5 ms·

>You just described google 10 years ago. And I would argue they have been on a downhill slop ever since. Don't forget Microsoft ever since the early 90s or so.

>You just described google 10 years ago. And I would argue they have been on a downhill slop ever since. Don't forget Microsoft ever since the early 90s or so. And I would argue they haven't produced much usable stuff in the research realm at all. So I think it's more than just #1 and #2. There's also a #3: a national culture where doing great things is seen as more important than simply maximizing shareholder returns. The US had that many decades ago when it sent people to the Moon, but it lost it sometime after the 1980s.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
ryandrake 2y ago
I'd love to see an alternate timeline where one of these giant companies took their trillions of dollars and said "You know what, fuck you, shareholders! We're going to be pure research now! We're going to turn our offices back into a college-campus-like playhouse of innovation! We're going to hire the best and brightest again and give them amazing things to work on rather than improving click-rates by 0.1%! We're going to do only moonshots! We're not going to maximize shareholder value!" The stock price would go to $0.01 but it would be a paradise for researchers and developers. It would be such a breath of fresh air from all of the dollar-maximizer companies that we seem to be stuck with now.
- randomdata 2y ago
  > I'd love to see an alternate timeline where one of these giant companies took their trillions of dollars and said "You know what, fuck you, shareholders! We're going to be pure research now! If this alternate timeline where giant companies are autonomous creatures were to be, why would there be shareholders?
  - throwaway14356 2y ago
    why would they even be companies? Not sure if true but i read a funny: bezos entire fortune could keep the pentagon afloat for 2 whole weeks.
    - notjulianjaynes 2y ago
      Forbes is saying he's got $211 billion so more like 3 months if we're comparing to the whole dod budget
      - robertlagrant 2y ago
        That's shares number of shares times current share price, not money. If he starts selling those shares they won't all sell at that price.
      - throwaway14356 2y ago
        $6.1 trillion 2023 seems 500b per month?
    - randomdata 2y ago
      > why would they even be companies? Because that's what was asserted to be in this alternate timeline. An alternate-alternate timeline could have no companies, sure, but the discussion is centred around a specific alternate timeline.
  - bee_rider 2y ago
    Maybe the companies could be run by LLMs. They will still need shareholders because, well, as far as I know at least computers can’t own property yet.
    - randomdata 2y ago
      An alternate-alternate timeline might have companies run by LLMs, but the alternate timeline under discussion states that the giant companies act on their own accord, with their own dollars – which, again, questions where the shareholders fit.
- toast0 2y ago
  I don't think that works either. You need a playhouse of innovation, but you also need a pipeline of taking that innovation and making lots of money/practical applications. And you need the interaction between people doing practical work and feeling limitations and the playhouse trying stuff out. Bell Labs worked because AT&T had huge field operations, a huge automation problem (telephone switching and billing), and a huge manufacturing arm for telco equipment and customer equipment, and a reputation for solving problems related to communication. Small innovations easily contributed to the bottom line, and large innovations enabled massive expansion of communication. Also, there's a huge benefit from research being connected to scale --- Bell labs innovations were likely to be applied in AT&Ts businesses quickly which informs future innovation; if you're an unconnected playhouse of ideas, it's hard to know if your innovations can be applied. For better or worse, things are less integrated now. Telcos still have large field operations, but they don't usually manufacture the equipment. Automation of telephone switching is so complete, I don't know if there are any operators anymore. Billing for usage is very limited. You see some companies developing the processors in equipment they use and sell, which is more integrated than when it was all Intel/AMD/Qualcomm.
