

I doubt Google will cut back any time soon, but as a former Google engineer, I find this an entertaining definition of business value ;) How much money does Google Photos make? Last time I used it, there were no ads in it. Isn't speech recognition nearly at human levels of comprehension, at least for US English and outside of highly technical jargon? Speech patterns change slowly, so would Android continue to make money if investment in speech R&D were cut back? My guess is yes, it'd be fine. Does Google Translate make money in some specific, measurable way? I don't mean "well it's neat to have translation links in web search", I mean, would people cut back on the commercial queries that are Google's main source of income if Translate quality stopped improving? I doubt it. Much of their products are like this. They're products but they aren't businesses. It's very easy to lose sight of the basics of business when inside the Google bubble. The things you mention are not providing business value in the conventional sense of the term because they aren't yielding independent profits. So they're all vulnerable. That said, vulnerable to what? I think Google is at risk of losing a lot of trust around web search and political and informational search more generally, but commercial queries are probably pretty much impregnable.

dragonwriter 9y ago
> How much money does Google Photos make? Last time I used it, there were no ads in it. Google Photos is, in a sense, a big ad with prominent calls to action for selling storage space. > Isn't speech recognition nearly at human levels of comprehension, at least for US English and outside of highly technical jargon? Recognition, maybe (though I think no). Applying recognized text to get the desired outcome, not even close. > Does Google Translate make money in some specific, measurable way? It powers a paid API, so, yes, it makes money in a specific, direct, measurable way.
- peoplewindow 9y ago
  But selling disk storage is a very marginal business and few people take huge numbers of photos they value enough to pay for storage of (vs sticking them on Facebook or Instagram which compresses the hell out of them but does it for free). I really doubt this is a significant business for Google.
  - wastedhours 9y ago
    But this will only compound, no? If people keep using it, the switching "cost" (cognitive/time) increases exponentially and people will near the storage limits.
nradov 9y ago
Speech recognition is still nowhere near human levels of comprehension. I have no speech impediments and speak US English with a neutral accent, yet Android speech recognition makes so many mistakes that it's usually faster to just type.
- sangnoir 9y ago
  > I have no speech impediments and speak US English with a neutral accent FYI: there is no such thing as a "neutral accent" - unless you mean neutral to your locale. I could describe an object as having "neutral temperature", but you'd need to know how hot/cold its environment is before it makes sense.
  - nradov 9y ago
    That's not correct for US English which absolutely does have a neutral accent unrelated to locale. For typical examples listen to nationwide network news broadcasts.
    - ghaff 9y ago
      Well, yes, because an accent generally associated with the Northeast and Midwest became "Network Standard." The Wikipedia article on the topic is quite good. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_American https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_American It's true that this accent generally lacks the strong regionalisms that some other US accents do. But it's mostly still an outgrowth of a general region even if its use is cultivated more widely.
danans 9y ago
> Isn't speech recognition nearly at human levels of comprehension, at least for US English and outside of highly technical jargon? Recognition of technical jargon is an easier problem than recognition common speech. Jargons are far more regular and have limited lexical and idiomatic variation, while common speech has a huge number of variations and is constantly innovating new usages. This is evidenced by the fact that the earliest speech recognition systems were only useful in highly restricted domains (medical transcription, phone support tree navigation).

dragonwriter 9y ago

> How much money does Google Photos make? Last time I used it, there were no ads in it. Google Photos is, in a sense, a big ad with prominent calls to action for selling storage space. > Isn't speech recognition nearly at human levels of comprehension, at least for US English and outside of highly technical jargon? Recognition, maybe (though I think no). Applying recognized text to get the desired outcome, not even close. > Does Google Translate make money in some specific, measurable way? It powers a paid API, so, yes, it makes money in a specific, direct, measurable way.

peoplewindow 9y ago
But selling disk storage is a very marginal business and few people take huge numbers of photos they value enough to pay for storage of (vs sticking them on Facebook or Instagram which compresses the hell out of them but does it for free). I really doubt this is a significant business for Google.
- wastedhours 9y ago
  But this will only compound, no? If people keep using it, the switching "cost" (cognitive/time) increases exponentially and people will near the storage limits.

nradov 9y ago

Speech recognition is still nowhere near human levels of comprehension. I have no speech impediments and speak US English with a neutral accent, yet Android speech recognition makes so many mistakes that it's usually faster to just type.

sangnoir 9y ago
> I have no speech impediments and speak US English with a neutral accent FYI: there is no such thing as a "neutral accent" - unless you mean neutral to your locale. I could describe an object as having "neutral temperature", but you'd need to know how hot/cold its environment is before it makes sense.
- nradov 9y ago
  That's not correct for US English which absolutely does have a neutral accent unrelated to locale. For typical examples listen to nationwide network news broadcasts.
  - ghaff 9y ago
    Well, yes, because an accent generally associated with the Northeast and Midwest became "Network Standard." The Wikipedia article on the topic is quite good. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_American https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_American It's true that this accent generally lacks the strong regionalisms that some other US accents do. But it's mostly still an outgrowth of a general region even if its use is cultivated more widely.

danans 9y ago

> Isn't speech recognition nearly at human levels of comprehension, at least for US English and outside of highly technical jargon? Recognition of technical jargon is an easier problem than recognition common speech. Jargons are far more regular and have limited lexical and idiomatic variation, while common speech has a huge number of variations and is constantly innovating new usages. This is evidenced by the fact that the earliest speech recognition systems were only useful in highly restricted domains (medical transcription, phone support tree navigation).