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Anyone else find it ironic that Google is the subject of one of the biggest anti-trust cases in recent history, and now Schmidt is blaming the US for not innova
by bogwog 6y ago
Anyone else find it ironic that Google is the subject of one of the biggest anti-trust cases in recent history, and now Schmidt is blaming the US for not innovating enough?
Maybe if so much of the tech industry's wealth and resources weren't pooled together into a handful of massive monopolists who have nearly complete control over whether any competitor lives or dies, the US (and really, the entire world) would have more opportunity to innovate.
- giancarlostoro 6y agoGoogle definitely could of created a research laboratory. Wasnt it not long ago that companies would invest a lot more money on research? That was why we got so many impressive projects out of Bell Labs and I am sure other companies. Its a shame that horse race ended. Whats worse is Google wants all their software to be as intangible as possible by forcing it all on their servers. Google hasnt had many desktop apps you can use without their servers involved in a long time. I dont consider Chrome a desktop app since it is their own OS and the new IE based on its hostility on the web to build up a Google Monopoly.
- bepvte 6y agohttps://research.google/ https://research.google/
- smt88 6y agoGoogle and Microsoft do a lot of interesting research. Waymo is a good example. I'm not sure what Apple does. My issue with big tech is not lack of innovation or research, but rather that it's all private. We're driving people out orgs that share their research with the world and into ones that lock it away.
- jupp0r 6y agoThis. At least from my understanding Bell Labs and PARC published papers continuously (I’ve read many over the years, not sure how much got published vs not).
- gonzo41 6y agoI think Apples research is seeing what happens when you sit on a quarter of a trillion dollars. Without veering far off topic. I don't think apple really has a culture of innovation anymore. Each rectangle looks the same. Remember when nokia had all their crazy feature phones. Taking a 30% cut on apps isn't that.
- vsskanth 6y agoCounterpoint - A Series Chips. And now MacBooks on Apple Silicon
- stiglitz 6y agoI’m not defending Apple, but I disagree that adding features is the same as innovation. I wish the tech industry would focus on quality over quantity.
- _fat_santa 6y agoIt seems Apple isn't on the bleeding edge anymore, but rather they take what is already out there and make the best possible version of it and knock it out of the park. Take Airpods or FaceID, Apple was not the first to innovate in the headphone space or in the face unlock space. But when they did eventually come out with their own version, that version is miles ahead of the competition.
- austinheap 6y agoApple makes money by selling to the masses. They let others waste cycles on the bleeding edge and learn from their mistakes.
- newsclues 6y agoResearchers working at Bell Labs are credited with the development of radio astronomy, the transistor, the laser, the photovoltaic cell, the charge-coupled device (CCD), information theory, the Unix operating system, and the programming languages B, C, C++, and S. Source: Wikipedia page on Bell Labs. Yes, google does research but not the basic fundamental research that isn’t immediately a product to be sold.
- bavell 6y agoLet's not be silly, we all know AMP is a way bigger innovation than all of that combined.... In all seriousness, it's very sad how impotent US research has become. Only a few companies and individuals truly pushing the envelope these days (e.g. Musk).
- normalnorm 6y ago> could of I am not a grammar nazi. I am not even a fucking native English speaker, but what the fuck??? Why is this mistake so prevalent these days?
- badwolf 6y agoMany people contract "could have" to be "could've" which when spoken can very easily turn to "could of"
- normalnorm 6y agoYes, but this means that you don't understand the meaning of simple words. Doesn't that bother you?
- Caylio 6y agoGrammar nazi.
- istjohn 6y agoSince we're being pedantic, "Nazi" is always capitalized.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- normalnorm 6y agoRegarding the capitalization of "N/nazi" People seem to disagree with you: https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/73948/grammar-nazi-or-grammar-nazi https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/73948/grammar-na... Regarding being pedantic: well, I'm not sure what to say. I think confusing "could of" with "could have" is a fundamental, terrible mistake. I guess one person's permissiveness is another's idiocracy?
- austinheap 6y agoOxford dictionary confirms it’s a proper noun: https://www.lexico.com/definition/nazi https://www.lexico.com/definition/nazi No need for StackOverflow conspiracies if we’re lecturing Internet people.
- Zigurd 6y agoThat may be true but it does not address the kinds of large-scale, national policy issues Schmidt is talking about. We have lost our way in technology strategy. Instead of welcoming foreign students we chase them away. Instead of integrating tech markets globally to extend our soft power, we practice knee jerk techno-nationalism. It is not even done competently. The "advisors" pushing these policies are known for being cranks. The utter mess that is the TikTok forced sale highlights that we do not have policy as much as we have bad improvisation around spastic uninformed actions. We have always had seemingly invulnerable dominant tech companies. Remember Intel? Their dominance was seen as holding down chip innovation, but it was also an instrument of American soft power. The latter is what Schmidt is talking about.
