5 ms·

At this point, Google just seems to be a conventional company. The writing has been on the wall for a long while now, but their first layoff seems to cement tha

At this point, Google just seems to be a conventional company. The writing has been on the wall for a long while now, but their first layoff seems to cement that fact.

762236 4y ago
[flagged]
bushbaba 4y ago
This isn’t googles first layoff. This is their first mass layoff
xiphias2 4y ago
I wouldn't write them down so easily. Even though they are not providing machine learning models, Google is still the biggest provider of high quality AI research papers in the world. As AI models are improving, at some point they will turn into business advantages, it's just not yet big enough business for Google to make a big difference compared to ads.
- theGnuMe 4y ago
  Maybe, I am more impressed with FAIR and Deep Mind. Yes I know Deep Mind is part of Alphabet... that being said TensorFlow and Attention is All you Need were amazing.
  - xiphias2 4y ago
    We can argue whether Deep Mind is part of Google or not (I think for many years it was officially a seperated entity inside Google, and recently moved out to be under Alphabet), but basically you agree with me :) Google is still one of the special companies that are prepared to take advantage of AI when it gets to the point of capturing trillions of dollars of value.
  - primordialsoup 4y ago
    I can think of a list of works from Alphabet but can't think of much from FAIR (other than OPT). I will be happy to read something nice from FAIR as well, so please elaborate.
    - zone411 4y ago
      They do good work https://ai.facebook.com/blog/ https://ai.facebook.com/blog/ but Google/Deepmind are ahead.
- 0xcafefood 4y ago
  "Google is still the biggest provider of high quality AI research papers in the world." I agree that they have at least one of the top AI research groups among the corporate players. But is that going to translate into business advantage? IBM Research was (and is still to some extent) pretty solid, but did that actually translate into business advantage? The "Watson" that competed on Jeopardy was impressive for its time. But we can look back on how the attempt to commercialize that flopped pretty hard. Note: I'm not saying Google has IBM levels of sclerosis, at least not yet. But there's no ironclad law that a solid research division will always turn into something profitable.
  - basementcat 4y ago
    IBM research has had multiple positive effects on its business (and industry). Just a few off the top of my head… * Giant Magnetoresistance (gigabyte hard drives) * Financial Swaps * Silicon on Insulator Technology * DRAM * Fortran * Copper metallization on silicon dies
  - jeffbee 4y ago
    Outsiders just don't understand how ML contributes to Google's profits, because Google doesn't directly sell the ML to customers (like IBM's idiotic Watson product). But ML is plugged in everywhere: BERT (or its secret descendants) in Search, whatever unnamed inference system stands behind their Smart Reply and Smart Compose, the image segmenting and classification thing that makes searching Google Photos so easy. They even have a thing in Google Sheets that predicts what formula you are about to type. Their physical infrastructure from water pumps to cooling fans right down to CPU clock speed is controlled by machine-learned algorithms. They have a machine-learned compiler optimization pass that inserts explicit memory prefetches in key latency-critical function. ML is everywhere.
