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As someone who's been at Google Research ~5y, this nails is it 100%. I was at the non-Brain part of Research and it was seen as Google Brain is the "cool", pur

by bartwr 3y ago

As someone who's been at Google Research ~5y, this nails is it 100%. I was at the non-Brain part of Research and it was seen as Google Brain is the "cool", pure research one, dealing with some future abstract AI and not caring for the products, feasibility, or even if the research "could" be made practical any day. Deepmind was an "extreme" version of it, with some animosities and politics between the two, which I didn't follow too closely. There were attempts at making Deepmind useful, called "Deepmind for Google", but the people there were... clueless. Though one really cool thing came out of it (XManager). (I was at a closer to the product part, "Perception", which I loved. And still got to publish, explore, pursue my own research goals, etc.)

dmix 3y ago
That's what great about competition. It kicks you in the pants and reminds you you need to try. iPhone scared the shit out of the phone market and today we have great phones from Samsung and Google which dominate the market. If everyone was trying to predict the smartphone market in 2007 they'd be talking about how Nokia missed the boat but excited to see their response (or Motorola/Sony/Blackberry etc). The market today won't necessarily be the market in 10yrs from now. It might be Google, they have a solid head start to be #2 and future #1, but who knows what will happen and whether that talent/advantage stays in Google. It could just as easily be other companies we don't even consider serious players today.
- nr2x 3y ago
  * dominate the low-end of the market. Apple has the platform where users have money to spend on apps and services.
  - 76SlashDolphin 3y ago
    * dominate the global market. Apple is a very minor player outside of the US and Japan.
    - throwaway2037 3y ago
      "very minor player": I do not agree. I Googled for: "iphone market share by country" Here is the top hit: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/iphone-market-share-by-country https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/iphone-ma... What is wild to me: This is a single company. Android has a huge number of makers.
      - canjobear 3y ago
        Nearly 100% in North Korea!
    - nr2x 3y ago
      I’m not in favor of it, but most of the global market is too poor to matter. One of the things I do respect Google for is providing services to poor people, but that doesn’t mean it’s a business advantage. If you offered me control of the entire Android ecosystem or just Apples iPhone business I’d not even blink to take Apple.
  - seanmcdirmid 3y ago
    They also have the majority of profits in mobile phone sales.
  - rvba 3y ago
    From technical perspective apple phones are usually few years behind competition.
    - pharmakom 3y ago
      Except in CPU / GPU which is a strange state of affairs.
    - sentinalien 3y ago
      Really depends on what you're thinking of when you say technical
      - rvba 3y ago
        My Samsung phone was waterproof long before Apple had it.
        salad-tycoon 3y ago
        I bought an s7 or s10 which was waterproof and took photos under the water. Iirc apple was rumored to also be waterproof at the time but it was advertised. I don’t know how true these things were. Did anyone else get this perception?
xiphias2 3y ago
Ilya _was_ at Google Brain, so something doesn’t add up there. I believe people wanted to launch things, but higher management stopped it. I was next to the team that created Allo’s chat bot, but they said that they had to take out most cool stuff because legal didn’t allow it to launch, so they had to dumb it down totally. I believe the main problem was all the ethics/safety teams that just hired a lot of non-programmers, while OpenAI management treated safety as an engineering problem that has to be solved with a technical solution.
- fnbr 3y ago
  Yeah, but Ilya left. Doesn't that prove your point?
- bushbaba 3y ago
  OpenAI isn’t a multibillion profitable public company with many prior lost (some won) lawsuits. To some extent they didn’t have anything to loose by cutting corners. This is one of startups greatest advantages over established players.
  - kmac_ 3y ago
    Microsoft is a multibillion profitable public company and they managed to extend the search in no time. Google is not as effective as it could be. They have great engineering and they proved that many times, but something is not working on the product design side.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  - rmbyrro 3y ago
    This is such a lousy excuse on Google part. We see multi-billion public companies bringing bold innovative products to extremely regulated sectors, like pharmaceutical and medical devices. Google can't deploy a chatbot because of lawsuits? Oh, c'mon...
theefer 3y ago
Not to nitpick, but XManager was built by the Platform team at DeepMind, not DeepMind for Google, though they helped roll it out beyond DeepMind. (I was on the XManager team in Platform.)
kabes 3y ago
What is xmanager?
- boulos 3y ago
  https://github.com/deepmind/xmanager https://github.com/deepmind/xmanager

