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The website fails to explain what it is and why users should care. It’s not a very good home page in that respect, as the point of a home page for a business is

The website fails to explain what it is and why users should care. It’s not a very good home page in that respect, as the point of a home page for a business is to engage in seconds by answering those two questions. It’s similarity and lack of structural UX makes it so that besides loudly being AI, AI, AI!!! it is confusingly similar to https://x.company/ https://x.company/ Google needs to establish a leadership position in the AI market and make it clear that they are deeply focused and executing better than competitors. This isn’t helping.

dleeftink 3y ago
> needs to establish a leadership position Why is this needed?
- Fuzzwah 3y ago
  Share prices, of course.
- happytiger 3y ago
  Let’s see. OpenAI acquired 100 million users and was the fasted growth in history, partners with Google’s biggest competitor Microsoft. They have since integrated ChatGPT into Bing and announced a raft of new products. Amazon has launched their competitors as well. Tons of other companies are throwing their hats in the ring too, but their big cloud competitors (the platform of platforms) are already launched and looking competitive. Google, on the other hand, was late to introduce a product competitive to ChatGPT and mostly fumbled the announcement when it did. Google is coming from behind in their execution after being outmaneuvered by OpenAI and a very weak early showing with Bard. Google didn’t deliver a chat-powered generative A.I. product despite working on one for years. They just didn’t have the risk taking culture where releasing it into the wild imperfectly was something Google was willing to do. This was a profound misstep, and dethroned them. At one point they had the largest and most talented assembly of AI researchers in the world and virtually unlimited research budgets, but they didn’t ship. This puts them in a position where they have something to prove. To investors. To developers. To cloud customers. And to themselves. Their entire business is about being a trusted place for people to find information, and they didn’t feel they were ready, and then they missed the boat. It's the reason, when it finally rushed a product out the door, *they called it Bard.* They didn't call it Google AI. They talked AI up to the point of ridiculousness at I/O. Two words they drove home in every talk: responsible and helpful. This is why they need to establish a position of leadership and avoid weak delivery like this labs launch (maybe it’s not a launch, maybe it just needs to be relaunched — I’m making an assumption). Because it’s not super on point in delivering their brand promise for AI or even explaining what it is in a clear way. People can’t even tell what it is, not a gigantic corporate delivering early stage experiments at the cutting edge of helpful and responsible AI. I’m open to being wrong about any of this, but this is how I generally see it.
  - mikhael28 3y ago
    Do you work at Google or Something?
    - happytiger 3y ago
      No but in full disclosure I have worked with Google before.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - hashtag-til 3y ago
    At the same OpenAI keeps things to the basics. Look how clean the app is? Not some convoluted list of unclear, disjoint models coming out of google. Maybe a lesson for google to learn.
    - happytiger 3y ago
      If it’s a killer app it doesn’t need promotion. We have the evidence of 100 million instant users backing up that claim at OpenAI.
  - vineyardmike 3y ago
    > Google didn’t deliver a chat-powered generative A.I. product despite working on one for years. Don’t forget that Google translate has been out for years and used the GPT structure they invented. Also I think Google missing the ball on the GenAI chat will go down as one of the biggest AI and tech fumbles, even if the fads around LLMs fade. They beat OpenAI to creating a chat interface- but they had all that drama last summer of some crazy religious employee getting spooked at it being sentient, so they locked it down. That’s probably what gave OpenAI the idea to ship ChatGPT honestly. Also this labs page clearly looks like a vanity marketing site to remind people (?) that Google Does AI (tm).
    - rollcat 3y ago
      > They beat OpenAI to creating a chat interface- but they had all that drama last summer of some crazy religious employee getting spooked at it being sentient, so they locked it down. It sounds absolutely hilarious, and highlights everything that's wrong about this bubble. Do you have a source on this?
pverghese 3y ago
This has been their website for experiments for years. Its for people to try out and not for the entire world to use as yet. It has had a lot of fun stuff over the years
- happytiger 3y ago
  Ok. Well Google can't just pretend that generative A.I. isn't having a massive moment, and the company has a lot more riding on the future of this particular technology than just an "experiment." They’ve had a weak sauce launch, and while it’s nice there’s a website to launch experiments I don’t think it’s helpful with audience perception of the company. Maybe it’s time to up their game.
- tdeck 3y ago
  Is that true? I distinctly remember Google Labs being shut down during Larry's Google+ disaster years, and this article seems to bear it out: https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/google-shuts-down-google-labs/ https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/google-shuts-down-google-la... (This is also my personal nomination for the oft-asked "when did Google stop being unique and cool?").
  - pas 3y ago
    G+ was okayish. the frantic push to use it everywhere was of course typical megacorp bullshit, but there was no real reason to shut it down, they could have kept the brand, use it as the glue between all the other things they have with profiles, sharing, social like yt, blogger, maps, photos...
    - visarga 3y ago
      Do you remember Google Wave? That was the last time Google had balls to try an new vision. The last day of exploration, after that it was just exploitation (make money). A long time ago they even started a trend - 20% time for personal projects, that was an act of exploration, but now they lost their curiosity and playfulness.
hashtag-til 3y ago
What is going on with this page? the design is unnecessarily overwhelming. Why don't they just to an old style university website, pure-HTML with a clear list of their published work, etc. Why does everything from Google these days need to be a childish design, crazy stuff moving around and unclear objective? I kept it open for a minute or so, and that's it for me.
- beretguy 3y ago
  Reminded me of this: https://yewtu.be/watch?v=pq7NLMwynYg https://yewtu.be/watch?v=pq7NLMwynYg
- rpdillon 3y ago
  Completely agree. Miss when serious folks had plain pages focused on substance, like DJB's or Fabrice Bellard's pages. https://cr.yp.to/djb.html https://cr.yp.to/djb.html https://www.bellard.org/ https://www.bellard.org/
  - sockaddr 3y ago
    It's because two completely separate worlds (and users) happen to use the same technology to present things. There's the WWW serving information to people to use and then there's the parasitic Marketing Miasma and Self-flagulators setting up camp on top trying to manipulate and steal energy from the system and its participants. I'd actually like to see some kind of uncoupling of these two worlds. The commercial web and the web I go to for exploring knowledge shouldn't be the same.
visarga 3y ago
When OpenAI or other companies demo a model they put more effort into it. Google doesn't care about getting people to admire their work.

