4 ms·

It's certainly an odd situation where Google is on the forefront of all these emerging technologies while the latest chatbots from OpenAI and Anthropic are gett

It's certainly an odd situation where Google is on the forefront of all these emerging technologies while the latest chatbots from OpenAI and Anthropic are getting breathless press releases and wildly hyperbolic coverage ("rogue AIs" "too dangerous, must be banned" etc...) Google acting like a normal but competent company that's just chugging away, meanwhile the hype cycle is propping up its upstart competitors to truly ludicrous valuations.

IanCal 2mo ago
> Google acting like a normal but competent company that's just chugging away, Chugging away not releasing products or releasing ones worse than their competition typically. Not sure that’s what a normal competent company should be doing.
JumpCrisscross 2mo ago
> Google acting like a normal but competent company that's just chugging away Competent is a stretch. Google's AI offering seems to be, once again, PM led–lots of constantly-changing brands being merged and deprecated with zero customer support or service. They'll almost certainly be one of the survivors. Their technical competece is unmatched. But that doesn't mean they have a great product in the way both OpenAI and Anthropic do. (Outside their datacentres, which are a legitimate feat.)
- pants2 2mo ago
  After all this time it's still a pain point just to pay them for a Gemini API key.
  - mountainriver 2mo ago
    So crazy, at one point they had 3 different systems for interacting with Gemini, all with different auth. For a company that prides themselves on the smartest engineers, they really struggle with the basics
    - ben_w 2mo ago
      Mm, however the more I experience of the world, the more I find this matches the description up-thread: > Google acting like a normal but competent company Is it messed up and weird? Yup. Still normal though. Worse, this is matching the baseline of competence I find in so many other places.
    - xnx 2mo ago
      A lot of this is having to incorporate with existing billing systems for their customers. OpenAI and Anthropic have it easier by having no previous billing setup to be compatible with.
- titzer 2mo ago
  Google has never been good at supporting developers, and it absolutely loathes end users. Support for everything that is not their ad ecosystem is miserable. There's never any long term plan, everything gets deprecated and bitrots.
- slashdave 2mo ago
  Don't forget: resources
soulofmischief 2mo ago
Google wins on infrastructure and creativity (NotebookLM, etc) but entirely lacks product coherence. The ecosystem is a mess, just like Microsoft's offering, and I don't think this is a coincidence but rather a symptom of the type of company in which these two companies have evolved. Furthermore, Gemini is just all around a less trustworthy and mature model, for many reasons. Very smart but lacking the precision and holistically exhibited in the more recent models from OpenAI and Anthropic. On the flip side, Google's work on Gemma is unmatched.
- BodyCulture 2mo ago
  Everything would be perfect if only you were CEO of both companies!
  - soulofmischief 2mo ago
    What is the purpose of this comment?
  - IanCal 2mo ago
    I can say a portrait doesn’t look like a person even if I can’t do better, googles product range is an absolute mess and using it is a nightmare - I don’t know how to fix the company but I know the outcome is bad.
    - annzabelle 2mo ago
      I thought Google was a mess until I started working at a Microsoft shop for the first time. Boy it's astonishing. I've got two versions of Outlook on my computer, neither of which is as quick to load as Thunderbird was 20 years ago. My team uses Azure DevOps for our git forge, which is somehow a completely different product than GitHub. There are multiple versions of Planner in Teams, where the free version's features are not a strict subset of the premium - there are features that are blocked if you pay. The thing that gets me with Google is that they've killed too many products I used daily (RIP Inbox and Google Podcasts) for me to be able to trust that any new offering will exist in 5 years.
lII1lIlI11ll 2mo ago
> Google acting like a normal but competent company that's just chugging away People are too quick to forget racially-diverse Nazi soldiers and other hilariously incompetent stuff that has been going around their generative AI efforts just a couple of years ago. Google look like they finally getting their shit together under immense competitive pressure but I would keep my eye on them for a few more years before starting calling them "competent".
Melatonic 2mo ago
I mean they did practically invent LLMs and a lot of modern machine learning stuff. Or I should say researchers at Google. Makes sense they would keep at it
- sumedh 2mo ago
  > I mean they did practically invent LLMs Didn't all those authors leave Google?
azan_ 2mo ago
It’s because their products are really bad. Last time I tried Gemini it repeatedly lied about running internet search when explicitly asked to do it. I know their models benchmark really well, but in real world the performance is abysmal.
- broeng 2mo ago
  Maybe it was just using Google Search, and not finding anything ...
  - azan_ 2mo ago
    It admitted not running any search when pushed on it. Though yeah, google search is so bad right now that I understand why you'd consider that.
sumedh 2mo ago
> Google acting like a normal but competent company I am just waiting for the 10 AI models or Chatbot Apps competing with one another like the 10 messenger Apps.
- spwa4 2mo ago
  Wait? What are you talking about? We're already drowning in them. There's literally more than Google messenger apps. An incomplete list of Google AI chatbots currently online: Gemini Gemini Live Gemini Code Assist Gemini for Google Cloud NotebookLM Gmail Google Docs Google Sheets Google Slides Google Drive Google Chat Google Meet Google Calendar Google Forms Google Vids AppSheet Workspace Studio Google Search Google app Google Chrome Google Lens Google Maps Google Flights Google Hotels Google Shopping Google Photos YouTube Google Messages Google Translate Android Circle to Search Google Home Google Play Pixel apps and features Google Flow Google AI Studio
preg_match 2mo ago
I think it’s because, right now, THE use case for LLMs is computer programming. Everything else has been deranked. And openAI and Anthropic make good models for specifically computer programming. I think LLMs might have other use cases, but all the ones that were dreamt up basically disappeared.