- cowmix 4y ago
  Which makes the fact they seem so flat-footed by ChatGPT seem so insane. They invented or partially invented all this crap. I think they were afraid this tech would cannibalize their existing offerings and wanted to slow-roll things. Now they're sorta f'd.
  - xiphias2 4y ago
    It is cannibalizing their existing offerings. I am already using ChatGPT instead of Google for some things. And it's not the Kodak days, Googlers fully understand that they need to disrupt themselves. And to tell you the truth many engineers there are more excited than afraid that things are happening, I think they will have the opportunity to get much more creative than before.
    - a9h74j 4y ago
      IBM, Kodak, ... also PARC in the popular mix of such comparisons?
  - skybrian 4y ago
    ChatGPT is an impressive tech demo that hasn't resulted in any revenue, and it's not clear that it's better than what Google has internally. We can try it, though, so it's great for publicity.
  - sidibe 4y ago
    They're flat-footed for PR reasons more than fear of cannibilizing IMO, I'm sure they'll find a way to squeeze money out of a ChatGPT like thing. ChatGPT is rightfully received as an awesome demo, but if Google was first to release it would be evil incarnate, people will find all kinds of bad things they can make it say and it'll be a legal/PR nightmare. Not to mention the lack of "fair play" of pointing people to other sites, they already have enough flak from the little snippets, but they'd make a lot of enemies by not giving anyone else traffic anymore. Because of their size, they have a lot more constraints on them than OpenAI.
    - fidgewidge 4y ago
- htrp 4y ago
  > Google is still the biggest provider of high quality AI research papers in the world. AI Research papers usually don't contribute to the bottom line.... you need execution chops there.
- Keyframe 4y ago
  If AI is in their (production) future, what sre all those TPUs there for.. for what years now? Everything we saw from OpenAI we've seen in one way or form from good ol alphabet already, just not accessible or obvious in their products. They're really both blessed with immense science and engineering talent and highly inert and frankly dumb business side.
detaro 4y ago
What else would it be?
- libraryatnight 4y ago
  Were you around when Google started to get big? And all the magazines were doing cover stories either about their engineers, their vision for the future, their offices, 'don't be evil,' for awhile it seemed like a real shining city on a hill. A shakeup of the established megacorps - overnight billionaires that gave their employees naps and a percentage of their day to experiment and work on other projects. Anyway, however obvious you mind find it, to many people watching Google become...this...is disappointing, or vindicating, or just interesting to see. I grew up with them and they're aging poorly.
  - fidgewidge 4y ago
    Are they though. Not google's biggest fan for various reasons but most of that stuff you mentioned does still apply. The nice offices never went away and their impact on eng comp/perks has been astronomical. They didn't go evil either really, not like MS in the 90s which is what that referred to, not unless you're some sort of anti-capitalist who thinks all advertising is inherently wrong (prolly whilst collecting a nice faang paycheck). The most sinister/evil stuff they do is manipulate the public conversation around controversial topics.

