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I don't see it as fumbling the ball. The technology is brand new and Google just yesterday announced they are currently testing bringing this to chat too. Just

I don't see it as fumbling the ball. The technology is brand new and Google just yesterday announced they are currently testing bringing this to chat too. Just like Apple does not release folding phones and rear screens first, the major player does not need to be the first mover. OpenAI has grabbed all the publicity but this entire time Google research has been publishing their own work in the field and they have shown it off at the annual google developer conference. Now the day after Google announced that they are beginning large scale testing of this feature in search for an imminent wide release, Microsoft has released their version. There is no need for Google to be the absolute first. What is most important is that they keep the Google brand looking great and they release the feature when it is ready.

zone411 4y ago
They pretty much admitted that they did fumble the ball: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/21/technology/ai-chatgpt-google-search.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/21/technology/ai-chatgpt-goo.... But I agree that Google's research is #1 and they will come back strong.
speedgoose 4y ago
Meanwhile ChatGPT had 100 million users and 13 million daily users in January. They accumulated a lot of data and while I’m sure the Google engineers are very competent and fast, their large scale testing may not produce as much useful data. I think Google will manage in the long term, but for the current race it looks difficult.
- TaylorAlexander 4y ago
  This all assumes it’s even a good idea. Google is always extremely careful with their brand. We harp on them for canceling projects but to most people google is a search engine. And yes the quality of results has steadily declined for a long time, but deploying a large language model in google search has the potential to cause serious negative outcomes unlike slowly degrading search results. I really don’t see it as a race, which presumes that moving first is an advantage. OpenAI is building their brand and wants to be known as an AI company, so it makes sense to release early versions of their system. Google is a well established company that can easily deploy this technology when they think it’s ready and eclipse OpenAI in users overnight. But even then it’s not about having the most users, it’s about building a new platform for the next 10+ years of search. Google is already the default. They can take their time and still do just fine.

zone411 4y ago

They pretty much admitted that they did fumble the ball: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/21/technology/ai-chatgpt-google-search.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/21/technology/ai-chatgpt-goo.... But I agree that Google's research is #1 and they will come back strong.

speedgoose 4y ago

Meanwhile ChatGPT had 100 million users and 13 million daily users in January. They accumulated a lot of data and while I’m sure the Google engineers are very competent and fast, their large scale testing may not produce as much useful data. I think Google will manage in the long term, but for the current race it looks difficult.

TaylorAlexander 4y ago
This all assumes it’s even a good idea. Google is always extremely careful with their brand. We harp on them for canceling projects but to most people google is a search engine. And yes the quality of results has steadily declined for a long time, but deploying a large language model in google search has the potential to cause serious negative outcomes unlike slowly degrading search results. I really don’t see it as a race, which presumes that moving first is an advantage. OpenAI is building their brand and wants to be known as an AI company, so it makes sense to release early versions of their system. Google is a well established company that can easily deploy this technology when they think it’s ready and eclipse OpenAI in users overnight. But even then it’s not about having the most users, it’s about building a new platform for the next 10+ years of search. Google is already the default. They can take their time and still do just fine.