6 ms·

I hate the Gemini 'Dear Sydney' ad more every passing moment

76 points by ColinWright 2y ago

ColinWright 2y ago
UnPayWalled: https://archive.ph/7OS2Q https://archive.ph/7OS2Q Take-away quotation: > All of the buffoons excited by the prospect of AI taking over all our writing — report summaries, data surveys, children’s letters, all tossed into the same pile indiscriminately — are missing the point in a spectacular manner. Do you know what writing is? > It is thinking in a form that you can share with other people. It is a method for taking thoughts and images and stories out of your brain and putting them into someone else’s brain. E.M. Forster quotes a woman saying, “How can I tell what I think until I see what I say?” To take away the ability to write for yourself is to take away the ability to think for yourself.
- Kon-Peki 2y ago
  > To take away the ability to write for yourself is to take away the ability to think for yourself. She writes that as if this is a bad thing (from Google's point of view). Just think of how much more effective advertising will be!
- wccrawford 2y ago
  I hate that ad. But I don't agree with those quotes. Writing to other people is a way to communicate your ideas and feelings to them. If you are unable to easily communicate those ideas and feelings, you can get someone, or some thing, to help you. The alternatives are to just send it and know it won't be understood, or struggle and hope it's understood. That ad isn't asking for help with that, though. It's asking the AI to pretend to be his daughter and send a fan letter that means nothing. It isn't taking his daughter's thoughts and feelings and communicating them... It's just making everything up whole cloth, and even inventing a fake daughter for the guy to have that wants and does what he wants, instead of what she wants. It's disgusting.
techostritch 2y ago
I’m not the most in touch person in the world but this ad felt super out of touch. I was having this discussion with someone and they said the problem with tech is they’re just going to teach our kids to be prompt engineers and learn nothing else, and I naively defended the tech industry and said no, of course not, AI will be used to enhance people’s learning of traditional skills, not replace it, and boy does this ad make me feel wrong.
- beezlebroxxxxxx 2y ago
  The ad is seen as so bad because its attempt to create some supposed "essential" use case is hilariously transparent. There's just a visceral disgust we have when we see things like these targeted at children. We know what they are. The takeaway from the ad is a step back and away from the idea that technology will make us better or improve our lives; Google comes across as crassly presenting something bad (or pointless at best) as some human good, when most people can see right through it as the worst kind of marketing, a new low point in 2 decades and change of tech companies insisting they're "changing the world" with some half-baked, MBA fuelled, ghoulish crap.
  - seoulmetro 2y ago
    > when most people can see right through it as the worst kind of marketing No. Most people definitely cannot. Most people can't see through the weird diversity nuclear option on all large company marketing these days. "White, male, straight, most common denominator in many countries and YOU have the NERVE to think that we should market to you!?" It'd be hilarious if it weren't so weird to think that people are actively trying not to include the largest demographics.
    - consteval 2y ago
      I think the reality is that the vast majority of media, period, is about and targeted to white people. If you were to take up ALL the media, you'd realize minorities are still very under represented. Also it makes people feel good when they're represented. White men won't admit that, because for them they're always represented. And when they're not its a problem, so clearly even they understand the power of representation. And, lastly, if you LOOK you can see white people are still in almost every ad. They're just not the only people in the ad. This is a problem of greed, the white man does not settle for anything less than 100%. Keep in mind I'm saying this as a white man. The world is truly made for us and our success. On the off-chance it's not this one time, we need to be okay with that and learn to get over it.
mitthrowaway2 2y ago
Maybe I'm becoming too cynical, but now even an op-ed complaining about an ad feels like it might actually itself be a submarine ad in disguise; a "false-flag" attack against your own side to stir the pot and get people thinking about your product. There's no such thing as bad publicity, as they say.
- JohnFen 2y ago
  > There's no such thing as bad publicity, as they say. That's what they say, but it isn't true. Business history is littered with counterexamples.
  - pinewurst 2y ago
    Boeing has done so well from their bad publicity. :)
LorenDB 2y ago
A funny coincidence: the Bing AI internal codename was Sydney according to leaked system prompts. I'm sure Google didn't think about that at all, but one could turn it into a metaphor where Google is looking up to Microsoft/OpenAI with intent to eventually pass them.
