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There was a point in time when basically every well known AI researcher worked at Google. They have been at the forefront of AI research and investing heavily f

There was a point in time when basically every well known AI researcher worked at Google. They have been at the forefront of AI research and investing heavily for longer than anybody. It’s kind of crazy that they have been slow to create real products and competitive large scale models from their research. But they are in full gear now that there is real competition, and it’ll be cool to see what they release over the next few years.

hosh 8mo ago
I also think the presence of Sergey Brin has been making a difference in this.
- refulgentis 8mo ago
  Ex-googler: I doubt it, but am curious for rationale (i know there was a round of PR re: him “coming back to help with AI.” but just between you and me, the word on him internally, over years and multiple projects, was having him around caused chaos b/c he was a tourist flitting between teams, just spitting out ideas, but now you have unclear direction and multiple teams hearing the same “you should” and doing it)
  - pstuart 8mo ago
    That makes sense. A "secret shopper" might be a better way to avoid that but wouldn't give him the strokes of being the god in the room.
    - belter 8mo ago
      He was shopping for other strokes from Google employees: https://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/the-exchange/alleged-affair-google-co-founder-brin-raises-ethical-201333813.html https://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/the-exchange/alleged-affair-...
  - LightBug1 8mo ago
    Oh ffs, we have an external investor who behaves like that. Literally set us back a year on pet nonsense projects and ideas.
    - redanddead 8mo ago
      What'd he say
      - refulgentis 8mo ago
        That the rocket company should buy an LLM
  - AYBABTME 8mo ago
    the rebuke is that lack of chaos makes people feel more orderly and as if things are going better, but it doesn't increase your luck surface area, it just maximizes cozy vibes and self interested comfort.
    - refulgentis 8mo ago
      My dynamic range of professional experience is high, dropout => waiter => found startup => acquirer => Google. You're making an interesting point that I somewhat agree with from the perspective of someone was...clearly a little more feral than his surroundings in Google, and wildly succeeded and ultimately quietly failed because of it. The important bit is "great man" theory doesn't solve lack of dynamism. It usually makes things worse. The people you read about in newspapers are pretty much as smart as you, for better or worse. I actually disagreed with the Sergey thing along the same lines, it was being used as a parable for why it was okay to do ~nothing in year 3 and continue avoiding what we were supposed to ship in year 1, because only VPs outside my org and the design section in my org would care. Not sure if all that rhymes or will make any sense to you at all. But I deeply respect the point you are communicating, and also mean to communicate that there's another just as strong lesson: one person isn't bright enough to pull that off, and the important bit there isn't "oh, he isn't special", it's that it makes you even more careful building organizations that maintain dynamism and creativity.
      - sdf2erf 8mo ago
        Yeah people seem to be pretty poor at judging the impact of 'key' people. E.g. Steve Jobs was absolutely fundamental to the turn around of Apple. Will Brin have this level of incremental impact on the Goog/Alphabet of today? Nah.
        rstuart4133 8mo ago
        The difference is: Apple had one "key person", Jobs, and yes the products he drove made the company successful. Now Jobs has gone I haven't seen anything new. But if you look at Google, there isn't one key product. There are a whole pile of products that are best in class. Search (cringe, I know it's popular here to say Google search sucks and perhaps it does, but what search engine is far better?), YouTube, Maps, Android, Waymo, GMail, Deep Mind, the cloud infrastructure, translate, lens (OCR) and probably a lot of others I've forgotten. Don't forget Sheets and Docs, which while they have been replicated by Microsoft and others now were first done by Google. Some of them, like Maps, seem to have swapped entire teams - yet continued to be best in class. Predicting Google won't be at the forefront on the next advance seems perilous. Maybe these products have key people as you call them, but the magic in Alphabet doesn't seem to be them. The magic seems to be Alphabet has some way to create / acquire these keep people. Or perhaps Alphabet just knows how to create top engineering teams that keep rolling along, even when the team members are replaced. Apple produced one key person, Jobs. Alphabet seems to be a factory creating lots of key people moving products along. But as Google even manages to replace these key people (as they did for Maps) and still keep the product moving, I'm not sure they are the key to Googles success.
  - IncreasePosts 8mo ago
    I'm in a similar position and generally agree with your take, but the plus side to his involvement is if he believed in your project or viewpoint he would act as the ultimate red tape cutter.
    - refulgentis 8mo ago
      And there is absolutely nothing more valuable at G (no snark) (cheers, don't read too much signal into my thoughts, it's more negative than I'd intend. Just was aware it was someone going off PR, and doing hero worship that I myself used to do, and was disabused over 7 years there, and would like other people outside to disabuse themselves of. It's a place, not the place)
- hungryhobbit 8mo ago
  Please, Google was terrible about using the tech the had long before Sundar, back when Brin was in charge. Google Reader is a simple example: Googl had by far the most popular RSS reader, and they just threw it away. A single intern could have kept the whole thing running, and Google has literal billions, but they couldn't see the value in it. I mean, it's not like being able to see what a good portion of America is reading every day could have any value for an AI company, right? Google has always been terrible about turning tech into (viable, maintained) products.