dleeftink 3y ago

> needs to establish a leadership position Why is this needed?

Fuzzwah 3y ago
Share prices, of course.
happytiger 3y ago
Let’s see. OpenAI acquired 100 million users and was the fasted growth in history, partners with Google’s biggest competitor Microsoft. They have since integrated ChatGPT into Bing and announced a raft of new products. Amazon has launched their competitors as well. Tons of other companies are throwing their hats in the ring too, but their big cloud competitors (the platform of platforms) are already launched and looking competitive. Google, on the other hand, was late to introduce a product competitive to ChatGPT and mostly fumbled the announcement when it did. Google is coming from behind in their execution after being outmaneuvered by OpenAI and a very weak early showing with Bard. Google didn’t deliver a chat-powered generative A.I. product despite working on one for years. They just didn’t have the risk taking culture where releasing it into the wild imperfectly was something Google was willing to do. This was a profound misstep, and dethroned them. At one point they had the largest and most talented assembly of AI researchers in the world and virtually unlimited research budgets, but they didn’t ship. This puts them in a position where they have something to prove. To investors. To developers. To cloud customers. And to themselves. Their entire business is about being a trusted place for people to find information, and they didn’t feel they were ready, and then they missed the boat. It's the reason, when it finally rushed a product out the door, *they called it Bard.* They didn't call it Google AI. They talked AI up to the point of ridiculousness at I/O. Two words they drove home in every talk: responsible and helpful. This is why they need to establish a position of leadership and avoid weak delivery like this labs launch (maybe it’s not a launch, maybe it just needs to be relaunched — I’m making an assumption). Because it’s not super on point in delivering their brand promise for AI or even explaining what it is in a clear way. People can’t even tell what it is, not a gigantic corporate delivering early stage experiments at the cutting edge of helpful and responsible AI. I’m open to being wrong about any of this, but this is how I generally see it.
- mikhael28 3y ago
  Do you work at Google or Something?
  - happytiger 3y ago
    No but in full disclosure I have worked with Google before.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- hashtag-til 3y ago
  At the same OpenAI keeps things to the basics. Look how clean the app is? Not some convoluted list of unclear, disjoint models coming out of google. Maybe a lesson for google to learn.
  - happytiger 3y ago
    If it’s a killer app it doesn’t need promotion. We have the evidence of 100 million instant users backing up that claim at OpenAI.
- vineyardmike 3y ago
  > Google didn’t deliver a chat-powered generative A.I. product despite working on one for years. Don’t forget that Google translate has been out for years and used the GPT structure they invented. Also I think Google missing the ball on the GenAI chat will go down as one of the biggest AI and tech fumbles, even if the fads around LLMs fade. They beat OpenAI to creating a chat interface- but they had all that drama last summer of some crazy religious employee getting spooked at it being sentient, so they locked it down. That’s probably what gave OpenAI the idea to ship ChatGPT honestly. Also this labs page clearly looks like a vanity marketing site to remind people (?) that Google Does AI (tm).
  - rollcat 3y ago
    > They beat OpenAI to creating a chat interface- but they had all that drama last summer of some crazy religious employee getting spooked at it being sentient, so they locked it down. It sounds absolutely hilarious, and highlights everything that's wrong about this bubble. Do you have a source on this?

