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> Can someone explain to me the rationale of investing in a product, marketing it, seeing that it drives consumers away from your product and erodes trust, and

> Can someone explain to me the rationale of investing in a product, marketing it, seeing that it drives consumers away from your product and erodes trust, and then you continue to invest at an accelerating rate? Sure! Google began investing heavily in AI (LLMs, actually) to catch up to the other frontier labs, which had already produced a product that was going to eviscerate Google Search (and therefore, Google ad revenue). They recognized this, and set about becoming a leader in the emerging field. Is it not better to be a leader in the nascent industry that is poised to kill your profitability? This is the same approach that Google took with smartphones. They saw Apple as a threat not because they had a product that was directly competing, but because they recognized that allowing Apple to monopolize mobile computing would put them in a position to take Google’s ad revenue — or allow them to extract rent in the form of payments to ensure Apple didn’t direct their users to a competing service. Android was not initially intended to be a revenue source, at least not most importantly. It was intended to limit the problem that Apple represented. Later, once Google had a large part of the market, they found ways to monetize the platform via both their ad network and an app store. AI is no different. If Google does nothing, they lose. If they catch up and take the lead, they limit the size of the future threat and if all goes well, will be able to monetize their newfound market share down the road - but monetization is a problem for future Google. Today’s Google’s problem is getting the market share.

m463 11mo ago
I like the duck duck go AI summaries...
keyle 11mo ago
[flagged]
- tempestn 11mo ago
  It was a well reasoned response to the question posed. Not everything is AI, and not all "walls of text" are equal.
  - Ancapistani 11mo ago
    I didn’t see the comment, but I assume they were accusing me of generating it. For what it’s worth, I didn’t use AI at all for it. I just tend to sound like an LLM, likely because I have ADHD and grew up very rural (most of my vocabulary and grammar from reading). I also tend to use a lot of parenthetical phrases, semi-colons, and lists. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- FloorEgg 11mo ago
  Maybe consider trying to follow the HN guidelines?
schnitzelstoat 11mo ago
Yeah, like imagine if the LLM's don't advance that much, the agentic stuff doesn't really take off etc. Even in this conservative case, ChatGPT could seriously erode Google Search revenues. That alone would be a massive disruption and Google wants to ensure they end up as the Google in that scenario and not the Lycos, AltaVista, AskJeeves etc. etc.
- b112 11mo ago
  But what Google is doing, is like what Firefox did when Chrome came out. Panicking. Panicking, and therefore making horrible design and product choices. Google has made their main search engine output utter and complete junk. It's just terrible. If they didn't have 'web' search, I'd never be able to use it. In almost every search for the last month, normal search results in horrible matches. Switch to web? Bam! First result. Not web? The same perfect result might be 3 or 4 pages deep. If that. (I am comparing web results in both cases, and ignoring the also broken 80% of the pages of AI junk.) In an attempt to compete, they're literally driving people to use ChatGPT for search in droves. They could compete, and do so without this panicky disaster of a response.
  - andrepd 11mo ago
    What do you mean "normal" and "web"?
    - b112 11mo ago
      Do a search. After, you can select image, shop, other things or web search.
  - mjcl 11mo ago
    Fun fact: For now, adding a boolean search term like -blahblahblah will skip the AI result and just show web results.
jcgrillo 11mo ago
> frontier labs, which had already produced a product that was going to eviscerate Google Search (and therefore, Google ad revenue) > If Google does nothing, they lose. Is any of that actually true though? In retrospect, had google done nothing their search product would still work. Currently it's pretty profoundly broken, at least from a functional standpoint--no idea how that impacts revenue if at all. To me it seems like google in particular took the bait and went after a paper tiger, and in doing so damaged their product.
- oblio 11mo ago
  Users still googled before. Now they just move to chatbots. Regular people don't really notice the search degradation as much and enshittification helps Google, as revenues kept going up. Chatbots are an existential threat since they will add ads and that's where Google's ad revenue dies.
  - jcgrillo 11mo ago
    Did any users actually move to chatbots? By which I don't mean the 0.001% of tech nerds who buy chatgpt subscriptions, but in aggregate did a meaningful number of google searchers defect to chatgpt or other llm services? I really doubt that. Data would be interesting but there's a credibility problem...
    - big-and-small 11mo ago
      Yes. People do use them and they trust them, unfortunately. Tech nerds know what ChatGPT is, they know llm limits somewhat and they know it's hallucinating. Normal people do not - for them is a magical all knowing oracle.
      - Ancapistani 11mo ago
        > People do use them and they trust them, unfortunately. Yep, and it’s hard to communicate that to them. It’s hard to accurately describe even to someone familiar with the context. I don’t think “trust” is the right word. Sitting here on 19 Nov 2025, I do in fact trust LLMs to reason. I don’t trust LLMs to be truthful. If I ask for a fact, I always consider what I’d lose if that fact were wrong. If I ask for reasoning, I provide the facts that I believe are required to make the decision. I then double-check that reasoning by inverting the prompt and comparing the output in the other direction. For more critical decisions, I make sure I use different models, from different providers, with completely separate context. If I’ve done all that, I think I can honestly say that I trust it. These days, I would describe it as “I don’t trust AI to distinguish truth”
rifty 11mo ago
This has been how I've framed a lot of the expenditure despite lack of immediate substantial new revenues. Everyone including Google is driven to protecting current revenues from prospective disruption. But the vulnerability AI created for Google is to other companies worth positioning themselves to take advantage of if Google falls behind and loses chunks of marketshare.
willis936 11mo ago
This makes sense, but if the goal was to avoid business failure from disruption / losing customers, then why would the companies not be behaving in ways that maximize their customers? Intermediate value theorem applies here. There is no number of net negative customer base that can be spun in a good way. There is no path to recouping their lost customers. These fundamentals must be seen by the decision makers.
i386 11mo ago
This is very revisionist. While they have been catching up quickly there was no master 4D chess strategy here. Google was incredibly late to this game - Sergey had to come back from retirement because most of the research team had a Sarah Connor complex and couldn’t ship. The saving grace is that AdWords picked up the tab again and founders shook the place up when it became clear the golden goose was being cooked.
- palmotea 11mo ago
  > Sergey had to come back from retirement because most of the research team had a Sarah Connor complex and couldn’t ship. What, you don't want to ship the Torment Nexus? You're fired! We must ship a Torment Nexus, we must maintain our market share even if it means our destruction!