  - jamespo 8mo ago
    Took a while but I got to the google reader post. Self host tt-rss, it's much better
  - vinkelhake 8mo ago
    Is there an equivalent to Godwin's law wrt threads about Google and Google Reader? See also: any programming thread and Rust.
    - scarmig 8mo ago
      I'm convinced my last groan will be reading a thread about Google paper clipping the world, and someone will be moaning about Google Reader.
      - tbossanova 8mo ago
        “A more elegant weapon of a civilised age.”
    - refulgentis 8mo ago
      Lol, it seems obvious in retrospect, there really, really, needs to be. Therefore we now have “Vinkel’s Law”
    - wisty 8mo ago
      It's far from the only example https://killedbygoogle.com/ https://killedbygoogle.com/
- deleted 8mo ago
  [deleted]
- belter 8mo ago
  Because after the death of Epstein he suddenly had a lot of free time? https://www.wsj.com/finance/jeffrey-epstein-advised-sergey-brin-with-tax-shelter-353cad20 https://www.wsj.com/finance/jeffrey-epstein-advised-sergey-b... https://x.com/MarioNawfal/status/2017428928814588323 https://x.com/MarioNawfal/status/2017428928814588323
  - rvnx 8mo ago
    If this is true, this is disappointing :/ On a similar topic, it is worth mentioning the entrepreneurs that are forced into sex (or let’s say, very pushed) by VCs. For those who feel safe or taking it as a joke, this affects women AND men. Some people are going to be disappointed about their heroes.
    - sdf2erf 8mo ago
      Dont mention the recent Eric Schmidt scandal. Barely any of these jokers are clean. Makes MZ look seemingly normal in comparison.
    - belter 8mo ago
      >> If this is true, this is disappointing Wait for the second set of files... "...One of Mr. Epstein’s former boat captains told The New York Times earlier this year that he had seen Mr. Brin on the island more than once..." https://dnyuz.com/2026/01/31/powerful-men-who-turn-up-in-the-new-batch-of-epstein-files/ https://dnyuz.com/2026/01/31/powerful-men-who-turn-up-in-the...
  - wslh 8mo ago
    What's striking is the sheer scale of Epstein's and Maxwell's scheduling and access. The source material makes it hard to even imagine how two people could sustain that many meetings/parties/dinners/victims, across so many places, with such high-profile figures. And, how those figures consistently found the time to meet them.
    - belter 8mo ago
      Ghislaine making a speech at the UN... https://youtu.be/-h5K3hfaXx4?t=350 https://youtu.be/-h5K3hfaXx4?t=350
smallnix 8mo ago
> It’s kind of crazy that they have been slow to create real products and competitive large scale models from their research. I always thought they deliberately tried to contain the genie in the bottle as long as they could
- mullingitover 8mo ago
  Their unreleased LaMDA[1] famously caused one of their own engineers to have a public crashout in 2022, before ChatGPT dropped. Pre-ChatGPT they also showed it off in their research blog[2] and showed it doing very ChatGPT-like things and they alluded to 'risks,' but those were primarily around it using naughty language or spreading misinformation. I think they were worried that releasing a product like ChatGPT only had downside risks for them, because it might mess up their money printing operation over in advertising by doing slurs and swears. Those sweet summer children: little did they know they could run an operation with a seig-heiling CEO who uses LLMs to manufacture and distribute CSAM worldwide, and it wouldn't make above-the-fold news. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LaMDA#Sentience_claims https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LaMDA#Sentience_claims [2] https://research.google/blog/lamda-towards-safe-grounded-and-high-quality-dialog-models-for-everything/ https://research.google/blog/lamda-towards-safe-grounded-and...
  - xtracto 8mo ago
    Attention is all you need was written by Googlers IIRC.
    - mullingitover 8mo ago
      Indeed, none of the current AI boom would’ve happened without Google Brain and their failure to execute on their huge early lead. It’s basically a Xerox Parc do-over with ads instead of printers.
  - bhadass 8mo ago
    I swear the Tay incident caused tech companies to be unnecessarily risk averse with chatbots for years.
Arainach 8mo ago
>It’s kind of crazy that they have been slow to create real products and competitive large scale models from their research. Not really. If Google released all of this first instead of companies that have never made a profit and perhaps never will, the case law would simply be the copyright holders suing them for infringement and winning.
- zipy124 8mo ago
  It's not even that. It's way easier to do R&D when you don't have a customer base to support.
- drewstiff 8mo ago
  Also think of how LLMs are replacing web searches for most people - Google would have been cannibalising their Search profits for no good reason
wslh 8mo ago
> It’s kind of crazy that they have been slow to create real products and competitive large scale models from their research. It’s not that crazy. Sometimes the rational move is to wait for a market to fully materialize before going after it. This isn’t a Xerox PARC situation, nor really the innovator’s dilemma, it’s about timing: turning research into profits when market conditions finally make it viable. Even mammoths like Google are limited in their ability to create entirely new markets.
- DSingularity 8mo ago
  This take makes even more sense when you consider the costs of making a move to create the market. The organizational energy and its necessary loss in focus and resources limits their ability to experiment. Arguably the best strategy for Google: (1) build foundational depth in research and infrastructure that would be impossible for competition to quickly replicate (2) wait for the market to present a clear new opportunity for you (3) capture it decisively by focusing and exploiting every foundational advantage Google was able to build.