- lainga 2y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exceeding_the_UK%2C_catching_the_USA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exceeding_the_UK%2C_catching_t...
toddmorey 2y ago
In trying to find a use case for AI, this ad actually sets up the worst possible scenario. All I can think of now is Sydney getting flooded with AI generated fan mail and trying to adjust spam filters.
- paxys 2y ago
  You are thinking too small. She can also have an AI reply to all her fan mail!
lovethevoid 2y ago
Yeah like the article hints at, I thought it was made by anti-AI folks due to it highlighting exactly the type of AI we don't need at all. Replacing the personal with the impersonal "perfect" spam. Only Google could mess up such an easy ad concept of athletes and AI. Barely related: I find it interesting the more I read about engineers refusal to allow their kids near tech, and how often their same companies use kids frequently in advertising.
cgijoe 2y ago
Remember the point of an ad. It's to be memorable, and to get people talking about it. Google wants people talking about Gemini. Well, here we are. I think Google won in this instance. But yes, the ad content is very bad.
- xg15 2y ago
  I mean, by that logic MS couldn't have done better with Tay a few years ago. People were definitely talking about that one...
  - kurthr 2y ago
    People are trying to bring back Clippy, because nostalgia for when bad wasn't quite as terrible.
  - fzzzy 2y ago
    Sorry to make you feel old, but Tay was over 8 years ago.
    - jagged-chisel 2y ago
      Does 8 not qualify as “a few?”
      - fzzzy 2y ago
        Does it? I seriously don't know.
        yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago
        I was taught that "a few" means 3-7 inclusive, but I can't seem to immediately find anything online to substantiate that; most dictionaries helpfully handwave it as a small number of things, and refuse to clarify what a small number might be.
    - xg15 2y ago
jagged-chisel 2y ago
> I don’t hate efficiency. Are any of us trying to be “efficient” when writing a fan letter? I wouldn’t think so. I want a suggestion on how to start. If I asked an AI for the letter from the ad, I would also have read and edited it heavily before I considered it “complete.” Maybe TFA author is correct that people need to hear what he’s saying (they won’t), but I for one will be using AI output as suggestions.
- Jensson 2y ago
  > Are any of us trying to be “efficient” when writing a fan letter? A student who got that as a writing assignment in school would! They are targeting all the people who have to write bullshit optimistic letters everywhere, like HR, managers writing encouragements, students writing assignments, teachers writing feedback, and so on.
- floren 2y ago
  Maybe the athletes can just skip those pesky fans and type "Gemini, write a fan letter to me that I can read for a little confidence boost". The entire sentiment and value of your AI-enhanced fan letter is contained in the prompt you fed the AI, because that's the part created by a human expressing their human feelings. All the rest is stochastic fluff. Why not just tweet the prompt to the athlete and call it a day?
  - kbelder 2y ago
    I haven't used Gemini at all, but figured I'd pop over and give it a try with your prompt. I cut-and-pasted "Gemini, write a fan letter to me that I can read for a little confidence boost", and its response was: "Sorry, I won't create content that encourages self-loathing, but you can always ask to be complimented." Is Gemini still so 'safe' that it's unusable?
- SuperNinKenDo 2y ago
  Children editing LLM generated garbage instead of actually writing to their heroes. Christ. This article was aimed at people like you mate.
tedunangst 2y ago
> If you haven’t seen this ad, you are leading a blessed existence and I wish to trade places with you. But I am about to recount it to you so that you can share in my misery Thanks. How kind.
aidenn0 2y ago
https://gemini.google.com/share/815f28b9c364 https://gemini.google.com/share/815f28b9c364 (via https://arstechnica.com/ai/2024/07/dear-sydney-why-i-find-googles-ai-olympics-ad-so-disturbing/ https://arstechnica.com/ai/2024/07/dear-sydney-why-i-find-go...)
- KTibow 2y ago
  It's funny how clearly it regurgitated phrases from the web (I'm pretty sure Gemini wouldn't say "pattern-matching autocomplete algorithm" by itself)
  - floren 2y ago
    Also the ad doesn't make any mention of pattern recognition or improved responses, nor does it involve using an AI to "predict" the child's future.
- kohbo 2y ago
  I love this. I know this isn't exactly self-reflection but it's interesting to think about the type of self-reflection that is completely objective.
  - floren 2y ago
    Hardly self-reflection; I asked it why an imaginary "Love, Jason" ad was so off-putting, changing the ad name from a letter salutation to the closing remarks, and it gave a very similar response.
capital_guy 2y ago
