6 ms·

Nothing spurs innovation like game-changing competition. Makes you wonder how long Google would have continued to sit on their laurels if GPT or AI never picked

Nothing spurs innovation like game-changing competition. Makes you wonder how long Google would have continued to sit on their laurels if GPT or AI never picked up speed.

leobg 4y ago
Ask Peter Thiel. He has been arguing that Google has been just resting on their monopoly laurels for over a decade now (and that everything else they’ve been doing since then has been basically just a red herring, so they can say, „Oh we are so much more than a search company”).
- PessimalDecimal 4y ago
  Got a link? I'd like to read more. The theory is at least plausible given what we see. They'll kill many products that seem viable, and would help diversify their revenue stream. Does Google really place no premium at all on that? For example, killing Stadia after only a few years, while predictable for Google, is still a head scratcher to me. Building a platform and letting other companies (in this case, game studios) take the big risks on what will sink and what will swim, is a hugely privileged position to be in. Why did they kill it when others are moving into the space?
  - 988747 4y ago
    [dead]
  - leobg 4y ago
    Several of his interviews on YouTube pre 2020 I believe. Might be in “Zero to One” as well. I believe there’s also a talk between him and Eric Schmidt on YouTube where he brought it up.
    - PessimalDecimal 4y ago
      Thank you!
  - Firmwarrior 4y ago
    Paul Graham has talked about the same thing a few times. Not necessarily ragging on Google so much as saying that the search space is ripe for disruption
- machdiamonds 4y ago
  I can't recall for certain, but I think in the book Zero to One, he made the case that monopolies can be beneficial for companies because they can devote their resources to developing new products and features rather than battling for market share in a single domain. Overall, I enjoyed the book, but I'm not completely convinced by this argument. Google did expand to other markets and did well in some (Android, YouTube, etc), but it seems to have been at the detriment to their main product.
  - gsatic 4y ago
    Well their main product really is Ad infra. And no one comes close to matching it. Its like they built a global real time stock market for Ads. For any possible search query, or space on some any page you click where an ad can be displayed, there is an real time auction running in the background where bidders, your digital data profile, sellers are all brought together to decide whats going to get displayed. And it all happens by the time your page load.
dylan604 4y ago
how can people say that they've been resting on their laurels when they are continuously making their product more shitty and more SEO rewarding with each update? If they were sitting on their laurels, we'd have the same version of search since before the drive for ads over legitimate search results.
- pixl97 4y ago
  Not doing anything in the search engine world will make it worse. One of those "if you're not moving you're falling behind situations". So, if google had done nothing at all the product would be completely unusable and we wouldn't even be talking about Google at all. Google operates in an adversarial environment in where bad faith actors attempt to garner as much attention and ad revenue as they can commandeer even though they put little to no effort in an actual website that demands it. That is not to say Google doesn't do a lot of bad/shitty things, it's that they are just "middling shitty" compared to all the scammers out there.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - dylan604 4y ago
    There's a difference from staying ahead of the cat&mouse game and whatever else they've done on top to promote any video from their owned product from youtube before a legitimate website. I get so many results from youtube videos of something where they just copy&paste SO answers and then make a video of that. Its truly one of the most bizarre things to me as being useful. Although, if all SO answers were forced to be videos, then maybe we'd have much less copy&paste of the code examples in production code?
  - x0x0 4y ago
    I disagree Google is middling shitty: they're a primary driver of all the scammers. (to be clear: primary, not the sole). But a lot of spam would disappear if Google didn't monetize it, particularly via adsense. So I'm not really sure they deserve credit for poorly addressing a mess that is of their making.
xtracto 4y ago
I tried the kagi search engine when it first came out, and it was just ok. When they started charging I just couldn't commit to paying their ask. But after using phind for two weeks, I got completely blown away. That's a search service I would deffinitely pay for, to avoid ads.
- freediver 4y ago
  What about it blew you away?
  - gremlinsinc 4y ago
    not op, but it's like gpt4 with 90 percent less hallucinations, at least as far as I've seen.
nr2x 4y ago
surveillance based adtech is collapsing already and is doomed in its present state. they are screwed with or without gpt.