- JackFr 2y ago
  There seems to be some amnesia about the sort of company AT&T was. AT&T was first and foremost a profit maximizer. They were the poster child for abusive monopolies. Remember until the 1980s, literally no one owned a phone. All hardware that connected to a phone line was owned by ATT.
- mdorazio 2y ago
  As much as I dislike Elon these days, this is basically how all his recent companies have been setup. Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink, and arguably even Boring are all moonshots, the latter 3 being so anti-shareholder that they aren't even publicly traded.
  - _visgean 2y ago
    He might be anti shareholder but that does not mean he is pro worker. https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-reportedly-terrified-tesla-staff-with-his-firing-sprees-2018-12 https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-reportedly-terrifi...
    - Nasrudith 2y ago
      Why would being anti-shareholder make someone pro-worker?
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
      - ethbr1 2y ago
        They're the two most common sinks for revenue.
  - jorvi 2y ago
    There is nothing special about Elon choosing to do that, it isn’t some contrarian masterstroke. Of Arianaspace, Blue Origin, Rocketlab, SpaceX, United Launch Alliance: only Rocketlab is publicly traded.
    - touristtam 2y ago
      > Arianaspace As in Ariane Space, wholly owned by Airbus SAS (ex EADS) and listed on Euronext Paris, FWB, CAC 40, DAX and Euro Stoxx 50?
      - 2y ago
- chrisco255 2y ago
  Google more or less did do this. Why do you think they created Alphabet? To house all of their experimental moonshot companies.
  - NetOpWibby 2y ago
    I thought it was for regulatory shielding
- robertlagrant 2y ago
  And then...the company goes bust? Why would anyone do this?
robertlagrant 2y ago
> And I would argue they haven't produced much usable stuff in the research realm at all I would disagree. C# and F# have been good. Advances in Haskell. AR advances. Those are all interesting, just off the top of my head.
- psunavy03 2y ago
  > AR advances. For a while, but they seem to have faceplanted in this realm.
- nequo 2y ago
  Adding to your list, Z3, Lean, F*, Koka are all non-trivial I think.
pjmlp 2y ago
Other than Haskell, OSes in memory safe languagess whose System C# and Bartok features starting arring in .NET Native and .NET Core, Haskell contributions, plenty of Cloud stuff on Azure, Azure Sphere with Pluton, a LLVM like compiler stack using MSIL, contributions to OpenJDK JIT, Q# and Quantum stuff, ...
brewdad 2y ago
The corporate tax structure was different back then as well. Much higher tax rates and it was far more difficult to simply ship your profits off to another more tax-advantaged nation. If the choice is spend the money hoping to find the next great innovation or hand it to your government and hope they do something productive with it, companies are usually going to choose the former. Today, you can license your profits to Ireland or some other off-shore holding company and never have to choose.
hammock 2y ago
If you count OpenAI , Microsoft has produced a lot. Bell Labs existed in an era of conglomeration, where Microsoft existed in an era of startup culture, but the idea of monopolies spending cash on research is still there
gessha 2y ago
> The US had that many decades ago when it sent people to the Moon This is a bad example. The only reason the US achieved it is because the Soviets ate their lunch over and over and over again.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