by bartwr 3y ago

dmix 3y ago

That's what great about competition. It kicks you in the pants and reminds you you need to try. iPhone scared the shit out of the phone market and today we have great phones from Samsung and Google which dominate the market. If everyone was trying to predict the smartphone market in 2007 they'd be talking about how Nokia missed the boat but excited to see their response (or Motorola/Sony/Blackberry etc). The market today won't necessarily be the market in 10yrs from now. It might be Google, they have a solid head start to be #2 and future #1, but who knows what will happen and whether that talent/advantage stays in Google. It could just as easily be other companies we don't even consider serious players today.

nr2x 3y ago
* dominate the low-end of the market. Apple has the platform where users have money to spend on apps and services.
- 76SlashDolphin 3y ago
  * dominate the global market. Apple is a very minor player outside of the US and Japan.
  - throwaway2037 3y ago
    "very minor player": I do not agree. I Googled for: "iphone market share by country" Here is the top hit: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/iphone-market-share-by-country https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/iphone-ma... What is wild to me: This is a single company. Android has a huge number of makers.
    - canjobear 3y ago
      Nearly 100% in North Korea!
  - nr2x 3y ago
    I’m not in favor of it, but most of the global market is too poor to matter. One of the things I do respect Google for is providing services to poor people, but that doesn’t mean it’s a business advantage. If you offered me control of the entire Android ecosystem or just Apples iPhone business I’d not even blink to take Apple.
- seanmcdirmid 3y ago
  They also have the majority of profits in mobile phone sales.
- rvba 3y ago
  From technical perspective apple phones are usually few years behind competition.
  - pharmakom 3y ago
    Except in CPU / GPU which is a strange state of affairs.
  - sentinalien 3y ago
    Really depends on what you're thinking of when you say technical
    - rvba 3y ago
      My Samsung phone was waterproof long before Apple had it.
      - salad-tycoon 3y ago
        I bought an s7 or s10 which was waterproof and took photos under the water. Iirc apple was rumored to also be waterproof at the time but it was advertised. I don’t know how true these things were. Did anyone else get this perception?

xiphias2 3y ago

Ilya _was_ at Google Brain, so something doesn’t add up there. I believe people wanted to launch things, but higher management stopped it. I was next to the team that created Allo’s chat bot, but they said that they had to take out most cool stuff because legal didn’t allow it to launch, so they had to dumb it down totally. I believe the main problem was all the ethics/safety teams that just hired a lot of non-programmers, while OpenAI management treated safety as an engineering problem that has to be solved with a technical solution.

fnbr 3y ago
Yeah, but Ilya left. Doesn't that prove your point?
bushbaba 3y ago
OpenAI isn’t a multibillion profitable public company with many prior lost (some won) lawsuits. To some extent they didn’t have anything to loose by cutting corners. This is one of startups greatest advantages over established players.
- kmac_ 3y ago
  Microsoft is a multibillion profitable public company and they managed to extend the search in no time. Google is not as effective as it could be. They have great engineering and they proved that many times, but something is not working on the product design side.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- rmbyrro 3y ago
  This is such a lousy excuse on Google part. We see multi-billion public companies bringing bold innovative products to extremely regulated sectors, like pharmaceutical and medical devices. Google can't deploy a chatbot because of lawsuits? Oh, c'mon...

theefer 3y ago

Not to nitpick, but XManager was built by the Platform team at DeepMind, not DeepMind for Google, though they helped roll it out beyond DeepMind. (I was on the XManager team in Platform.)

kabes 3y ago

What is xmanager?

boulos 3y ago
https://github.com/deepmind/xmanager https://github.com/deepmind/xmanager