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Google is David and OpenAI is Goliath, excessively nerfing Google will put us all at the mercy of closed AI. Gemini (the app, not the API or AI studio) is one

Google is David and OpenAI is Goliath, excessively nerfing Google will put us all at the mercy of closed AI. Gemini (the app, not the API or AI studio) is one of the few places where we can use frontier generative AI without a “customer noncompete” (you know, the one where they compete with us and then say we’re not allowed to compete back) … if you use Claude or OpenAI or Grok, you’re prohibited from training on your chat logs, or even using the thing to develop AI. Not so with Gemini app. Too bad you have to lose your chat history just to deactivate model training (“Gemini apps activity” conflates opt-out of training with opt-out of storing chat history) I don’t know much about the ads space but I just hope going after Google doesn’t create a vacuum that gets filled by an even worse monopoly (OpenAI)

azemetre 1y ago
Really odd that the trillionaire dollar corporation that prints billions of dollars in pure profit every quarter due to monopolistic and anti-democratic policies is the David, the weak feeble underdog in this story, compared to OpenAI that is wildly unprofitable and has no real strategy outside of burning money. There has been no time in human history where destroying monopolies were a bad thing.
- bionhoward 1y ago
  Isn’t Microsoft also a trillion dollar corporation? If we add their 39% market share in foundation models (likely due to enterprise use of Azure OpenAI Service) to OpenAI’s 9% market share, the result is around 48% market share, compared to Google’s 15%, which is less than half of the MSFT/OAI pair…not to mention a cursory comparison of Gemini vs ChatGPT apps. Just because OpenAI isn’t in “extraction mode” yet doesn’t mean it’s not a scary monopoly. Source, figure 2 in: [1] https://iot-analytics.com/leading-generative-ai-companies/ https://iot-analytics.com/leading-generative-ai-companies/
  - jeffbee 1y ago
    Yes, Microsoft is one of the world's biggest companies, and it underinvests in research and development, preferring to hoard cash. OpenAI is in effect a client state of Microsoft that Microsoft is using to make Google look flat-footed and force them to enter the chatbot market. Nothing that transpires between Microsoft and OpenAI is really at arms' length. Personally, I don't think this is a positive development for the industry or for humanity in generally. We were doing better before we had sycophantic robots confidently misleading us.
    - keeda 1y ago
      > Yes, Microsoft is one of the world's biggest companies, and it underinvests in research and development, preferring to hoard cash. I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic, but: 1. If you're talking about basic research, Microsoft Research has been a thing since the 90's, is highly prestigious, and has published far more papers than Google, based on their respective research websites. (To be fair, Google started much later.) 2. If you're talking about product development, MSFT is vastly more diversified in terms of revenues than any of the "Magnificent 7" because of their varied product lineup. 3. The basis of their relationship with OpenAI is literally them investing double digit billions to catch up on the AI race once they recognized the opportunity. > OpenAI is in effect a client state of Microsoft that Microsoft is using to make Google look flat-footed and force them to enter the chatbot market. I'm not sure about Microsoft's influence in OpenAI's strategy, but it's pretty clear Google was caught flatfooted by their own strategy of locking away transformer technology behind products that didn't threaten their search monopoly. There's a reason the researchers who invented transformers had to leave and start a different company to bring its true potential to the market. Which, even if it was just a chatbot, is what has kicked off the AI boom.
      - jeffbee 1y ago
        Everyone I've encountered thinks of Microsoft Research as a bad pattern, that includes all the refugees from MSR Silicon Valley who joined Google after Microsoft dissolved it in 2014. Perhaps it is a bias of the people I've worked with in my career but the core early contributors at Google who came from DEC WRL also viewed separate research divisions as a bad idea. Anyway my statement was meant to be objective. Look at how much Microsoft spends on R&D for the last 25 years, compared to the amount Google spends, in absolute terms and as a fraction of revenues.
  - azemetre 1y ago
    Maybe MSFT is King Saul in your biblical metaphor.
jeremyjh 1y ago
OpenAI is hardly a Goliath. It has no real moat, and is trying to build a business around a feature. But other businesses already have platforms with billions of users to deploy those features to.
- nicce 1y ago
  As others have pointed out, we should see the forest from the trees. Microsoft is a huge OpenAI redistributor, also Apple. Everyone knows ”ChatGPT”. While the company size might not be monopoly, based on a larger userbase, it is.

