8 ms·

OpenAI is like Google before 2003, dazzling the world with amazing products backed by astonishing technologies that went beyond wild dreams of millions of peopl

OpenAI is like Google before 2003, dazzling the world with amazing products backed by astonishing technologies that went beyond wild dreams of millions of people. And most importantly, OpenAI kept releasing new features at blazing speed with a few hundred people, just like early days of Google and Microsoft. This reminds me of stark contrast of Google's GSuite and Microsoft Office. Microsoft released new office every couple of years, introducing huge improvements and packing tons of features[1]. In contrast, GSuite appeared to be, hmm, quite quiet. [1] You may argue that no one needs that many features, but I subscribe to Joel Spolsky's idea: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2001/03/23/strategy-letter-iv-bloatware-and-the-8020-myth/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2001/03/23/strategy-letter-iv...

411111111111111 4y ago
With meta downsizing all the time and google getting outplayed on their own domain.... I wonder if the big programmer cashcows might realize that scaling up software development is a pipedream and will always become net-negative at some point. I hope not, as my job security kinda depends on there being an abundance of jobs...
uptownfunk 4y ago
What happened in 2003?
- g9yuayon 4y ago
  Nothing particular. I just don't remember major successful and speedy product launches from Google after 2003. In that year, Google launched Google Maps, shocking the IT world for how effective AJAX can be, even though the tech itself was invented by MS. Maybe GMaps was so impressive that I forgot what other major launches were after that.
  - panopticon 4y ago
    GMail was pretty impressive in 2004 too. It probably sounds banal now, but not having to constantly delete emails was game changing at the time. I still have access to email going back to 2004 and I find myself looking up things I received over a decade ago.
    - illiarian 4y ago
      > but not having to constantly delete emails was game changing at the time. Funnily enough Hotmail which was the premiere email service when GMail launched didn't have any meaningful increase in storage until like 10 years later
  - g9yuayon 4y ago
    Ah, you are right. Gmail is amazing. I somehow thought it was released before 2003.
  - paragraft 4y ago
    I think the big thing that happened around that time that marked the sunset of the Golden Age of Google was Google Books (launched 2003) and critically the response. It was the last large, ambitious project of theirs that really aligned with the old "organise the world's information and make it useful" mission, and from Google's perspective was clearly a no-brainer Good Thing for the world. And instead of the same enthusiastic reaction at large they had become used to, they got _hammered_ for it by publishers and dragged into court. I do wonder if that turned into a fundamental cultural inflection point for them.
  - ajmurmann 4y ago
    2007 saw Google Street View. Not a independent product, but a massive innovation even if it ended up a maps feature. Same year they introduced Android, another decent success.
  - thro1 4y ago
    > tech itself was invented by MS You could load to IFrame (but then have to rewrite it in IE for some reason, NS was fine with that - if knowing a way to avoid that layout flush bug after resize..) years before that, as I did. In my opinion XMLHttpRequest made more damage than help by forcing JS as the only way of doing similar things instead of letting bugs that what was there already to be fixed - so now, you can not even imagine, I guess, how all that could be different - mostly without need of JS and browser able to handle it..
infoseek12 4y ago
In terms of product innovation, OpenAI is now like Google and Google is now like Xerox.
- dtech 4y ago
  The analogy is even more apt when you think that most of the things Apple and Microsoft became big with in the 90's - like mouses and GUIs - were invented as Xerox but they failed to monetize, just like the basis for GTP came from Google and they failed to monetize (externally). I don't think Google is as Xerox- or IBM-ified yet though, they might still bounce back with AI products.
  - sharkweek 4y ago
    Please anyone willing to answer as if you might be speaking to a golden retriever: How important is a "lead" in this space? I have been comparing ChatGPT and Bard a lot the last two days because this is all very fascinating, and from my datapoint-of-one perspective, it feels like ChatGPT is way, way ahead. Then I start to wonder is this because ChatGPT captivated our attention so much the last few months that they've been able to inherently improve the product faster, and thus the flywheel starts spinning rapidly giving them even more of an advantage as more people use the service, giving it more to train off of? I.e., does Bard (and any forthcoming competitors) fall way behind because they lost the slightest head start that then rapidly spirals into a competitive advantage?
    - sroussey 4y ago
      Depends on the height of the S-curve — that is, how long the exponential uptrend continues. If not long, then they will converge quickly. But if it continues for a long time, then always being a few years behind then might as well give up. Still, following a different path might lead to a bigger step change and catch up. I would worry more for Apple than for Google.
    - rschoultz 4y ago
      Bard opened to a US-only audience. For being the engine in applications that might propel an LLM ahead of the others, I fail to see that this would be advantageous for opening markets and greeting new customers. As an example [of the contrary], I noticed Swedish Klarna among the partners that OpenAI revealed when announcing their plug-in API today.
logisticpeach 4y ago
This is pretty hyperbolic. Great products that were much better than what they replaced or competed with, but "beyond wild dreams of millions of people"? You'd think they cured cancer in 2003 or something...
- dudeinjapan 4y ago
  I thought this was rather tame as far as Wolfram announcements go. Last time he claimed to have discovered the fundamental rules underpinning the entire universe.
  - rezonant 4y ago
    This is GP replying to GGP here, not the OP.
  - lurquer 4y ago
    Ha. Conway’s game of life really had an impact on boomers. Never knew why. (Wolfram, though, is a helluva guy… the book was damn interesting. I mock him in the same way that one might mock Einstein’s hair-do.)
- copymoro 4y ago
  I think that by this point, saying "cure cancer" is like saying "cured all disease", just because "cancer" are of many different kinds, some of which are pretty much cured. nonetheless, I don't know enough about this because I am not an specialized oncologist. Which I only mention as a lead into a reflection of how in spite of all this information technology, I fear it's not getting any easier for the layman to learn more about types of cancer; the real shitty part is that it started getting MORE difficult in the least 8-10 years.. this time because of all this information technology. funny how 'sales' people bear the brunt of educating 'laymen' (consumers/patients) about new developments
- Melingo 4y ago
  Google maps has and had a tremendous effect to millions
SanderNL 4y ago
I don’t remember Google being this interesting. Ever. It was a good service and very useful, but nothing like this. It was not astonishing. The tech was mildly interesting, but most of all very useful.
- Drakim 4y ago
  Gmail launched on 1st of april and was thought to be a joke since it gave you a gitabyte (I think) of storage wheras email providers like hotmail gave you 50mb. Chrome launching was also a pretty big deal, I recall.
  - flavius29663 4y ago
    Google earth was nice too, and street view. It was hard to believe at first. But Chrome was just a re-hash of firefox, nothing exciting there.
    - jwally 4y ago
      Kind of agree. The last time I think I was this stoked to play with a mass market tech tool like this was street-view, and before that Google Earth.
    - rippercushions 4y ago
      No, Chrome was a revelation when it came out. It was way faster than Firefox and it had many great features we now take for granted, like isolated tabs, popup blocking etc.
      - MagnumOpus 4y ago
        Revisionist history. Firefox had a built-in pop up blocker in 2003, years before Chrome was even a seed in Sundar’s balls. I know because I used it. Chrome was and is a step back, foisted on people with dark patterns, back in the day having speed by sacrificing features like extensibility and customisability.