I've seen this ad a hundred times during the Olympics so far (why do they play the same ads over and over?) -- and this article summarizes how it makes me feel very well. The logical extension of this stuff is insane -- why have kids learn to write at all? They can just have an AI do it. Why learn anything? It's all on the internet anyway. There are plenty of good use cases for AI generated texts. Creating transcripts from audio, writing meeting summaries, and other types of rote, monotonous tasks. Writing a letter from the heart is not one of those things that should be outsourced. If there's anything on this earth we should value, it's humanity. And the tech giants are chomping at the bit to take that away. It's a sad vision for the future they're pushing
- jinushaun 2y ago
  Many have said it before: big tech is using AI to automate the wrong things.
  - potatoman22 2y ago
    I think there's plenty of "right" things that are being automated. They're just small/boring tasks so no one talks about them.
    - shrimp_emoji 2y ago
      Like employees
- api 2y ago
  This and that awful Apple ad are both saying the same thing, or at least that’s how people interpret it. They’re saying “AI is here to make life sterile and empty and it’s awesome!” What I find most intriguing is the fact that these are giant companies with huge ad budgets and that presumably clear the highest profile ads with the C suite or people near it. All these presumably smart people thought these ads were great. They either agreed with the message or wanted to convey a different one that absolutely did not come through… as any moron could have told them. It shows how insulated the bubble is around these people and companies. They must never even interact with people who aren’t drinking the same brand of kool-aid. It’s tempting to think this is just an elite mega corp thing but I see loads of out of touch bubbles around. People need to mix more. Get out of whatever filter bubble you live in. Read things you disagree with. Know people outside your profession or who don’t think like you. We used to say “travel” but I think intellectual and social diversity is more important now. We carry our filter bubbles with us. Travel can still help though, especially if it’s to places with differing dominant cultures.
xg15 2y ago
> Do you know what writing is? It is thinking in a form that you can share with other people. As if ad companies were ever interested in having users who can think...
dgfitz 2y ago
Could have dropped the title almost completely. “I hate the… ad” would have nailed it.
TheAceOfHearts 2y ago
Do such ads negatively impact the perception of leadership at Google? It feels like there's no overarching vision of what AI should be from the public face of Google's leadership team, so we end up with stuff like Dear Sydney which just comes off as tone-deaf. Why didn't anyone at Google step-in and say: "hey, maybe this ad isn't very good and it's failing to communicate our values"? Although maybe the explanation is that Google's leadership no longer has any values beyond making infinite amounts of money by any means necessary.
paxys 2y ago
You can tell that Google gave a big advertising agency a truck full of cash and a slight glance at their product and told them to get to work. All their Olympics ads are generic designed-by-committee garbage. Perfect representation of the company's products as a whole these days.
- Corrado 2y ago
  Maybe Google used Gemini to create Ads for Gemini. That tracks.
deleted 2y ago
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deleted 2y ago
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nrbernard 2y ago
> You’re missing it! You’re missing all of it! Go home, jump back into the sea, forget it, because this is the ride and you’re missing it. Petri gets at something much broader: what is the point of tech like Gemini that ostensibly makes some small parts of our lives more efficient when doing so robs them of what makes life worth living in the first place?
corytheboyd 2y ago
All the AI ads I have seen on TV are like “HOLY SHIT YOU CAN TURN ‘write a sentence’ INTO ‘Hello! This is a sentence which has been written.’ WOWZERS”. It’s so… bad.
jhanschoo 2y ago
How doubly ironic: marketing professionals failing to appropriately locate and communicate the value of their product, and doing so by telling a story about a family failing to appropriately locate the value of a fan letter that is meant to communicate a child's adoration.
404mm 2y ago
I feel fortunate to not know what you’re talking about. I’ve never seen this ad. I don’t do ads in my life.
latchkey 2y ago
We are just repeating history. Webvan advertisement 1999: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOw5i1PJ3vs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOw5i1PJ3vs
- tim333 2y ago
  It was interesting seeing that - I hadn't before. You could see them get some things right and some wrong. Web based delivery is of course big now but 'you have the right to grocery store prices" plus loads of guys in huge vans delivering didn't really add up. It's about the details I guess. In London most deliveries are guys on ebikes and cost about £5 so the numbers actually balance.
  - latchkey 2y ago
    In Vietnam, it is about $1-2. Was big before, but became huge after covid. I'm even seeing ghost kitchens here now.