azemetre 1y ago

Really odd that the trillionaire dollar corporation that prints billions of dollars in pure profit every quarter due to monopolistic and anti-democratic policies is the David, the weak feeble underdog in this story, compared to OpenAI that is wildly unprofitable and has no real strategy outside of burning money. There has been no time in human history where destroying monopolies were a bad thing.

bionhoward 1y ago
Isn’t Microsoft also a trillion dollar corporation? If we add their 39% market share in foundation models (likely due to enterprise use of Azure OpenAI Service) to OpenAI’s 9% market share, the result is around 48% market share, compared to Google’s 15%, which is less than half of the MSFT/OAI pair…not to mention a cursory comparison of Gemini vs ChatGPT apps. Just because OpenAI isn’t in “extraction mode” yet doesn’t mean it’s not a scary monopoly. Source, figure 2 in: [1] https://iot-analytics.com/leading-generative-ai-companies/ https://iot-analytics.com/leading-generative-ai-companies/
- jeffbee 1y ago
  Yes, Microsoft is one of the world's biggest companies, and it underinvests in research and development, preferring to hoard cash. OpenAI is in effect a client state of Microsoft that Microsoft is using to make Google look flat-footed and force them to enter the chatbot market. Nothing that transpires between Microsoft and OpenAI is really at arms' length. Personally, I don't think this is a positive development for the industry or for humanity in generally. We were doing better before we had sycophantic robots confidently misleading us.
  - keeda 1y ago
    > Yes, Microsoft is one of the world's biggest companies, and it underinvests in research and development, preferring to hoard cash. I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic, but: 1. If you're talking about basic research, Microsoft Research has been a thing since the 90's, is highly prestigious, and has published far more papers than Google, based on their respective research websites. (To be fair, Google started much later.) 2. If you're talking about product development, MSFT is vastly more diversified in terms of revenues than any of the "Magnificent 7" because of their varied product lineup. 3. The basis of their relationship with OpenAI is literally them investing double digit billions to catch up on the AI race once they recognized the opportunity. > OpenAI is in effect a client state of Microsoft that Microsoft is using to make Google look flat-footed and force them to enter the chatbot market. I'm not sure about Microsoft's influence in OpenAI's strategy, but it's pretty clear Google was caught flatfooted by their own strategy of locking away transformer technology behind products that didn't threaten their search monopoly. There's a reason the researchers who invented transformers had to leave and start a different company to bring its true potential to the market. Which, even if it was just a chatbot, is what has kicked off the AI boom.
    - jeffbee 1y ago
      Everyone I've encountered thinks of Microsoft Research as a bad pattern, that includes all the refugees from MSR Silicon Valley who joined Google after Microsoft dissolved it in 2014. Perhaps it is a bias of the people I've worked with in my career but the core early contributors at Google who came from DEC WRL also viewed separate research divisions as a bad idea. Anyway my statement was meant to be objective. Look at how much Microsoft spends on R&D for the last 25 years, compared to the amount Google spends, in absolute terms and as a fraction of revenues.
- azemetre 1y ago
  Maybe MSFT is King Saul in your biblical metaphor.

jeremyjh 1y ago

OpenAI is hardly a Goliath. It has no real moat, and is trying to build a business around a feature. But other businesses already have platforms with billions of users to deploy those features to.

nicce 1y ago
As others have pointed out, we should see the forest from the trees. Microsoft is a huge OpenAI redistributor, also Apple. Everyone knows ”ChatGPT”. While the company size might not be monopoly, based on a larger userbase, it is.