At this point, Google just seems to be a conventional company. The writing has been on the wall for a long while now, but their first layoff seems to cement that fact.

762236 4y ago

[flagged]

bushbaba 4y ago

This isn’t googles first layoff. This is their first mass layoff

xiphias2 4y ago

I wouldn't write them down so easily. Even though they are not providing machine learning models, Google is still the biggest provider of high quality AI research papers in the world. As AI models are improving, at some point they will turn into business advantages, it's just not yet big enough business for Google to make a big difference compared to ads.

theGnuMe 4y ago
Maybe, I am more impressed with FAIR and Deep Mind. Yes I know Deep Mind is part of Alphabet... that being said TensorFlow and Attention is All you Need were amazing.
- xiphias2 4y ago
  We can argue whether Deep Mind is part of Google or not (I think for many years it was officially a seperated entity inside Google, and recently moved out to be under Alphabet), but basically you agree with me :) Google is still one of the special companies that are prepared to take advantage of AI when it gets to the point of capturing trillions of dollars of value.
- primordialsoup 4y ago
  I can think of a list of works from Alphabet but can't think of much from FAIR (other than OPT). I will be happy to read something nice from FAIR as well, so please elaborate.
  - zone411 4y ago
    They do good work https://ai.facebook.com/blog/ https://ai.facebook.com/blog/ but Google/Deepmind are ahead.
0xcafefood 4y ago
"Google is still the biggest provider of high quality AI research papers in the world." I agree that they have at least one of the top AI research groups among the corporate players. But is that going to translate into business advantage? IBM Research was (and is still to some extent) pretty solid, but did that actually translate into business advantage? The "Watson" that competed on Jeopardy was impressive for its time. But we can look back on how the attempt to commercialize that flopped pretty hard. Note: I'm not saying Google has IBM levels of sclerosis, at least not yet. But there's no ironclad law that a solid research division will always turn into something profitable.
- basementcat 4y ago
  IBM research has had multiple positive effects on its business (and industry). Just a few off the top of my head… * Giant Magnetoresistance (gigabyte hard drives) * Financial Swaps * Silicon on Insulator Technology * DRAM * Fortran * Copper metallization on silicon dies
- jeffbee 4y ago
  Outsiders just don't understand how ML contributes to Google's profits, because Google doesn't directly sell the ML to customers (like IBM's idiotic Watson product). But ML is plugged in everywhere: BERT (or its secret descendants) in Search, whatever unnamed inference system stands behind their Smart Reply and Smart Compose, the image segmenting and classification thing that makes searching Google Photos so easy. They even have a thing in Google Sheets that predicts what formula you are about to type. Their physical infrastructure from water pumps to cooling fans right down to CPU clock speed is controlled by machine-learned algorithms. They have a machine-learned compiler optimization pass that inserts explicit memory prefetches in key latency-critical function. ML is everywhere.
cowmix 4y ago
Which makes the fact they seem so flat-footed by ChatGPT seem so insane. They invented or partially invented all this crap. I think they were afraid this tech would cannibalize their existing offerings and wanted to slow-roll things. Now they're sorta f'd.
- xiphias2 4y ago
  It is cannibalizing their existing offerings. I am already using ChatGPT instead of Google for some things. And it's not the Kodak days, Googlers fully understand that they need to disrupt themselves. And to tell you the truth many engineers there are more excited than afraid that things are happening, I think they will have the opportunity to get much more creative than before.
  - a9h74j 4y ago
    IBM, Kodak, ... also PARC in the popular mix of such comparisons?
- skybrian 4y ago
  ChatGPT is an impressive tech demo that hasn't resulted in any revenue, and it's not clear that it's better than what Google has internally. We can try it, though, so it's great for publicity.
- sidibe 4y ago
  They're flat-footed for PR reasons more than fear of cannibilizing IMO, I'm sure they'll find a way to squeeze money out of a ChatGPT like thing. ChatGPT is rightfully received as an awesome demo, but if Google was first to release it would be evil incarnate, people will find all kinds of bad things they can make it say and it'll be a legal/PR nightmare. Not to mention the lack of "fair play" of pointing people to other sites, they already have enough flak from the little snippets, but they'd make a lot of enemies by not giving anyone else traffic anymore. Because of their size, they have a lot more constraints on them than OpenAI.
  - fidgewidge 4y ago
htrp 4y ago
> Google is still the biggest provider of high quality AI research papers in the world. AI Research papers usually don't contribute to the bottom line.... you need execution chops there.
Keyframe 4y ago
If AI is in their (production) future, what sre all those TPUs there for.. for what years now? Everything we saw from OpenAI we've seen in one way or form from good ol alphabet already, just not accessible or obvious in their products. They're really both blessed with immense science and engineering talent and highly inert and frankly dumb business side.

detaro 4y ago

What else would it be?

libraryatnight 4y ago
Were you around when Google started to get big? And all the magazines were doing cover stories either about their engineers, their vision for the future, their offices, 'don't be evil,' for awhile it seemed like a real shining city on a hill. A shakeup of the established megacorps - overnight billionaires that gave their employees naps and a percentage of their day to experiment and work on other projects. Anyway, however obvious you mind find it, to many people watching Google become...this...is disappointing, or vindicating, or just interesting to see. I grew up with them and they're aging poorly.
- fidgewidge 4y ago
  Are they though. Not google's biggest fan for various reasons but most of that stuff you mentioned does still apply. The nice offices never went away and their impact on eng comp/perks has been astronomical. They didn't go evil either really, not like MS in the 90s which is what that referred to, not unless you're some sort of anti-capitalist who thinks all advertising is inherently wrong (prolly whilst collecting a nice faang paycheck). The most sinister/evil stuff they do is manipulate the public conversation around controversial topics.