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Today I saw one of the most talented engineers I know and worked with leave DeepMind and now I probably know part of the "why". Dark clouds hovering over Google

Today I saw one of the most talented engineers I know and worked with leave DeepMind and now I probably know part of the "why". Dark clouds hovering over Google's AI game.

misiti3780 2mo ago
I disagree - I will be surprised if google doesnt win the AI race long term. They have the money, the chips, and the ability to attract talent.
- gboss 2mo ago
  Ever heard of the innovator’s dilemma? Don’t underestimate the inertia of large companies and their unwillingness to pivot from their cash cow.
  - jerlam 2mo ago
    Google specifically has a track record. You could have made the same argument about social media (Google+) a decade ago.
    - krapht 2mo ago
      social media is a completely different market though - since there are massive returns to scale, it's incredibly hard for a new entrant to break in. model training and inference is the opposite. people switch LLMs like people change clothes in the morning. there are popular services (openrouter) that make moving as easy as changing a model string.
      - rowyourboat 2mo ago
        Which poses the question: Why does Google even need to catch up? At least currently, the name of the game is integration. The actual model is a commodity.
  - andsoitis 2mo ago
    If the new cow doesn’t have cash, it is better to stick to the cow you know.
    - keeda 2mo ago
      Unfortunately the new cow is cannibalizing the old cow, so Google is in a bit of a bind here. (So far I cannot imagine them monetizing AI overviews enough to compensate for the sharp loss of ads on SERPs.) To its credit Google seems willing to disrupt itself before its competitors can.
      - andsoitis 2mo ago
        One option would be to become vegetarian.
        jodrellblank 2mo ago
        You don't eat the cash cow, you milk the cash cow.
  - baq 2mo ago
    Demis will get an offer he can’t refuse - they’ll make him the CEO of Alphabet and have the whole company go all in - the question is when.
    - xnx 2mo ago
      How is the company not "all in" now? Google is going to spend $200B on AI buildout this year.
      - temp_praneshp 2mo ago
        Doesn't mean much for DeepMind if that's spent on Google Cloud, to rent out for Anthropic et al.
- reducesuffering 2mo ago
  > ability to attract talent. No, the top talent is clearly at Anthropic and OpenAI
- hypnodrones 2mo ago
  Agree that I would (and do) still place my bet on them for the long term. Maybe the outcome will be a couple of good startups seeded and DeepMind _really_ focusing on LLMs now.
- DANmode 2mo ago
  They’d be hard pressed to lose, if it’s what they want. They need to route all browser search strings to an LLM, and slowly begin to charge where people will pay. Likely ad space.
- nemomarx 2mo ago
  Are they measurably attracting more talent here? It seems like they're losing some of it right now, so is there public info about numbers of researchers they have or etc
- rdtsc 2mo ago
  I said that too at the start of the year, but that's a looong time in "AI years". I feel like by now they should have announced a Fable-killer model. They may still do it but looking back I am becoming less convinced now than I was 6 months ago.
- logicchains 2mo ago
  They also have the money, the hardware and the talent to be the best cloud infrastructure provider, yet they're still far behind AWS (for good reason, as anyone who's dealt with their customer service will understand).
A_D_E_P_T 2mo ago
> Dark clouds hovering over Google's AI game. It's not really clear what their gameplan is. From the outside, it looks like they're asleep at the wheel. Qwen/Deepseek/Kimi are crushing them from the cheap-and-open side, and they're not remotely competitive with Mythos/Sol or even plain-vanilla Opus on the "premium" tier. Gemini does actually have its uses, but they're very very marginal and niche. From day one everybody was saying that Google would eventually capture the AI market, but it looks more remote than ever. Maybe Hassabis' personal inclination towards AI-for-science, and physics/chemistry in particular -- as opposed to consumer AI and coding AI -- has hurt them commercially.
- mlmonkey 2mo ago
  They are not "asleep at the wheel"; it's just that the people in charge (the "MBA types") have no clue what to do! There's an old saying, if you judge a fish's smarts by how well it can ride a bicycle, it will always seem dumb. The people who have risen to the top of at Google are built for a different environment than what's needed right now. They are good at playing their political games, sabotaging each other, etc.; i.e. all of the petty games that managers play in big companies. But the AI era demands a different skill set: how to bring together incredibly smart people and forge them into a battle group that will achieve victory in the ongoing battle for AGI! It's as if you have built an army of tanks, but the next battle is being fought on the high seas.
  - DANmode 2mo ago
    Boeing has had smart engineers around the entire time, too. The group running the company, is the company.
- thereitgoes456 2mo ago
  I largely agree but I don't know if it's quite so clear cut. From the pricing angle, all competitors except Google, including Chinese models, have incentive to gain market share at all costs, and may be serving tokens at or below cost. I am not sure though, Google could certainly decrease prices if they wanted to. For agentic work, but especially for web search, 3.6 Flash has an important leg up, its fast speed, that no other model comes close to matching. I guess nobody pays attention to it because it's not the one big flashy number that you compare to other models.
artemonster 2mo ago
why?
- deleted 2mo ago
  [deleted]
- hypnodrones 2mo ago
  It seems that people wanting to focus on AI-for-science instead of topping LLM benchmarks don't have a place anymore in DeepMind.
cute_boi 2mo ago
If cursor can train model, I see no reason Google can't do it. They just have to hire more people and try on multiple angle.
dgellow 2mo ago
I’m wondering if they just don’t believe that there is a good business model to be made as a frontier AI lab Edit: hmm, no, they seem to be mentioning AGI and frontier models in https://blog.google/company-news/inside-google/message-ceo/next-chapter-ai-momentum/ https://blog.google/company-news/inside-google/message-ceo/n...
uejfiweun 2mo ago
I think Google realized that it's more profitable to sell compute to AI labs than to make AI. They are not an ideologically driven company like Anthropic. They very much turned into a conventional company that just wants to protect the bottom line. This was evident even back when they had LAMDA and refused to release it.