76 points by ColinWright 2y ago

UnPayWalled: https://archive.ph/7OS2Q https://archive.ph/7OS2Q Take-away quotation: > All of the buffoons excited by the prospect of AI taking over all our writing — report summaries, data surveys, children’s letters, all tossed into the same pile indiscriminately — are missing the point in a spectacular manner. Do you know what writing is? > It is thinking in a form that you can share with other people. It is a method for taking thoughts and images and stories out of your brain and putting them into someone else’s brain. E.M. Forster quotes a woman saying, “How can I tell what I think until I see what I say?” To take away the ability to write for yourself is to take away the ability to think for yourself.

Kon-Peki 2y ago
> To take away the ability to write for yourself is to take away the ability to think for yourself. She writes that as if this is a bad thing (from Google's point of view). Just think of how much more effective advertising will be!
wccrawford 2y ago
I hate that ad. But I don't agree with those quotes. Writing to other people is a way to communicate your ideas and feelings to them. If you are unable to easily communicate those ideas and feelings, you can get someone, or some thing, to help you. The alternatives are to just send it and know it won't be understood, or struggle and hope it's understood. That ad isn't asking for help with that, though. It's asking the AI to pretend to be his daughter and send a fan letter that means nothing. It isn't taking his daughter's thoughts and feelings and communicating them... It's just making everything up whole cloth, and even inventing a fake daughter for the guy to have that wants and does what he wants, instead of what she wants. It's disgusting.

techostritch 2y ago

I’m not the most in touch person in the world but this ad felt super out of touch. I was having this discussion with someone and they said the problem with tech is they’re just going to teach our kids to be prompt engineers and learn nothing else, and I naively defended the tech industry and said no, of course not, AI will be used to enhance people’s learning of traditional skills, not replace it, and boy does this ad make me feel wrong.

beezlebroxxxxxx 2y ago
The ad is seen as so bad because its attempt to create some supposed "essential" use case is hilariously transparent. There's just a visceral disgust we have when we see things like these targeted at children. We know what they are. The takeaway from the ad is a step back and away from the idea that technology will make us better or improve our lives; Google comes across as crassly presenting something bad (or pointless at best) as some human good, when most people can see right through it as the worst kind of marketing, a new low point in 2 decades and change of tech companies insisting they're "changing the world" with some half-baked, MBA fuelled, ghoulish crap.
- seoulmetro 2y ago
  > when most people can see right through it as the worst kind of marketing No. Most people definitely cannot. Most people can't see through the weird diversity nuclear option on all large company marketing these days. "White, male, straight, most common denominator in many countries and YOU have the NERVE to think that we should market to you!?" It'd be hilarious if it weren't so weird to think that people are actively trying not to include the largest demographics.
  - consteval 2y ago
    I think the reality is that the vast majority of media, period, is about and targeted to white people. If you were to take up ALL the media, you'd realize minorities are still very under represented. Also it makes people feel good when they're represented. White men won't admit that, because for them they're always represented. And when they're not its a problem, so clearly even they understand the power of representation. And, lastly, if you LOOK you can see white people are still in almost every ad. They're just not the only people in the ad. This is a problem of greed, the white man does not settle for anything less than 100%. Keep in mind I'm saying this as a white man. The world is truly made for us and our success. On the off-chance it's not this one time, we need to be okay with that and learn to get over it.

mitthrowaway2 2y ago

Maybe I'm becoming too cynical, but now even an op-ed complaining about an ad feels like it might actually itself be a submarine ad in disguise; a "false-flag" attack against your own side to stir the pot and get people thinking about your product. There's no such thing as bad publicity, as they say.