IanCal 2mo ago

> Google acting like a normal but competent company that's just chugging away, Chugging away not releasing products or releasing ones worse than their competition typically. Not sure that’s what a normal competent company should be doing.

JumpCrisscross 2mo ago

> Google acting like a normal but competent company that's just chugging away Competent is a stretch. Google's AI offering seems to be, once again, PM led–lots of constantly-changing brands being merged and deprecated with zero customer support or service. They'll almost certainly be one of the survivors. Their technical competece is unmatched. But that doesn't mean they have a great product in the way both OpenAI and Anthropic do. (Outside their datacentres, which are a legitimate feat.)

pants2 2mo ago
After all this time it's still a pain point just to pay them for a Gemini API key.
- mountainriver 2mo ago
  So crazy, at one point they had 3 different systems for interacting with Gemini, all with different auth. For a company that prides themselves on the smartest engineers, they really struggle with the basics
  - ben_w 2mo ago
    Mm, however the more I experience of the world, the more I find this matches the description up-thread: > Google acting like a normal but competent company Is it messed up and weird? Yup. Still normal though. Worse, this is matching the baseline of competence I find in so many other places.
  - xnx 2mo ago
    A lot of this is having to incorporate with existing billing systems for their customers. OpenAI and Anthropic have it easier by having no previous billing setup to be compatible with.
titzer 2mo ago
Google has never been good at supporting developers, and it absolutely loathes end users. Support for everything that is not their ad ecosystem is miserable. There's never any long term plan, everything gets deprecated and bitrots.
slashdave 2mo ago
Don't forget: resources

soulofmischief 2mo ago

Google wins on infrastructure and creativity (NotebookLM, etc) but entirely lacks product coherence. The ecosystem is a mess, just like Microsoft's offering, and I don't think this is a coincidence but rather a symptom of the type of company in which these two companies have evolved. Furthermore, Gemini is just all around a less trustworthy and mature model, for many reasons. Very smart but lacking the precision and holistically exhibited in the more recent models from OpenAI and Anthropic. On the flip side, Google's work on Gemma is unmatched.

BodyCulture 2mo ago
Everything would be perfect if only you were CEO of both companies!
- soulofmischief 2mo ago
  What is the purpose of this comment?
- IanCal 2mo ago
  I can say a portrait doesn’t look like a person even if I can’t do better, googles product range is an absolute mess and using it is a nightmare - I don’t know how to fix the company but I know the outcome is bad.
  - annzabelle 2mo ago
    I thought Google was a mess until I started working at a Microsoft shop for the first time. Boy it's astonishing. I've got two versions of Outlook on my computer, neither of which is as quick to load as Thunderbird was 20 years ago. My team uses Azure DevOps for our git forge, which is somehow a completely different product than GitHub. There are multiple versions of Planner in Teams, where the free version's features are not a strict subset of the premium - there are features that are blocked if you pay. The thing that gets me with Google is that they've killed too many products I used daily (RIP Inbox and Google Podcasts) for me to be able to trust that any new offering will exist in 5 years.

lII1lIlI11ll 2mo ago

> Google acting like a normal but competent company that's just chugging away People are too quick to forget racially-diverse Nazi soldiers and other hilariously incompetent stuff that has been going around their generative AI efforts just a couple of years ago. Google look like they finally getting their shit together under immense competitive pressure but I would keep my eye on them for a few more years before starting calling them "competent".

Melatonic 2mo ago

I mean they did practically invent LLMs and a lot of modern machine learning stuff. Or I should say researchers at Google. Makes sense they would keep at it

sumedh 2mo ago
> I mean they did practically invent LLMs Didn't all those authors leave Google?

azan_ 2mo ago

It’s because their products are really bad. Last time I tried Gemini it repeatedly lied about running internet search when explicitly asked to do it. I know their models benchmark really well, but in real world the performance is abysmal.

broeng 2mo ago
Maybe it was just using Google Search, and not finding anything ...
- azan_ 2mo ago
  It admitted not running any search when pushed on it. Though yeah, google search is so bad right now that I understand why you'd consider that.

sumedh 2mo ago

> Google acting like a normal but competent company I am just waiting for the 10 AI models or Chatbot Apps competing with one another like the 10 messenger Apps.

spwa4 2mo ago
Wait? What are you talking about? We're already drowning in them. There's literally more than Google messenger apps. An incomplete list of Google AI chatbots currently online: Gemini Gemini Live Gemini Code Assist Gemini for Google Cloud NotebookLM Gmail Google Docs Google Sheets Google Slides Google Drive Google Chat Google Meet Google Calendar Google Forms Google Vids AppSheet Workspace Studio Google Search Google app Google Chrome Google Lens Google Maps Google Flights Google Hotels Google Shopping Google Photos YouTube Google Messages Google Translate Android Circle to Search Google Home Google Play Pixel apps and features Google Flow Google AI Studio

preg_match 2mo ago

I think it’s because, right now, THE use case for LLMs is computer programming. Everything else has been deranked. And openAI and Anthropic make good models for specifically computer programming. I think LLMs might have other use cases, but all the ones that were dreamt up basically disappeared.