5 ms·

No way, AI wasn't on the radar back then.

• kragen 2y ago
  google has been an ai company since way before ai was fashionable. they hired norvig before i first met him in 02001. you can find dekhn comments here about larry and sergey talking with him about the central importance of ai back last millennium. i've also heard it myself from other early googlers (though not larry and sergey)
  • dymk 2y ago
    Occam's razor. Google has always been an ads company. YouTube had big ad potential. Saying it was for the training data for AI that wouldn't exist until over a decade later ignores the obvious.
    • kragen 2y ago
      google was an ads company before they bought youtube but they were an ai company before they were an ads company
      • deleted 2y ago
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  • deleted 2y ago
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• dannyobrien 2y ago
  At EFF we were arguing with Google about their permanent collection of user data early (I joined in 2005, and we already were putting pressure on them then). Whenever we asked, said they were sure it would come in useful for improving their services. Google just institutionally strongly believed in the value of data. I sometimes wonder if the form of our current machine-learning boom is actually based on that conviction and the determined search for applications, rather than modern AI being a vindication of that strategy. A bit like Moore's Law: is it an iron rule of technology, or just a way to coordinate a huge amount of resources across an industry?
• Kye 2y ago
  It was a long time ago that I read a history on this, and I might be missing a detail, but the gist was Google's investors were clamoring for profits following the .com crash and Google realized the data they had was a gold mine if they could just figure out how to apply ML to it. They tried really hard and did okay for a while using it for advertising, but Doubleclick did it better, so they bought it in 2008. AI (ML) was absolutely on the radar.