JohnFen 2y ago
> There's no such thing as bad publicity, as they say. That's what they say, but it isn't true. Business history is littered with counterexamples.
- pinewurst 2y ago
  Boeing has done so well from their bad publicity. :)

LorenDB 2y ago

A funny coincidence: the Bing AI internal codename was Sydney according to leaked system prompts. I'm sure Google didn't think about that at all, but one could turn it into a metaphor where Google is looking up to Microsoft/OpenAI with intent to eventually pass them.

lainga 2y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exceeding_the_UK%2C_catching_the_USA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exceeding_the_UK%2C_catching_t...

toddmorey 2y ago

In trying to find a use case for AI, this ad actually sets up the worst possible scenario. All I can think of now is Sydney getting flooded with AI generated fan mail and trying to adjust spam filters.

paxys 2y ago
You are thinking too small. She can also have an AI reply to all her fan mail!

lovethevoid 2y ago

Yeah like the article hints at, I thought it was made by anti-AI folks due to it highlighting exactly the type of AI we don't need at all. Replacing the personal with the impersonal "perfect" spam. Only Google could mess up such an easy ad concept of athletes and AI. Barely related: I find it interesting the more I read about engineers refusal to allow their kids near tech, and how often their same companies use kids frequently in advertising.

cgijoe 2y ago

Remember the point of an ad. It's to be memorable, and to get people talking about it. Google wants people talking about Gemini. Well, here we are. I think Google won in this instance. But yes, the ad content is very bad.

xg15 2y ago
I mean, by that logic MS couldn't have done better with Tay a few years ago. People were definitely talking about that one...
- kurthr 2y ago
  People are trying to bring back Clippy, because nostalgia for when bad wasn't quite as terrible.
- fzzzy 2y ago
  Sorry to make you feel old, but Tay was over 8 years ago.
  - jagged-chisel 2y ago
    Does 8 not qualify as “a few?”
    - fzzzy 2y ago
      Does it? I seriously don't know.
      - yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago
        I was taught that "a few" means 3-7 inclusive, but I can't seem to immediately find anything online to substantiate that; most dictionaries helpfully handwave it as a small number of things, and refuse to clarify what a small number might be.
  - xg15 2y ago

jagged-chisel 2y ago

> I don’t hate efficiency. Are any of us trying to be “efficient” when writing a fan letter? I wouldn’t think so. I want a suggestion on how to start. If I asked an AI for the letter from the ad, I would also have read and edited it heavily before I considered it “complete.” Maybe TFA author is correct that people need to hear what he’s saying (they won’t), but I for one will be using AI output as suggestions.

Jensson 2y ago
> Are any of us trying to be “efficient” when writing a fan letter? A student who got that as a writing assignment in school would! They are targeting all the people who have to write bullshit optimistic letters everywhere, like HR, managers writing encouragements, students writing assignments, teachers writing feedback, and so on.
floren 2y ago
Maybe the athletes can just skip those pesky fans and type "Gemini, write a fan letter to me that I can read for a little confidence boost". The entire sentiment and value of your AI-enhanced fan letter is contained in the prompt you fed the AI, because that's the part created by a human expressing their human feelings. All the rest is stochastic fluff. Why not just tweet the prompt to the athlete and call it a day?
- kbelder 2y ago
  I haven't used Gemini at all, but figured I'd pop over and give it a try with your prompt. I cut-and-pasted "Gemini, write a fan letter to me that I can read for a little confidence boost", and its response was: "Sorry, I won't create content that encourages self-loathing, but you can always ask to be complimented." Is Gemini still so 'safe' that it's unusable?
SuperNinKenDo 2y ago
Children editing LLM generated garbage instead of actually writing to their heroes. Christ. This article was aimed at people like you mate.

tedunangst 2y ago

> If you haven’t seen this ad, you are leading a blessed existence and I wish to trade places with you. But I am about to recount it to you so that you can share in my misery Thanks. How kind.

aidenn0 2y ago

https://gemini.google.com/share/815f28b9c364 https://gemini.google.com/share/815f28b9c364 (via https://arstechnica.com/ai/2024/07/dear-sydney-why-i-find-googles-ai-olympics-ad-so-disturbing/ https://arstechnica.com/ai/2024/07/dear-sydney-why-i-find-go...)

KTibow 2y ago
It's funny how clearly it regurgitated phrases from the web (I'm pretty sure Gemini wouldn't say "pattern-matching autocomplete algorithm" by itself)
- floren 2y ago
  Also the ad doesn't make any mention of pattern recognition or improved responses, nor does it involve using an AI to "predict" the child's future.
kohbo 2y ago
I love this. I know this isn't exactly self-reflection but it's interesting to think about the type of self-reflection that is completely objective.
- floren 2y ago
  Hardly self-reflection; I asked it why an imaginary "Love, Jason" ad was so off-putting, changing the ad name from a letter salutation to the closing remarks, and it gave a very similar response.