hosh 8mo ago

I also think the presence of Sergey Brin has been making a difference in this.

refulgentis 8mo ago
Ex-googler: I doubt it, but am curious for rationale (i know there was a round of PR re: him “coming back to help with AI.” but just between you and me, the word on him internally, over years and multiple projects, was having him around caused chaos b/c he was a tourist flitting between teams, just spitting out ideas, but now you have unclear direction and multiple teams hearing the same “you should” and doing it)
- pstuart 8mo ago
  That makes sense. A "secret shopper" might be a better way to avoid that but wouldn't give him the strokes of being the god in the room.
  - belter 8mo ago
    He was shopping for other strokes from Google employees: https://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/the-exchange/alleged-affair-google-co-founder-brin-raises-ethical-201333813.html https://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/the-exchange/alleged-affair-...
- LightBug1 8mo ago
  Oh ffs, we have an external investor who behaves like that. Literally set us back a year on pet nonsense projects and ideas.
  - redanddead 8mo ago
    What'd he say
    - refulgentis 8mo ago
      That the rocket company should buy an LLM
- AYBABTME 8mo ago
  the rebuke is that lack of chaos makes people feel more orderly and as if things are going better, but it doesn't increase your luck surface area, it just maximizes cozy vibes and self interested comfort.
  - refulgentis 8mo ago
    My dynamic range of professional experience is high, dropout => waiter => found startup => acquirer => Google. You're making an interesting point that I somewhat agree with from the perspective of someone was...clearly a little more feral than his surroundings in Google, and wildly succeeded and ultimately quietly failed because of it. The important bit is "great man" theory doesn't solve lack of dynamism. It usually makes things worse. The people you read about in newspapers are pretty much as smart as you, for better or worse. I actually disagreed with the Sergey thing along the same lines, it was being used as a parable for why it was okay to do ~nothing in year 3 and continue avoiding what we were supposed to ship in year 1, because only VPs outside my org and the design section in my org would care. Not sure if all that rhymes or will make any sense to you at all. But I deeply respect the point you are communicating, and also mean to communicate that there's another just as strong lesson: one person isn't bright enough to pull that off, and the important bit there isn't "oh, he isn't special", it's that it makes you even more careful building organizations that maintain dynamism and creativity.
    - sdf2erf 8mo ago
      Yeah people seem to be pretty poor at judging the impact of 'key' people. E.g. Steve Jobs was absolutely fundamental to the turn around of Apple. Will Brin have this level of incremental impact on the Goog/Alphabet of today? Nah.
      - rstuart4133 8mo ago
        The difference is: Apple had one "key person", Jobs, and yes the products he drove made the company successful. Now Jobs has gone I haven't seen anything new. But if you look at Google, there isn't one key product. There are a whole pile of products that are best in class. Search (cringe, I know it's popular here to say Google search sucks and perhaps it does, but what search engine is far better?), YouTube, Maps, Android, Waymo, GMail, Deep Mind, the cloud infrastructure, translate, lens (OCR) and probably a lot of others I've forgotten. Don't forget Sheets and Docs, which while they have been replicated by Microsoft and others now were first done by Google. Some of them, like Maps, seem to have swapped entire teams - yet continued to be best in class. Predicting Google won't be at the forefront on the next advance seems perilous. Maybe these products have key people as you call them, but the magic in Alphabet doesn't seem to be them. The magic seems to be Alphabet has some way to create / acquire these keep people. Or perhaps Alphabet just knows how to create top engineering teams that keep rolling along, even when the team members are replaced. Apple produced one key person, Jobs. Alphabet seems to be a factory creating lots of key people moving products along. But as Google even manages to replace these key people (as they did for Maps) and still keep the product moving, I'm not sure they are the key to Googles success.