ryandrake 2y ago

I'd love to see an alternate timeline where one of these giant companies took their trillions of dollars and said "You know what, fuck you, shareholders! We're going to be pure research now! We're going to turn our offices back into a college-campus-like playhouse of innovation! We're going to hire the best and brightest again and give them amazing things to work on rather than improving click-rates by 0.1%! We're going to do only moonshots! We're not going to maximize shareholder value!" The stock price would go to $0.01 but it would be a paradise for researchers and developers. It would be such a breath of fresh air from all of the dollar-maximizer companies that we seem to be stuck with now.

randomdata 2y ago
> I'd love to see an alternate timeline where one of these giant companies took their trillions of dollars and said "You know what, fuck you, shareholders! We're going to be pure research now! If this alternate timeline where giant companies are autonomous creatures were to be, why would there be shareholders?
- throwaway14356 2y ago
  why would they even be companies? Not sure if true but i read a funny: bezos entire fortune could keep the pentagon afloat for 2 whole weeks.
  - notjulianjaynes 2y ago
    Forbes is saying he's got $211 billion so more like 3 months if we're comparing to the whole dod budget
    - robertlagrant 2y ago
      That's shares number of shares times current share price, not money. If he starts selling those shares they won't all sell at that price.
    - throwaway14356 2y ago
      $6.1 trillion 2023 seems 500b per month?
  - randomdata 2y ago
    > why would they even be companies? Because that's what was asserted to be in this alternate timeline. An alternate-alternate timeline could have no companies, sure, but the discussion is centred around a specific alternate timeline.
- bee_rider 2y ago
  Maybe the companies could be run by LLMs. They will still need shareholders because, well, as far as I know at least computers can’t own property yet.
  - randomdata 2y ago
    An alternate-alternate timeline might have companies run by LLMs, but the alternate timeline under discussion states that the giant companies act on their own accord, with their own dollars – which, again, questions where the shareholders fit.
toast0 2y ago
I don't think that works either. You need a playhouse of innovation, but you also need a pipeline of taking that innovation and making lots of money/practical applications. And you need the interaction between people doing practical work and feeling limitations and the playhouse trying stuff out. Bell Labs worked because AT&T had huge field operations, a huge automation problem (telephone switching and billing), and a huge manufacturing arm for telco equipment and customer equipment, and a reputation for solving problems related to communication. Small innovations easily contributed to the bottom line, and large innovations enabled massive expansion of communication. Also, there's a huge benefit from research being connected to scale --- Bell labs innovations were likely to be applied in AT&Ts businesses quickly which informs future innovation; if you're an unconnected playhouse of ideas, it's hard to know if your innovations can be applied. For better or worse, things are less integrated now. Telcos still have large field operations, but they don't usually manufacture the equipment. Automation of telephone switching is so complete, I don't know if there are any operators anymore. Billing for usage is very limited. You see some companies developing the processors in equipment they use and sell, which is more integrated than when it was all Intel/AMD/Qualcomm.
JackFr 2y ago
There seems to be some amnesia about the sort of company AT&T was. AT&T was first and foremost a profit maximizer. They were the poster child for abusive monopolies. Remember until the 1980s, literally no one owned a phone. All hardware that connected to a phone line was owned by ATT.
mdorazio 2y ago
As much as I dislike Elon these days, this is basically how all his recent companies have been setup. Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink, and arguably even Boring are all moonshots, the latter 3 being so anti-shareholder that they aren't even publicly traded.
- _visgean 2y ago
  He might be anti shareholder but that does not mean he is pro worker. https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-reportedly-terrified-tesla-staff-with-his-firing-sprees-2018-12 https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-reportedly-terrifi...
  - Nasrudith 2y ago
    Why would being anti-shareholder make someone pro-worker?
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - ethbr1 2y ago
      They're the two most common sinks for revenue.
- jorvi 2y ago
  There is nothing special about Elon choosing to do that, it isn’t some contrarian masterstroke. Of Arianaspace, Blue Origin, Rocketlab, SpaceX, United Launch Alliance: only Rocketlab is publicly traded.
  - touristtam 2y ago
    > Arianaspace As in Ariane Space, wholly owned by Airbus SAS (ex EADS) and listed on Euronext Paris, FWB, CAC 40, DAX and Euro Stoxx 50?
    - 2y ago
chrisco255 2y ago
Google more or less did do this. Why do you think they created Alphabet? To house all of their experimental moonshot companies.
- NetOpWibby 2y ago
  I thought it was for regulatory shielding
robertlagrant 2y ago
And then...the company goes bust? Why would anyone do this?

robertlagrant 2y ago

> And I would argue they haven't produced much usable stuff in the research realm at all I would disagree. C# and F# have been good. Advances in Haskell. AR advances. Those are all interesting, just off the top of my head.

psunavy03 2y ago
> AR advances. For a while, but they seem to have faceplanted in this realm.
nequo 2y ago
Adding to your list, Z3, Lean, F*, Koka are all non-trivial I think.

pjmlp 2y ago

Other than Haskell, OSes in memory safe languagess whose System C# and Bartok features starting arring in .NET Native and .NET Core, Haskell contributions, plenty of Cloud stuff on Azure, Azure Sphere with Pluton, a LLVM like compiler stack using MSIL, contributions to OpenJDK JIT, Q# and Quantum stuff, ...

brewdad 2y ago

The corporate tax structure was different back then as well. Much higher tax rates and it was far more difficult to simply ship your profits off to another more tax-advantaged nation. If the choice is spend the money hoping to find the next great innovation or hand it to your government and hope they do something productive with it, companies are usually going to choose the former. Today, you can license your profits to Ireland or some other off-shore holding company and never have to choose.

hammock 2y ago

If you count OpenAI , Microsoft has produced a lot. Bell Labs existed in an era of conglomeration, where Microsoft existed in an era of startup culture, but the idea of monopolies spending cash on research is still there

gessha 2y ago

> The US had that many decades ago when it sent people to the Moon This is a bad example. The only reason the US achieved it is because the Soviets ate their lunch over and over and over again.