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The only inflection I see here is Microsoft single-handedly dominating global tech industry and its future after its years in sleep. US DoD must have been reall

The only inflection I see here is Microsoft single-handedly dominating global tech industry and its future after its years in sleep. US DoD must have been really worried about the US Empire’s continued dominance.

unethical_ban 3y ago
Uh-huh. Amazon, Google, Meta, and Apple are has-beens. A plausible theory with less coordination required: Microsoft is a large company with lots of money attempting to regain competitive advantages against their rivals through acquisition.
- CuriouslyC 3y ago
  While that's a true story today, Satya is brutally outplaying Google, Amazon is a utility company and Apple's domain is hardware and will likely continue to be. Mark is making some good strategic plays to keep the field even, but Microsoft really is poised to clean up as AI takes off.
  - danpalmer 3y ago
    Microsoft is poised to do well, sure, but they're currently beholden to Nvidia for hardware and OpenAI for models, and their main surface area for products is Office, Azure, and to a lesser extent, Outlook. Comparatively, Google controls their hardware, Google builds their models, and Google has Search, Workspace, Gmail, Android, Cloud, and YouTube, all of which could have significant AI investments. I'm not saying Satya isn't doing a great job, he really is, and I have many criticisms of Google's approach, but I do think Google is at least equally well positioned, and possibly better positioned.
    - CuriouslyC 3y ago
      I agree that TPUs are a huge competitive edge. That and huggingface integration is going to let google do very well serving open models until other competitive hardware comes online. The problem is that I think the window to capitalize on TPUs isn't going to be long enough to cement any sort of dominance, and they're fumbling so badly now that I don't have faith in the leadership.
    - feyman_r 3y ago
      Outlook is a part of Office. Also, I’m not sure ‘vertical integration’ is the only way to succeed at business. Google is trying to do that here - with a fast-changing landscape, one would want to use the best downstream provider.
      - danpalmer 3y ago
        I was trying to think of user-perceived surfaces. I'd expect most Outlook.com users are not office users, as they originated as Hotmail or MSN users. One would want to use the "best" downstream provider, but part of being best is the cost. Would you accept a chip that's 30% slower and 80% cheaper? Yeah probably, especially if you're serving at scale to non-paying traffic. I don't think Google/Amazon/MS need to make chips as fast as Nvidia, or as scalable, as long as they work out for serving costs at scale and have the enabling technology (mostly about sufficient memory).
- Aerbil313 3y ago
  Surely the others have ties with Pentagon too. But Microsoft is the biggest company in the world and the one most intertwined with the US government.
  - unethical_ban 3y ago
    Sweet Jesus, I truly didn't know MSFT was at over $3,000,000,000,000 market cap.

unethical_ban 3y ago

Uh-huh. Amazon, Google, Meta, and Apple are has-beens. A plausible theory with less coordination required: Microsoft is a large company with lots of money attempting to regain competitive advantages against their rivals through acquisition.

CuriouslyC 3y ago
While that's a true story today, Satya is brutally outplaying Google, Amazon is a utility company and Apple's domain is hardware and will likely continue to be. Mark is making some good strategic plays to keep the field even, but Microsoft really is poised to clean up as AI takes off.
- danpalmer 3y ago
  Microsoft is poised to do well, sure, but they're currently beholden to Nvidia for hardware and OpenAI for models, and their main surface area for products is Office, Azure, and to a lesser extent, Outlook. Comparatively, Google controls their hardware, Google builds their models, and Google has Search, Workspace, Gmail, Android, Cloud, and YouTube, all of which could have significant AI investments. I'm not saying Satya isn't doing a great job, he really is, and I have many criticisms of Google's approach, but I do think Google is at least equally well positioned, and possibly better positioned.
  - CuriouslyC 3y ago
    I agree that TPUs are a huge competitive edge. That and huggingface integration is going to let google do very well serving open models until other competitive hardware comes online. The problem is that I think the window to capitalize on TPUs isn't going to be long enough to cement any sort of dominance, and they're fumbling so badly now that I don't have faith in the leadership.
  - feyman_r 3y ago
    Outlook is a part of Office. Also, I’m not sure ‘vertical integration’ is the only way to succeed at business. Google is trying to do that here - with a fast-changing landscape, one would want to use the best downstream provider.
    - danpalmer 3y ago
      I was trying to think of user-perceived surfaces. I'd expect most Outlook.com users are not office users, as they originated as Hotmail or MSN users. One would want to use the "best" downstream provider, but part of being best is the cost. Would you accept a chip that's 30% slower and 80% cheaper? Yeah probably, especially if you're serving at scale to non-paying traffic. I don't think Google/Amazon/MS need to make chips as fast as Nvidia, or as scalable, as long as they work out for serving costs at scale and have the enabling technology (mostly about sufficient memory).
Aerbil313 3y ago
Surely the others have ties with Pentagon too. But Microsoft is the biggest company in the world and the one most intertwined with the US government.
- unethical_ban 3y ago
  Sweet Jesus, I truly didn't know MSFT was at over $3,000,000,000,000 market cap.