pverghese 3y ago

This has been their website for experiments for years. Its for people to try out and not for the entire world to use as yet. It has had a lot of fun stuff over the years

happytiger 3y ago
Ok. Well Google can't just pretend that generative A.I. isn't having a massive moment, and the company has a lot more riding on the future of this particular technology than just an "experiment." They’ve had a weak sauce launch, and while it’s nice there’s a website to launch experiments I don’t think it’s helpful with audience perception of the company. Maybe it’s time to up their game.
tdeck 3y ago
Is that true? I distinctly remember Google Labs being shut down during Larry's Google+ disaster years, and this article seems to bear it out: https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/google-shuts-down-google-labs/ https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/google-shuts-down-google-la... (This is also my personal nomination for the oft-asked "when did Google stop being unique and cool?").
- pas 3y ago
  G+ was okayish. the frantic push to use it everywhere was of course typical megacorp bullshit, but there was no real reason to shut it down, they could have kept the brand, use it as the glue between all the other things they have with profiles, sharing, social like yt, blogger, maps, photos...
  - visarga 3y ago
    Do you remember Google Wave? That was the last time Google had balls to try an new vision. The last day of exploration, after that it was just exploitation (make money). A long time ago they even started a trend - 20% time for personal projects, that was an act of exploration, but now they lost their curiosity and playfulness.

hashtag-til 3y ago

What is going on with this page? the design is unnecessarily overwhelming. Why don't they just to an old style university website, pure-HTML with a clear list of their published work, etc. Why does everything from Google these days need to be a childish design, crazy stuff moving around and unclear objective? I kept it open for a minute or so, and that's it for me.

beretguy 3y ago
Reminded me of this: https://yewtu.be/watch?v=pq7NLMwynYg https://yewtu.be/watch?v=pq7NLMwynYg
rpdillon 3y ago
Completely agree. Miss when serious folks had plain pages focused on substance, like DJB's or Fabrice Bellard's pages. https://cr.yp.to/djb.html https://cr.yp.to/djb.html https://www.bellard.org/ https://www.bellard.org/
- sockaddr 3y ago
  It's because two completely separate worlds (and users) happen to use the same technology to present things. There's the WWW serving information to people to use and then there's the parasitic Marketing Miasma and Self-flagulators setting up camp on top trying to manipulate and steal energy from the system and its participants. I'd actually like to see some kind of uncoupling of these two worlds. The commercial web and the web I go to for exploring knowledge shouldn't be the same.

visarga 3y ago

When OpenAI or other companies demo a model they put more effort into it. Google doesn't care about getting people to admire their work.