Nothing spurs innovation like game-changing competition. Makes you wonder how long Google would have continued to sit on their laurels if GPT or AI never picked up speed.

leobg 4y ago

Ask Peter Thiel. He has been arguing that Google has been just resting on their monopoly laurels for over a decade now (and that everything else they’ve been doing since then has been basically just a red herring, so they can say, „Oh we are so much more than a search company”).

PessimalDecimal 4y ago
Got a link? I'd like to read more. The theory is at least plausible given what we see. They'll kill many products that seem viable, and would help diversify their revenue stream. Does Google really place no premium at all on that? For example, killing Stadia after only a few years, while predictable for Google, is still a head scratcher to me. Building a platform and letting other companies (in this case, game studios) take the big risks on what will sink and what will swim, is a hugely privileged position to be in. Why did they kill it when others are moving into the space?
- 988747 4y ago
  [dead]
- leobg 4y ago
  Several of his interviews on YouTube pre 2020 I believe. Might be in “Zero to One” as well. I believe there’s also a talk between him and Eric Schmidt on YouTube where he brought it up.
  - PessimalDecimal 4y ago
    Thank you!
- Firmwarrior 4y ago
  Paul Graham has talked about the same thing a few times. Not necessarily ragging on Google so much as saying that the search space is ripe for disruption
machdiamonds 4y ago
I can't recall for certain, but I think in the book Zero to One, he made the case that monopolies can be beneficial for companies because they can devote their resources to developing new products and features rather than battling for market share in a single domain. Overall, I enjoyed the book, but I'm not completely convinced by this argument. Google did expand to other markets and did well in some (Android, YouTube, etc), but it seems to have been at the detriment to their main product.
- gsatic 4y ago
  Well their main product really is Ad infra. And no one comes close to matching it. Its like they built a global real time stock market for Ads. For any possible search query, or space on some any page you click where an ad can be displayed, there is an real time auction running in the background where bidders, your digital data profile, sellers are all brought together to decide whats going to get displayed. And it all happens by the time your page load.

dylan604 4y ago

how can people say that they've been resting on their laurels when they are continuously making their product more shitty and more SEO rewarding with each update? If they were sitting on their laurels, we'd have the same version of search since before the drive for ads over legitimate search results.

pixl97 4y ago
Not doing anything in the search engine world will make it worse. One of those "if you're not moving you're falling behind situations". So, if google had done nothing at all the product would be completely unusable and we wouldn't even be talking about Google at all. Google operates in an adversarial environment in where bad faith actors attempt to garner as much attention and ad revenue as they can commandeer even though they put little to no effort in an actual website that demands it. That is not to say Google doesn't do a lot of bad/shitty things, it's that they are just "middling shitty" compared to all the scammers out there.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- dylan604 4y ago
  There's a difference from staying ahead of the cat&mouse game and whatever else they've done on top to promote any video from their owned product from youtube before a legitimate website. I get so many results from youtube videos of something where they just copy&paste SO answers and then make a video of that. Its truly one of the most bizarre things to me as being useful. Although, if all SO answers were forced to be videos, then maybe we'd have much less copy&paste of the code examples in production code?
- x0x0 4y ago
  I disagree Google is middling shitty: they're a primary driver of all the scammers. (to be clear: primary, not the sole). But a lot of spam would disappear if Google didn't monetize it, particularly via adsense. So I'm not really sure they deserve credit for poorly addressing a mess that is of their making.

xtracto 4y ago

I tried the kagi search engine when it first came out, and it was just ok. When they started charging I just couldn't commit to paying their ask. But after using phind for two weeks, I got completely blown away. That's a search service I would deffinitely pay for, to avoid ads.

freediver 4y ago
What about it blew you away?
- gremlinsinc 4y ago
  not op, but it's like gpt4 with 90 percent less hallucinations, at least as far as I've seen.

nr2x 4y ago

surveillance based adtech is collapsing already and is doomed in its present state. they are screwed with or without gpt.