- OpticalWindows 6y agoBeyond this blip in politics I dont see how any of your arguments has any foothold. And again you're blaming Intel for not being a monopoly.
- Zigurd 6y agoI'm not blaming Intel "for being a monopoly." If anything, I am blaming Intel for letting a dominant position that benefited the US slip away.
- TheAdamAndChe 6y agoThe trend against immigration was caused by a combination of unchecked illegal immigration causing economic and cultural pressure against the lower class combined with nearly unchecked immigration causing pressure on the middle class(see H1B exploitation by Disney, tech contracting companies, etc). Fix these issues, and you will fix much of the disdain towards immigrants shown by modern-day Plebs.
- thelastname 6y ago> Plebs Workers.
- soc14lism00 6y agoAfter WW2/Korea (I forget the exact time frame) IBM was making money just fine and refused to take a risk on then modern transistor computing machines. The US Government spent the money and effectively donated trillions in profits to the rich elites of today. I find it hilarious how ignorant we are of the last 50-70 years of details of our history. Basically the lifetime of Bezos, Gates... their parents changed the rules to benefit their mini dictators Here’s a hint: no different than what’s happened with covid handouts, government pays out big dollars to their buddies, we all get to then fight over a seat at the hand chosen ones table Free market isn’t anything more than a simple propaganda line Anyone that can believe human biology has evolved away from the behavior of a generation ago is a childish fool Keep sequestering social power into the hands of a minority of barons and lords, everyone. That’s the goal, no different than a church; keep you focused on their lofty ambitions and need for capital at the expense of your own. Our biology is just as susceptible to blind faith as our ancestors.
- barry-cotter 6y ago> The US Government spent the money and effectively donated trillions in profits to the rich elites of today. Those rich elites being everybody who uses a computer. Basic scientific research is the paradigmatic case of where the government should be spending money. The rich don’t get better iPhones, they barely get better computers considering how fast the state of the art advances. There may be fields where something resembling your argument has some truth to it but basic research in computing and computing hardware isn’t it.
- soc14lism00 6y agoThe biological shortcomings inherent to the species are inherent in scientists and engineers. Your argument to the contrary is reductionist to the point of absurdity. Emotionally minimizing their set of privileges to “their iPhones are the same!” Insanity. Great we all get the same iPhone. I’d rather have their healthcare. But let them push us into multimedia gadgetry production, not hospital building, by shaping the information we see through the gadgets! Economics of keeping people healthy is costlier to them than keeping us sedate and distracted from our literal health through the high of new disposable stuff. Capacity for blind faith is a feature of our biology. If you’re going to peddle science in engineering systems, you can’t wave away the science of biology and say “well in social contexts core physics are arbitrarily different.” Engineers are carpenters with circuits (disclaimer: hardware engineer with 20yrs in the industry). They haven’t re-invented physics that can’t be re-invented. They’re librarians of knowledge, not creators of unique physical truth in fundamental ways. And to address the social system aspects, the historical record is clear and easily Googled. You’ve done nothing to challenge the arguments I’ve studied over decades. Social media hot takes hardly wave away decades of measured science and public government files. More blind faith serving as personal validation.
- alpineidyll3 6y agoJust look at tensorflow. It masquerades as enabling open source ai, while really pushing people to pricey, proprietary google cloud compute. How these ppl can keep a straight face, I have no idea.
- galimaufry 6y agoI run tensorflow on my laptop for small jobs, and AWS for big ones or in production. Not sure what the "push" is supposed to be.
- jnwatson 6y agoHuh? I run tensorflow locally with no problem.
- scsilver 6y agoI currently run a 120 dollar tensorflow device all locally that does real time object detection. I dont understand your criticism.
- alpineidyll3 6y agoI'm talking about Google sequestering tensor cores and writing the distributed training code for g-cloud pods. Even your nice embedded inference device was designed with the hopes you'd grab some high performance compute to train something high quality. (These embedded devices are useless for training)
- scsilver 6y agoFair enough, but with everything google, the free tier good enough for a prototype and personal use. If I need to scale it, there are other options. For me, I appreciate the option of this model, it makes high tech accessible to low capital ventures. And sometimes buying locked in services is the rational decision taking into account the costs of learning other platforms and maintaining a vender unlocked platform.
- fomine3 6y ago