3 ms·

There is no other way to describe the Gemini 3.5 pro delay than as a complete and unmitigated disaster. It's a huge company. It's unlikely there is any one pe

There is no other way to describe the Gemini 3.5 pro delay than as a complete and unmitigated disaster. It's a huge company. It's unlikely there is any one person to blame (and entirely possible he has none of it). But things need to change.

sigmoid10 2mo ago
Google was always at the frontier of real research, but has been abysmal at shipping good products (at least since Sundar). The core company is run for margins and interest rates by the business people nowadays.
- mynameisjonny_ 2mo ago
  Gemini 3.1-pro was genuinely SOTA for a few weeks, in fairness
  - deleted 2mo ago
    [deleted]
- DannyBee 2mo ago
  So they are fixing this by letting go of the people who were best at the research side, and therefore will have no problem converting "nothing" into products anymore!
tanh 2mo ago
Yeah. I’m guessing they’re behind the Chinese models in capability now
- chanux 2mo ago
  Just today my Pixel failed to do the right thing on "Set an alarm in 15 minutes" thanks to Gemini. This has worked reliably since Google Assistant was introduced.
  - 27183 2mo ago
    "Hey Siri, find me gas stations along my route" routinely fails now. That worked great for years. Total clown show.
overfeed 2mo ago
> But things need to change. Not all change is good, as proven by Zuckerberg's response after the lackluster Llama 4 release. The radical restructuring appears to have made things worse.
- ignoramous 2mo ago
  How? Muse Spark 1.1 is a huge step up from Llama 4 & competitive with xAI's Grok 4.5. In another 3 to 4 releases, MSL might very well be challenging Ant & OAI. Moonshot, despite their comparatively limited resources, has already demonstrated that the Big 2 aren't invincible.
  - Mr_Eri_Atlov 2mo ago
    As someone who has worn Meta Glasses for about a year, AI is not Meta's strength
  - htrp 2mo ago
    Meta did not blow up their entire AI Org to be the 5th or 6th place model https://artificialanalysis.ai/models/muse-spark https://artificialanalysis.ai/models/muse-spark
pixl97 2mo ago
Huge companies tend to make money from network effects, rent seeking, and lock in. They tend to be horrifically bad when it comes to innovation, especially when it may disrupt exiting departments in the company. Those departments will fight for their life and generally muck things up. Very few companies have leadership that can prevent this infighting and force teams on directed goals.
godwinson__4-8 2mo ago
People keep saying the same thing about Google lagging behind and always end up looking rather silly. Google was going to lose search to OpenAI. Then people complained there was too much AI in Google search. Now it's pretty good and par for the course. Yes it's a huge company. So they are slower. Then they will surface it across their massive product base and keep generating cash. While having a hand in Anthropic and others via investment anyway. Google doesn't need to offer you the bleeding edge at startup pace. They're playing a different game. When the bubble pops they will be well positioned really no matter the outcome to continue to capitalize as their competitors implode or get absorbed. The idea a delay is a "complete and unmitigated disaster" is just laughable. People have been saying this about Google since ChatGPT first invaded the public consciousness. Google will continue to do well, the histrionics of people like you aside.
- asdfman123 2mo ago
  That's one thing everyone needs to remember. AI is here to stay, but the bubble IS going to pop. This level of spending is unsustainable. Soon the market will readjust and the amount of money we spend on AI will return to sane levels. Google has multiple cash firehouses, the small AI companies do not.
- tiahura 2mo ago
  Apparently Sundar thought it was a problem.
  - godwinson__4-8 2mo ago
    Obviously a delay is a problem. Did he say a "complete and unmitigated disaster"? No, because he's not a fool. If he had said that the correct response would have been to question his sanity.
EthanHeilman 2mo ago
I disagree. Google is one of the few parties that can monetize AI because Google has a massive moat in the form of their products: gmail, chrome, photos, search, etc... and Google already has the custom-built chips and datacenters. Google spending money on competing head to head with your LLMs is a waste of money for Google. If anthropic wins, Google copies their approach, buys anthropic for cheap or both. All the investors throwing money into OpenAI, Anthropic, are just accidentally subsidizing Google's product development. Google shouldn't spend its AI research capital in an arms race with Anthropic but instead should invest in AI approaches that no one else is investigating at scale. That way Google can hedge against LLMs hitting a wall. There is a real but small danger to Google that Anthropic replaces Google as a search engine, but that is an uphill fight for Anthropic. Google has massive brand recognition, network effects with gmail and chrome, Anthropic can't just copy what works from Google. On the other hand Google can copy what works for Anthropic. Google would have to play poorly to lose that fight. Probably the worse case for Google is that software becomes so cheap and easy to create and maintain that all of Google's product offerings become commoditized. Even in that world Google has a lock on infrastructure. Perhaps ASI software creation completely removes that as well? If so we are living in a post-singularity world and probably the stockmarket doesn't exist anymore either.
- asdfman123 2mo ago
  And Gemini seems about as good as a search engine as any of the other LLMs, if you use them casually. And Google has the brand-name recognition. Right now AI companies are competing to make LLMs better at graduate-school level tasks. They all can already competently tell you what the weather is going to be like tomorrow or when the first Led Zeppelin album was released.
  - EthanHeilman 2mo ago
    Gemini seems like a better search engine than the alternatives because it has access to Google's massive crawler feeds. I think Google could charge 30 dollars month for Gemini + all the data Google has locked up (Scholar, Books, crawled webpages, Google Groups, Usenet archives + search of your personalized datasets such as calendars, photos, emails, docs, slides, etc...). I'd pay that easily.