411111111111111 4y ago

With meta downsizing all the time and google getting outplayed on their own domain.... I wonder if the big programmer cashcows might realize that scaling up software development is a pipedream and will always become net-negative at some point. I hope not, as my job security kinda depends on there being an abundance of jobs...

uptownfunk 4y ago

What happened in 2003?

g9yuayon 4y ago
Nothing particular. I just don't remember major successful and speedy product launches from Google after 2003. In that year, Google launched Google Maps, shocking the IT world for how effective AJAX can be, even though the tech itself was invented by MS. Maybe GMaps was so impressive that I forgot what other major launches were after that.
- panopticon 4y ago
  GMail was pretty impressive in 2004 too. It probably sounds banal now, but not having to constantly delete emails was game changing at the time. I still have access to email going back to 2004 and I find myself looking up things I received over a decade ago.
  - illiarian 4y ago
    > but not having to constantly delete emails was game changing at the time. Funnily enough Hotmail which was the premiere email service when GMail launched didn't have any meaningful increase in storage until like 10 years later
- g9yuayon 4y ago
  Ah, you are right. Gmail is amazing. I somehow thought it was released before 2003.
- paragraft 4y ago
  I think the big thing that happened around that time that marked the sunset of the Golden Age of Google was Google Books (launched 2003) and critically the response. It was the last large, ambitious project of theirs that really aligned with the old "organise the world's information and make it useful" mission, and from Google's perspective was clearly a no-brainer Good Thing for the world. And instead of the same enthusiastic reaction at large they had become used to, they got _hammered_ for it by publishers and dragged into court. I do wonder if that turned into a fundamental cultural inflection point for them.
- ajmurmann 4y ago
  2007 saw Google Street View. Not a independent product, but a massive innovation even if it ended up a maps feature. Same year they introduced Android, another decent success.
- thro1 4y ago
  > tech itself was invented by MS You could load to IFrame (but then have to rewrite it in IE for some reason, NS was fine with that - if knowing a way to avoid that layout flush bug after resize..) years before that, as I did. In my opinion XMLHttpRequest made more damage than help by forcing JS as the only way of doing similar things instead of letting bugs that what was there already to be fixed - so now, you can not even imagine, I guess, how all that could be different - mostly without need of JS and browser able to handle it..