m463 11mo ago

I like the duck duck go AI summaries...

keyle 11mo ago

[flagged]

tempestn 11mo ago
It was a well reasoned response to the question posed. Not everything is AI, and not all "walls of text" are equal.
- Ancapistani 11mo ago
  I didn’t see the comment, but I assume they were accusing me of generating it. For what it’s worth, I didn’t use AI at all for it. I just tend to sound like an LLM, likely because I have ADHD and grew up very rural (most of my vocabulary and grammar from reading). I also tend to use a lot of parenthetical phrases, semi-colons, and lists. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
FloorEgg 11mo ago
Maybe consider trying to follow the HN guidelines?

schnitzelstoat 11mo ago

Yeah, like imagine if the LLM's don't advance that much, the agentic stuff doesn't really take off etc. Even in this conservative case, ChatGPT could seriously erode Google Search revenues. That alone would be a massive disruption and Google wants to ensure they end up as the Google in that scenario and not the Lycos, AltaVista, AskJeeves etc. etc.

b112 11mo ago
But what Google is doing, is like what Firefox did when Chrome came out. Panicking. Panicking, and therefore making horrible design and product choices. Google has made their main search engine output utter and complete junk. It's just terrible. If they didn't have 'web' search, I'd never be able to use it. In almost every search for the last month, normal search results in horrible matches. Switch to web? Bam! First result. Not web? The same perfect result might be 3 or 4 pages deep. If that. (I am comparing web results in both cases, and ignoring the also broken 80% of the pages of AI junk.) In an attempt to compete, they're literally driving people to use ChatGPT for search in droves. They could compete, and do so without this panicky disaster of a response.
- andrepd 11mo ago
  What do you mean "normal" and "web"?
  - b112 11mo ago
    Do a search. After, you can select image, shop, other things or web search.
- mjcl 11mo ago
  Fun fact: For now, adding a boolean search term like -blahblahblah will skip the AI result and just show web results.

jcgrillo 11mo ago

> frontier labs, which had already produced a product that was going to eviscerate Google Search (and therefore, Google ad revenue) > If Google does nothing, they lose. Is any of that actually true though? In retrospect, had google done nothing their search product would still work. Currently it's pretty profoundly broken, at least from a functional standpoint--no idea how that impacts revenue if at all. To me it seems like google in particular took the bait and went after a paper tiger, and in doing so damaged their product.

oblio 11mo ago
Users still googled before. Now they just move to chatbots. Regular people don't really notice the search degradation as much and enshittification helps Google, as revenues kept going up. Chatbots are an existential threat since they will add ads and that's where Google's ad revenue dies.
- jcgrillo 11mo ago
  Did any users actually move to chatbots? By which I don't mean the 0.001% of tech nerds who buy chatgpt subscriptions, but in aggregate did a meaningful number of google searchers defect to chatgpt or other llm services? I really doubt that. Data would be interesting but there's a credibility problem...
  - big-and-small 11mo ago
    Yes. People do use them and they trust them, unfortunately. Tech nerds know what ChatGPT is, they know llm limits somewhat and they know it's hallucinating. Normal people do not - for them is a magical all knowing oracle.
    - Ancapistani 11mo ago
      > People do use them and they trust them, unfortunately. Yep, and it’s hard to communicate that to them. It’s hard to accurately describe even to someone familiar with the context. I don’t think “trust” is the right word. Sitting here on 19 Nov 2025, I do in fact trust LLMs to reason. I don’t trust LLMs to be truthful. If I ask for a fact, I always consider what I’d lose if that fact were wrong. If I ask for reasoning, I provide the facts that I believe are required to make the decision. I then double-check that reasoning by inverting the prompt and comparing the output in the other direction. For more critical decisions, I make sure I use different models, from different providers, with completely separate context. If I’ve done all that, I think I can honestly say that I trust it. These days, I would describe it as “I don’t trust AI to distinguish truth”

rifty 11mo ago

This has been how I've framed a lot of the expenditure despite lack of immediate substantial new revenues. Everyone including Google is driven to protecting current revenues from prospective disruption. But the vulnerability AI created for Google is to other companies worth positioning themselves to take advantage of if Google falls behind and loses chunks of marketshare.

willis936 11mo ago

This makes sense, but if the goal was to avoid business failure from disruption / losing customers, then why would the companies not be behaving in ways that maximize their customers? Intermediate value theorem applies here. There is no number of net negative customer base that can be spun in a good way. There is no path to recouping their lost customers. These fundamentals must be seen by the decision makers.

i386 11mo ago

This is very revisionist. While they have been catching up quickly there was no master 4D chess strategy here. Google was incredibly late to this game - Sergey had to come back from retirement because most of the research team had a Sarah Connor complex and couldn’t ship. The saving grace is that AdWords picked up the tab again and founders shook the place up when it became clear the golden goose was being cooked.

palmotea 11mo ago
> Sergey had to come back from retirement because most of the research team had a Sarah Connor complex and couldn’t ship. What, you don't want to ship the Torment Nexus? You're fired! We must ship a Torment Nexus, we must maintain our market share even if it means our destruction!