- IncreasePosts 8mo ago
  I'm in a similar position and generally agree with your take, but the plus side to his involvement is if he believed in your project or viewpoint he would act as the ultimate red tape cutter.
  - refulgentis 8mo ago
    And there is absolutely nothing more valuable at G (no snark) (cheers, don't read too much signal into my thoughts, it's more negative than I'd intend. Just was aware it was someone going off PR, and doing hero worship that I myself used to do, and was disabused over 7 years there, and would like other people outside to disabuse themselves of. It's a place, not the place)
hungryhobbit 8mo ago
Please, Google was terrible about using the tech the had long before Sundar, back when Brin was in charge. Google Reader is a simple example: Googl had by far the most popular RSS reader, and they just threw it away. A single intern could have kept the whole thing running, and Google has literal billions, but they couldn't see the value in it. I mean, it's not like being able to see what a good portion of America is reading every day could have any value for an AI company, right? Google has always been terrible about turning tech into (viable, maintained) products.
- jamespo 8mo ago
  Took a while but I got to the google reader post. Self host tt-rss, it's much better
- vinkelhake 8mo ago
  Is there an equivalent to Godwin's law wrt threads about Google and Google Reader? See also: any programming thread and Rust.
  - scarmig 8mo ago
    I'm convinced my last groan will be reading a thread about Google paper clipping the world, and someone will be moaning about Google Reader.
    - tbossanova 8mo ago
      “A more elegant weapon of a civilised age.”
  - refulgentis 8mo ago
    Lol, it seems obvious in retrospect, there really, really, needs to be. Therefore we now have “Vinkel’s Law”
  - wisty 8mo ago
    It's far from the only example https://killedbygoogle.com/ https://killedbygoogle.com/
deleted 8mo ago
[deleted]
belter 8mo ago
Because after the death of Epstein he suddenly had a lot of free time? https://www.wsj.com/finance/jeffrey-epstein-advised-sergey-brin-with-tax-shelter-353cad20 https://www.wsj.com/finance/jeffrey-epstein-advised-sergey-b... https://x.com/MarioNawfal/status/2017428928814588323 https://x.com/MarioNawfal/status/2017428928814588323
- rvnx 8mo ago
  If this is true, this is disappointing :/ On a similar topic, it is worth mentioning the entrepreneurs that are forced into sex (or let’s say, very pushed) by VCs. For those who feel safe or taking it as a joke, this affects women AND men. Some people are going to be disappointed about their heroes.
  - sdf2erf 8mo ago
    Dont mention the recent Eric Schmidt scandal. Barely any of these jokers are clean. Makes MZ look seemingly normal in comparison.
  - belter 8mo ago
    >> If this is true, this is disappointing Wait for the second set of files... "...One of Mr. Epstein’s former boat captains told The New York Times earlier this year that he had seen Mr. Brin on the island more than once..." https://dnyuz.com/2026/01/31/powerful-men-who-turn-up-in-the-new-batch-of-epstein-files/ https://dnyuz.com/2026/01/31/powerful-men-who-turn-up-in-the...
- wslh 8mo ago
  What's striking is the sheer scale of Epstein's and Maxwell's scheduling and access. The source material makes it hard to even imagine how two people could sustain that many meetings/parties/dinners/victims, across so many places, with such high-profile figures. And, how those figures consistently found the time to meet them.
  - belter 8mo ago
    Ghislaine making a speech at the UN... https://youtu.be/-h5K3hfaXx4?t=350 https://youtu.be/-h5K3hfaXx4?t=350

