8 ms·

This is going to get spicy. I wonder what impact it will have on Google's monopoly.

by avgDev 4y ago

echelon 4y ago
Google is stepping out of the frying pan and into the fire. They foolishly derive 50+% of their income from search, where there is no longer a moat. The golden goose is cooked. Edit: It's quite possible that anyone will be able to enter this race right now and build LLM silos for their own domain. This cracks monolithic search wide open. GameFaqs becomes ChatGG, where you can ask, "How do I beat Ridley for the second time in Metroid Prime?" Etc. Websites will become less of a thing. All the people building websites will switch to building AI products. If traffic to Google leaves by X%, they've lost. Now there are lots of new destinations. The race is on, and apex tech companies are not the only ones that can win. Google, in fact, has to sacrifice its most important product to come out alive. That's dangerous.
- vore 4y ago
  But Google is also adding ChatGPT-like functionality? This seems like a pretty premature declaration.
- eclipxe 4y ago
  Getting users to switch from an ingrained habit is hard. I wouldn't write things off so fast.
- pphysch 4y ago
  Too early to say. Microsoft has to execute well, as a first-mover, while Google has to fail to execute. This could easily blow up in Microsoft's face (infrastructure failure or safety/correctness issues), or Google could put out a peer product and win simply due to existing momentum in search.
  - HDThoreaun 4y ago
    > Google could put out a peer product and win simply due to existing momentum in search. This is the likely outcome, but I don't see how it's anything but an utter disaster for Google. The only way for chatbots to monetize at the rate google is currently monetizing search is by the responses themselves being ads. Would people use such a product or would they reject in favor of a product that has simple banner ads? I think the answer is clear. Even if Google retained 99.9% market share in search their revenue would nosedive and their expenses would surely skyrocket with the amount of compute required to run these models.
    - pphysch 4y ago
      If I were an advertiser, I would be keenly interested in how my client's products can be embedded into natural-sounding AI conversation. That is an extraordinary valuable innovation and Google can charge accordingly. Meanwhile, MS has a lot of catching up to do in the ad space.
      - HDThoreaun 4y ago
        I don't see how such a product gains any footing in the market when Bing is over there not putting ads in the chatbot itself and just showing some banners. I certainly would instantly switch away from google if they released that.
        pphysch 4y ago
        1) If Google can't afford it, how does Microsoft? 2) The deployment of ads would be subtle and hard to detect. To use the example from the announcement, when someone asks "give me a 5 day itinerary for Mexico", you would prioritize suggesting locations or activities that are backed by ad spend. The end user has no way of knowing, they just asked an open-ended question.
        HDThoreaun 4y ago
        1) If google goes from making .1 cents to .05 cents per search they've got big, big existentially sized problems. If microsoft does they're extremely happy to have users at all. 2) This might work for a while, but I refuse to believe people are that dumb. They'd find out eventually.
  - Jackson__ 4y ago
    Rumor is that google will be deploying an 8 billion parameter version of lamda for their competitor, compared to the 176 Billion parameters used for GPT3.5. If that holds true, they might have already fatally fumbled the execution.
    - pphysch 4y ago
      If it means average latency is 100ms instead of 1s or whatever the huge GPT model can currently serve to millions of content users, that matters a lot for search.
- throwawayapples 4y ago
  You're right in one respect; it's the Innovator's Dilemma. It's how monopolies have historically been weakened and eventually destroyed. I don't think we've seen enough actual leadership (aside from simple rent-seeking) from Google, and I'm not even sure the erstwhile thought leaders haven't already left the building and been replaced by people who are more concerned with stock prices and DEI than with actual innovation. On the other hand, Google is still an incredibly formidable force, and it would be incredibly foolish for any prospective competitor (even in an adjacent field like AI) to ignore them. But, lest you be too freaked out: just remember Google Stadia.

This is going to get spicy. I wonder what impact it will have on Google's monopoly.

by avgDev 4y ago

This is going to get spicy. I wonder what impact it will have on Google's monopoly.

Google is stepping out of the frying pan and into the fire. They foolishly derive 50+% of their income from search, where there is no longer a moat. The golden goose is cooked. Edit: It's quite possible that anyone will be able to enter this race right now and build LLM silos for their own domain. This cracks monolithic search wide open. GameFaqs becomes ChatGG, where you can ask, "How do I beat Ridley for the second time in Metroid Prime?" Etc. Websites will become less of a thing. All the people building websites will switch to building AI products. If traffic to Google leaves by X%, they've lost. Now there are lots of new destinations. The race is on, and apex tech companies are not the only ones that can win. Google, in fact, has to sacrifice its most important product to come out alive. That's dangerous.

vore 4y ago
But Google is also adding ChatGPT-like functionality? This seems like a pretty premature declaration.
eclipxe 4y ago
Getting users to switch from an ingrained habit is hard. I wouldn't write things off so fast.
pphysch 4y ago
Too early to say. Microsoft has to execute well, as a first-mover, while Google has to fail to execute. This could easily blow up in Microsoft's face (infrastructure failure or safety/correctness issues), or Google could put out a peer product and win simply due to existing momentum in search.
- HDThoreaun 4y ago
  > Google could put out a peer product and win simply due to existing momentum in search. This is the likely outcome, but I don't see how it's anything but an utter disaster for Google. The only way for chatbots to monetize at the rate google is currently monetizing search is by the responses themselves being ads. Would people use such a product or would they reject in favor of a product that has simple banner ads? I think the answer is clear. Even if Google retained 99.9% market share in search their revenue would nosedive and their expenses would surely skyrocket with the amount of compute required to run these models.
  - pphysch 4y ago
    If I were an advertiser, I would be keenly interested in how my client's products can be embedded into natural-sounding AI conversation. That is an extraordinary valuable innovation and Google can charge accordingly. Meanwhile, MS has a lot of catching up to do in the ad space.
    - HDThoreaun 4y ago
      I don't see how such a product gains any footing in the market when Bing is over there not putting ads in the chatbot itself and just showing some banners. I certainly would instantly switch away from google if they released that.
      - pphysch 4y ago
        1) If Google can't afford it, how does Microsoft? 2) The deployment of ads would be subtle and hard to detect. To use the example from the announcement, when someone asks "give me a 5 day itinerary for Mexico", you would prioritize suggesting locations or activities that are backed by ad spend. The end user has no way of knowing, they just asked an open-ended question.
        HDThoreaun 4y ago
        1) If google goes from making .1 cents to .05 cents per search they've got big, big existentially sized problems. If microsoft does they're extremely happy to have users at all. 2) This might work for a while, but I refuse to believe people are that dumb. They'd find out eventually.
- Jackson__ 4y ago
  Rumor is that google will be deploying an 8 billion parameter version of lamda for their competitor, compared to the 176 Billion parameters used for GPT3.5. If that holds true, they might have already fatally fumbled the execution.
  - pphysch 4y ago
    If it means average latency is 100ms instead of 1s or whatever the huge GPT model can currently serve to millions of content users, that matters a lot for search.
throwawayapples 4y ago
You're right in one respect; it's the Innovator's Dilemma. It's how monopolies have historically been weakened and eventually destroyed. I don't think we've seen enough actual leadership (aside from simple rent-seeking) from Google, and I'm not even sure the erstwhile thought leaders haven't already left the building and been replaced by people who are more concerned with stock prices and DEI than with actual innovation. On the other hand, Google is still an incredibly formidable force, and it would be incredibly foolish for any prospective competitor (even in an adjacent field like AI) to ignore them. But, lest you be too freaked out: just remember Google Stadia.