Today I saw one of the most talented engineers I know and worked with leave DeepMind and now I probably know part of the "why". Dark clouds hovering over Google's AI game.

misiti3780 2mo ago

I disagree - I will be surprised if google doesnt win the AI race long term. They have the money, the chips, and the ability to attract talent.

gboss 2mo ago
Ever heard of the innovator’s dilemma? Don’t underestimate the inertia of large companies and their unwillingness to pivot from their cash cow.
- jerlam 2mo ago
  Google specifically has a track record. You could have made the same argument about social media (Google+) a decade ago.
  - krapht 2mo ago
    social media is a completely different market though - since there are massive returns to scale, it's incredibly hard for a new entrant to break in. model training and inference is the opposite. people switch LLMs like people change clothes in the morning. there are popular services (openrouter) that make moving as easy as changing a model string.
    - rowyourboat 2mo ago
      Which poses the question: Why does Google even need to catch up? At least currently, the name of the game is integration. The actual model is a commodity.
- andsoitis 2mo ago
  If the new cow doesn’t have cash, it is better to stick to the cow you know.
  - keeda 2mo ago
    Unfortunately the new cow is cannibalizing the old cow, so Google is in a bit of a bind here. (So far I cannot imagine them monetizing AI overviews enough to compensate for the sharp loss of ads on SERPs.) To its credit Google seems willing to disrupt itself before its competitors can.
    - andsoitis 2mo ago
      One option would be to become vegetarian.
      - jodrellblank 2mo ago
        You don't eat the cash cow, you milk the cash cow.
- baq 2mo ago
  Demis will get an offer he can’t refuse - they’ll make him the CEO of Alphabet and have the whole company go all in - the question is when.
  - xnx 2mo ago
    How is the company not "all in" now? Google is going to spend $200B on AI buildout this year.
    - temp_praneshp 2mo ago
      Doesn't mean much for DeepMind if that's spent on Google Cloud, to rent out for Anthropic et al.
reducesuffering 2mo ago
> ability to attract talent. No, the top talent is clearly at Anthropic and OpenAI
hypnodrones 2mo ago
Agree that I would (and do) still place my bet on them for the long term. Maybe the outcome will be a couple of good startups seeded and DeepMind _really_ focusing on LLMs now.
DANmode 2mo ago
They’d be hard pressed to lose, if it’s what they want. They need to route all browser search strings to an LLM, and slowly begin to charge where people will pay. Likely ad space.
nemomarx 2mo ago
Are they measurably attracting more talent here? It seems like they're losing some of it right now, so is there public info about numbers of researchers they have or etc
rdtsc 2mo ago
I said that too at the start of the year, but that's a looong time in "AI years". I feel like by now they should have announced a Fable-killer model. They may still do it but looking back I am becoming less convinced now than I was 6 months ago.
logicchains 2mo ago
They also have the money, the hardware and the talent to be the best cloud infrastructure provider, yet they're still far behind AWS (for good reason, as anyone who's dealt with their customer service will understand).