sigmoid10 2mo ago

Google was always at the frontier of real research, but has been abysmal at shipping good products (at least since Sundar). The core company is run for margins and interest rates by the business people nowadays.

mynameisjonny_ 2mo ago
Gemini 3.1-pro was genuinely SOTA for a few weeks, in fairness
- deleted 2mo ago
  [deleted]
DannyBee 2mo ago
So they are fixing this by letting go of the people who were best at the research side, and therefore will have no problem converting "nothing" into products anymore!

tanh 2mo ago

Yeah. I’m guessing they’re behind the Chinese models in capability now

chanux 2mo ago
Just today my Pixel failed to do the right thing on "Set an alarm in 15 minutes" thanks to Gemini. This has worked reliably since Google Assistant was introduced.
- 27183 2mo ago
  "Hey Siri, find me gas stations along my route" routinely fails now. That worked great for years. Total clown show.

overfeed 2mo ago

> But things need to change. Not all change is good, as proven by Zuckerberg's response after the lackluster Llama 4 release. The radical restructuring appears to have made things worse.

ignoramous 2mo ago
How? Muse Spark 1.1 is a huge step up from Llama 4 & competitive with xAI's Grok 4.5. In another 3 to 4 releases, MSL might very well be challenging Ant & OAI. Moonshot, despite their comparatively limited resources, has already demonstrated that the Big 2 aren't invincible.
- Mr_Eri_Atlov 2mo ago
  As someone who has worn Meta Glasses for about a year, AI is not Meta's strength
- htrp 2mo ago
  Meta did not blow up their entire AI Org to be the 5th or 6th place model https://artificialanalysis.ai/models/muse-spark https://artificialanalysis.ai/models/muse-spark

pixl97 2mo ago

Huge companies tend to make money from network effects, rent seeking, and lock in. They tend to be horrifically bad when it comes to innovation, especially when it may disrupt exiting departments in the company. Those departments will fight for their life and generally muck things up. Very few companies have leadership that can prevent this infighting and force teams on directed goals.

godwinson__4-8 2mo ago

People keep saying the same thing about Google lagging behind and always end up looking rather silly. Google was going to lose search to OpenAI. Then people complained there was too much AI in Google search. Now it's pretty good and par for the course. Yes it's a huge company. So they are slower. Then they will surface it across their massive product base and keep generating cash. While having a hand in Anthropic and others via investment anyway. Google doesn't need to offer you the bleeding edge at startup pace. They're playing a different game. When the bubble pops they will be well positioned really no matter the outcome to continue to capitalize as their competitors implode or get absorbed. The idea a delay is a "complete and unmitigated disaster" is just laughable. People have been saying this about Google since ChatGPT first invaded the public consciousness. Google will continue to do well, the histrionics of people like you aside.

asdfman123 2mo ago
That's one thing everyone needs to remember. AI is here to stay, but the bubble IS going to pop. This level of spending is unsustainable. Soon the market will readjust and the amount of money we spend on AI will return to sane levels. Google has multiple cash firehouses, the small AI companies do not.
tiahura 2mo ago
Apparently Sundar thought it was a problem.
- godwinson__4-8 2mo ago
  Obviously a delay is a problem. Did he say a "complete and unmitigated disaster"? No, because he's not a fool. If he had said that the correct response would have been to question his sanity.

EthanHeilman 2mo ago

I disagree. Google is one of the few parties that can monetize AI because Google has a massive moat in the form of their products: gmail, chrome, photos, search, etc... and Google already has the custom-built chips and datacenters. Google spending money on competing head to head with your LLMs is a waste of money for Google. If anthropic wins, Google copies their approach, buys anthropic for cheap or both. All the investors throwing money into OpenAI, Anthropic, are just accidentally subsidizing Google's product development. Google shouldn't spend its AI research capital in an arms race with Anthropic but instead should invest in AI approaches that no one else is investigating at scale. That way Google can hedge against LLMs hitting a wall. There is a real but small danger to Google that Anthropic replaces Google as a search engine, but that is an uphill fight for Anthropic. Google has massive brand recognition, network effects with gmail and chrome, Anthropic can't just copy what works from Google. On the other hand Google can copy what works for Anthropic. Google would have to play poorly to lose that fight. Probably the worse case for Google is that software becomes so cheap and easy to create and maintain that all of Google's product offerings become commoditized. Even in that world Google has a lock on infrastructure. Perhaps ASI software creation completely removes that as well? If so we are living in a post-singularity world and probably the stockmarket doesn't exist anymore either.

asdfman123 2mo ago
And Gemini seems about as good as a search engine as any of the other LLMs, if you use them casually. And Google has the brand-name recognition. Right now AI companies are competing to make LLMs better at graduate-school level tasks. They all can already competently tell you what the weather is going to be like tomorrow or when the first Led Zeppelin album was released.
- EthanHeilman 2mo ago
  Gemini seems like a better search engine than the alternatives because it has access to Google's massive crawler feeds. I think Google could charge 30 dollars month for Gemini + all the data Google has locked up (Scholar, Books, crawled webpages, Google Groups, Usenet archives + search of your personalized datasets such as calendars, photos, emails, docs, slides, etc...). I'd pay that easily.