smallnix 8mo ago

> It’s kind of crazy that they have been slow to create real products and competitive large scale models from their research. I always thought they deliberately tried to contain the genie in the bottle as long as they could

mullingitover 8mo ago
Their unreleased LaMDA[1] famously caused one of their own engineers to have a public crashout in 2022, before ChatGPT dropped. Pre-ChatGPT they also showed it off in their research blog[2] and showed it doing very ChatGPT-like things and they alluded to 'risks,' but those were primarily around it using naughty language or spreading misinformation. I think they were worried that releasing a product like ChatGPT only had downside risks for them, because it might mess up their money printing operation over in advertising by doing slurs and swears. Those sweet summer children: little did they know they could run an operation with a seig-heiling CEO who uses LLMs to manufacture and distribute CSAM worldwide, and it wouldn't make above-the-fold news. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LaMDA#Sentience_claims https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LaMDA#Sentience_claims [2] https://research.google/blog/lamda-towards-safe-grounded-and-high-quality-dialog-models-for-everything/ https://research.google/blog/lamda-towards-safe-grounded-and...
- xtracto 8mo ago
  Attention is all you need was written by Googlers IIRC.
  - mullingitover 8mo ago
    Indeed, none of the current AI boom would’ve happened without Google Brain and their failure to execute on their huge early lead. It’s basically a Xerox Parc do-over with ads instead of printers.
- bhadass 8mo ago
  I swear the Tay incident caused tech companies to be unnecessarily risk averse with chatbots for years.

Arainach 8mo ago

>It’s kind of crazy that they have been slow to create real products and competitive large scale models from their research. Not really. If Google released all of this first instead of companies that have never made a profit and perhaps never will, the case law would simply be the copyright holders suing them for infringement and winning.

zipy124 8mo ago
It's not even that. It's way easier to do R&D when you don't have a customer base to support.
drewstiff 8mo ago
Also think of how LLMs are replacing web searches for most people - Google would have been cannibalising their Search profits for no good reason

wslh 8mo ago

> It’s kind of crazy that they have been slow to create real products and competitive large scale models from their research. It’s not that crazy. Sometimes the rational move is to wait for a market to fully materialize before going after it. This isn’t a Xerox PARC situation, nor really the innovator’s dilemma, it’s about timing: turning research into profits when market conditions finally make it viable. Even mammoths like Google are limited in their ability to create entirely new markets.

DSingularity 8mo ago
This take makes even more sense when you consider the costs of making a move to create the market. The organizational energy and its necessary loss in focus and resources limits their ability to experiment. Arguably the best strategy for Google: (1) build foundational depth in research and infrastructure that would be impossible for competition to quickly replicate (2) wait for the market to present a clear new opportunity for you (3) capture it decisively by focusing and exploiting every foundational advantage Google was able to build.