infoseek12 4y ago

In terms of product innovation, OpenAI is now like Google and Google is now like Xerox.

dtech 4y ago
The analogy is even more apt when you think that most of the things Apple and Microsoft became big with in the 90's - like mouses and GUIs - were invented as Xerox but they failed to monetize, just like the basis for GTP came from Google and they failed to monetize (externally). I don't think Google is as Xerox- or IBM-ified yet though, they might still bounce back with AI products.
- sharkweek 4y ago
  Please anyone willing to answer as if you might be speaking to a golden retriever: How important is a "lead" in this space? I have been comparing ChatGPT and Bard a lot the last two days because this is all very fascinating, and from my datapoint-of-one perspective, it feels like ChatGPT is way, way ahead. Then I start to wonder is this because ChatGPT captivated our attention so much the last few months that they've been able to inherently improve the product faster, and thus the flywheel starts spinning rapidly giving them even more of an advantage as more people use the service, giving it more to train off of? I.e., does Bard (and any forthcoming competitors) fall way behind because they lost the slightest head start that then rapidly spirals into a competitive advantage?
  - sroussey 4y ago
    Depends on the height of the S-curve — that is, how long the exponential uptrend continues. If not long, then they will converge quickly. But if it continues for a long time, then always being a few years behind then might as well give up. Still, following a different path might lead to a bigger step change and catch up. I would worry more for Apple than for Google.
  - rschoultz 4y ago
    Bard opened to a US-only audience. For being the engine in applications that might propel an LLM ahead of the others, I fail to see that this would be advantageous for opening markets and greeting new customers. As an example [of the contrary], I noticed Swedish Klarna among the partners that OpenAI revealed when announcing their plug-in API today.

logisticpeach 4y ago

This is pretty hyperbolic. Great products that were much better than what they replaced or competed with, but "beyond wild dreams of millions of people"? You'd think they cured cancer in 2003 or something...

dudeinjapan 4y ago
I thought this was rather tame as far as Wolfram announcements go. Last time he claimed to have discovered the fundamental rules underpinning the entire universe.
- rezonant 4y ago
  This is GP replying to GGP here, not the OP.
- lurquer 4y ago
  Ha. Conway’s game of life really had an impact on boomers. Never knew why. (Wolfram, though, is a helluva guy… the book was damn interesting. I mock him in the same way that one might mock Einstein’s hair-do.)
copymoro 4y ago
I think that by this point, saying "cure cancer" is like saying "cured all disease", just because "cancer" are of many different kinds, some of which are pretty much cured. nonetheless, I don't know enough about this because I am not an specialized oncologist. Which I only mention as a lead into a reflection of how in spite of all this information technology, I fear it's not getting any easier for the layman to learn more about types of cancer; the real shitty part is that it started getting MORE difficult in the least 8-10 years.. this time because of all this information technology. funny how 'sales' people bear the brunt of educating 'laymen' (consumers/patients) about new developments
Melingo 4y ago
Google maps has and had a tremendous effect to millions

SanderNL 4y ago

I don’t remember Google being this interesting. Ever. It was a good service and very useful, but nothing like this. It was not astonishing. The tech was mildly interesting, but most of all very useful.

Drakim 4y ago
Gmail launched on 1st of april and was thought to be a joke since it gave you a gitabyte (I think) of storage wheras email providers like hotmail gave you 50mb. Chrome launching was also a pretty big deal, I recall.
- flavius29663 4y ago
  Google earth was nice too, and street view. It was hard to believe at first. But Chrome was just a re-hash of firefox, nothing exciting there.
  - jwally 4y ago
    Kind of agree. The last time I think I was this stoked to play with a mass market tech tool like this was street-view, and before that Google Earth.
  - rippercushions 4y ago
    No, Chrome was a revelation when it came out. It was way faster than Firefox and it had many great features we now take for granted, like isolated tabs, popup blocking etc.
    - MagnumOpus 4y ago
      Revisionist history. Firefox had a built-in pop up blocker in 2003, years before Chrome was even a seed in Sundar’s balls. I know because I used it. Chrome was and is a step back, foisted on people with dark patterns, back in the day having speed by sacrificing features like extensibility and customisability.