capital_guy 2y ago

I've seen this ad a hundred times during the Olympics so far (why do they play the same ads over and over?) -- and this article summarizes how it makes me feel very well. The logical extension of this stuff is insane -- why have kids learn to write at all? They can just have an AI do it. Why learn anything? It's all on the internet anyway. There are plenty of good use cases for AI generated texts. Creating transcripts from audio, writing meeting summaries, and other types of rote, monotonous tasks. Writing a letter from the heart is not one of those things that should be outsourced. If there's anything on this earth we should value, it's humanity. And the tech giants are chomping at the bit to take that away. It's a sad vision for the future they're pushing

jinushaun 2y ago
Many have said it before: big tech is using AI to automate the wrong things.
- potatoman22 2y ago
  I think there's plenty of "right" things that are being automated. They're just small/boring tasks so no one talks about them.
  - shrimp_emoji 2y ago
    Like employees
api 2y ago
This and that awful Apple ad are both saying the same thing, or at least that’s how people interpret it. They’re saying “AI is here to make life sterile and empty and it’s awesome!” What I find most intriguing is the fact that these are giant companies with huge ad budgets and that presumably clear the highest profile ads with the C suite or people near it. All these presumably smart people thought these ads were great. They either agreed with the message or wanted to convey a different one that absolutely did not come through… as any moron could have told them. It shows how insulated the bubble is around these people and companies. They must never even interact with people who aren’t drinking the same brand of kool-aid. It’s tempting to think this is just an elite mega corp thing but I see loads of out of touch bubbles around. People need to mix more. Get out of whatever filter bubble you live in. Read things you disagree with. Know people outside your profession or who don’t think like you. We used to say “travel” but I think intellectual and social diversity is more important now. We carry our filter bubbles with us. Travel can still help though, especially if it’s to places with differing dominant cultures.

xg15 2y ago

> Do you know what writing is? It is thinking in a form that you can share with other people. As if ad companies were ever interested in having users who can think...

dgfitz 2y ago

Could have dropped the title almost completely. “I hate the… ad” would have nailed it.

TheAceOfHearts 2y ago

Do such ads negatively impact the perception of leadership at Google? It feels like there's no overarching vision of what AI should be from the public face of Google's leadership team, so we end up with stuff like Dear Sydney which just comes off as tone-deaf. Why didn't anyone at Google step-in and say: "hey, maybe this ad isn't very good and it's failing to communicate our values"? Although maybe the explanation is that Google's leadership no longer has any values beyond making infinite amounts of money by any means necessary.

paxys 2y ago

You can tell that Google gave a big advertising agency a truck full of cash and a slight glance at their product and told them to get to work. All their Olympics ads are generic designed-by-committee garbage. Perfect representation of the company's products as a whole these days.

Corrado 2y ago
Maybe Google used Gemini to create Ads for Gemini. That tracks.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

nrbernard 2y ago

> You’re missing it! You’re missing all of it! Go home, jump back into the sea, forget it, because this is the ride and you’re missing it. Petri gets at something much broader: what is the point of tech like Gemini that ostensibly makes some small parts of our lives more efficient when doing so robs them of what makes life worth living in the first place?

corytheboyd 2y ago

All the AI ads I have seen on TV are like “HOLY SHIT YOU CAN TURN ‘write a sentence’ INTO ‘Hello! This is a sentence which has been written.’ WOWZERS”. It’s so… bad.

jhanschoo 2y ago

How doubly ironic: marketing professionals failing to appropriately locate and communicate the value of their product, and doing so by telling a story about a family failing to appropriately locate the value of a fan letter that is meant to communicate a child's adoration.

404mm 2y ago

I feel fortunate to not know what you’re talking about. I’ve never seen this ad. I don’t do ads in my life.

latchkey 2y ago

We are just repeating history. Webvan advertisement 1999: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOw5i1PJ3vs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOw5i1PJ3vs

tim333 2y ago
It was interesting seeing that - I hadn't before. You could see them get some things right and some wrong. Web based delivery is of course big now but 'you have the right to grocery store prices" plus loads of guys in huge vans delivering didn't really add up. It's about the details I guess. In London most deliveries are guys on ebikes and cost about £5 so the numbers actually balance.
- latchkey 2y ago
  In Vietnam, it is about $1-2. Was big before, but became huge after covid. I'm even seeing ghost kitchens here now.