A_D_E_P_T 2mo ago

> Dark clouds hovering over Google's AI game. It's not really clear what their gameplan is. From the outside, it looks like they're asleep at the wheel. Qwen/Deepseek/Kimi are crushing them from the cheap-and-open side, and they're not remotely competitive with Mythos/Sol or even plain-vanilla Opus on the "premium" tier. Gemini does actually have its uses, but they're very very marginal and niche. From day one everybody was saying that Google would eventually capture the AI market, but it looks more remote than ever. Maybe Hassabis' personal inclination towards AI-for-science, and physics/chemistry in particular -- as opposed to consumer AI and coding AI -- has hurt them commercially.

mlmonkey 2mo ago
They are not "asleep at the wheel"; it's just that the people in charge (the "MBA types") have no clue what to do! There's an old saying, if you judge a fish's smarts by how well it can ride a bicycle, it will always seem dumb. The people who have risen to the top of at Google are built for a different environment than what's needed right now. They are good at playing their political games, sabotaging each other, etc.; i.e. all of the petty games that managers play in big companies. But the AI era demands a different skill set: how to bring together incredibly smart people and forge them into a battle group that will achieve victory in the ongoing battle for AGI! It's as if you have built an army of tanks, but the next battle is being fought on the high seas.
- DANmode 2mo ago
  Boeing has had smart engineers around the entire time, too. The group running the company, is the company.
thereitgoes456 2mo ago
I largely agree but I don't know if it's quite so clear cut. From the pricing angle, all competitors except Google, including Chinese models, have incentive to gain market share at all costs, and may be serving tokens at or below cost. I am not sure though, Google could certainly decrease prices if they wanted to. For agentic work, but especially for web search, 3.6 Flash has an important leg up, its fast speed, that no other model comes close to matching. I guess nobody pays attention to it because it's not the one big flashy number that you compare to other models.

artemonster 2mo ago

why?

deleted 2mo ago
[deleted]
hypnodrones 2mo ago
It seems that people wanting to focus on AI-for-science instead of topping LLM benchmarks don't have a place anymore in DeepMind.

cute_boi 2mo ago

If cursor can train model, I see no reason Google can't do it. They just have to hire more people and try on multiple angle.

dgellow 2mo ago

I’m wondering if they just don’t believe that there is a good business model to be made as a frontier AI lab Edit: hmm, no, they seem to be mentioning AGI and frontier models in https://blog.google/company-news/inside-google/message-ceo/next-chapter-ai-momentum/ https://blog.google/company-news/inside-google/message-ceo/n...

uejfiweun 2mo ago

I think Google realized that it's more profitable to sell compute to AI labs than to make AI. They are not an ideologically driven company like Anthropic. They very much turned into a conventional company that just wants to protect the bottom line. This was evident even back when they had LAMDA and refused to release it.