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I still think Google is the only one who has a shot of coming out of this on top. Open AI and Anthropic's whole existence is predicated on some sort of moat, wh

I still think Google is the only one who has a shot of coming out of this on top. Open AI and Anthropic's whole existence is predicated on some sort of moat, which I don't really see them having long term. They've got a bit of a headstart, but that's it. Conversely, AI is just a means to an end for Google - they don't need for their model to be the one to succeed. But, in contrast to the other major company in their position Apple, they do have a model, so they're not totally beholden to another for AI (like Apple is using Gemini!). But beyond that, for training the model they have YouTube, and of course they have their crawler and index, and the billions of users. I think HN skews coding agent focused, but that's not really a market for Google. I expect we will have coding specific models in the future, but Google wants a more general intelligence, to handle search queries, be able to connect email to chat to calendar and tasks, and so on. I don't find Gemini that much worse than the other big models for non-coding things.

B-Con 2mo ago
I read Google's business incentive as "in it to not lose". AI is a new consumer endpoint and Google currently captures a lot of the endpoints. > I think HN skews coding agent focused 100% this. Coding agents are an interesting test ground, but the people who care about them are a fairly small bubble. I think they carry some of the overall AI weight because of the "what if you can vibe code your entire business" moonshot, but that's still orders of magnitude away and who knows if today's coding agents will actually be a stepping stone to that. If we ever get there it will likely be with entirely new domain languages.
computerdork 2mo ago
Agreed:)
treis 2mo ago
I hardly use Google search anymore in favor of ChatGPT. It's surely an existential threat. Google has a lot of layers of defense in Android, Chrome, Gmail/Accounts, and a stranglehold on internet ads. But at the center of that is search and search is being replaced by LLMs.
- ttul 2mo ago
  We are seeing an exponential increase in the share of site traffic to our B2B company originating from ChatGPT and other models. Google Search is cooked.
- paganel 2mo ago
  > I hardly use Google search anymore in favor of ChatGPT. Same here, and I'm generally very skeptical when it comes to AI. It's just that ChatGPT can provide better/more accurate answers, Google seems to have lost the plot. I still use google search when it comes to appending "wiki/wikipedia" to it, i.e. when I use google search just as a redirect to a wikipedia page.
- cogman10 2mo ago
  IMO, this is largely because google made their search next to worthless. They very apparently prioritized making money over returning good relevant results. The decline in quality is so pronounced that I've heard more than a few people talk about using other search engines besides google. I don't think it's extreme to say that Bing is a better search engine than Google at this point and Bing isn't great.
- siva7 2mo ago
  I stopped googling. Chatgpt does better web search than Google Ai.
nostrademons 2mo ago
The leaked internal Google memo "We have no moat" [1] was really prescient. It foresaw all of these proprietary models losing out to open-weight models. Entirely possible that none of the big incumbents ends up winning, economically. [1] https://simonwillison.net/2023/May/4/no-moat/ https://simonwillison.net/2023/May/4/no-moat/
- chrisXOXO 2mo ago
  I would like a reassessment of that. This was 2023. I imagine the only ones filling the moat is Chinese labs, but there are other significant obststacles for even Chinese models. Even if they would become as good as their American counterparts, the distribution and inference is mostly in the ballpark of Anthropic and OpenAI. But I don’t know anything, so I would love to hear other opinions.
  - alfalfasprout 2mo ago
    If anything, it's becoming more true. In the last month you already have Kimi K3 reaching competitive frontier performance (in practice, a bit behind Fable/Sol but close enough). Sure, it's a chinese model but the reality is it puts dramatic pricing pressure on the main players. And these models are now getting good enough to actually help accelerate further AI model research which would suggest the gap might close even more in the near future.
dolmen 2mo ago
What about revenue if people aren't using the search engine directly anymore, also consuming content through chats (not made by them), not on the web where ads are displayed?
alfalfasprout 2mo ago
On the flipside, Apple has realized AI models are quickly becoming a commodity. By not blowing hundreds of billions in speculative capex, they get to focus on the bits that likely have higher ROI: the touchpoints with AI and how it's used.

B-Con 2mo ago

I read Google's business incentive as "in it to not lose". AI is a new consumer endpoint and Google currently captures a lot of the endpoints. > I think HN skews coding agent focused 100% this. Coding agents are an interesting test ground, but the people who care about them are a fairly small bubble. I think they carry some of the overall AI weight because of the "what if you can vibe code your entire business" moonshot, but that's still orders of magnitude away and who knows if today's coding agents will actually be a stepping stone to that. If we ever get there it will likely be with entirely new domain languages.

computerdork 2mo ago

Agreed:)

treis 2mo ago

I hardly use Google search anymore in favor of ChatGPT. It's surely an existential threat. Google has a lot of layers of defense in Android, Chrome, Gmail/Accounts, and a stranglehold on internet ads. But at the center of that is search and search is being replaced by LLMs.

ttul 2mo ago
We are seeing an exponential increase in the share of site traffic to our B2B company originating from ChatGPT and other models. Google Search is cooked.
paganel 2mo ago
> I hardly use Google search anymore in favor of ChatGPT. Same here, and I'm generally very skeptical when it comes to AI. It's just that ChatGPT can provide better/more accurate answers, Google seems to have lost the plot. I still use google search when it comes to appending "wiki/wikipedia" to it, i.e. when I use google search just as a redirect to a wikipedia page.
cogman10 2mo ago
IMO, this is largely because google made their search next to worthless. They very apparently prioritized making money over returning good relevant results. The decline in quality is so pronounced that I've heard more than a few people talk about using other search engines besides google. I don't think it's extreme to say that Bing is a better search engine than Google at this point and Bing isn't great.
siva7 2mo ago
I stopped googling. Chatgpt does better web search than Google Ai.

nostrademons 2mo ago

The leaked internal Google memo "We have no moat" [1] was really prescient. It foresaw all of these proprietary models losing out to open-weight models. Entirely possible that none of the big incumbents ends up winning, economically. [1] https://simonwillison.net/2023/May/4/no-moat/ https://simonwillison.net/2023/May/4/no-moat/

chrisXOXO 2mo ago
I would like a reassessment of that. This was 2023. I imagine the only ones filling the moat is Chinese labs, but there are other significant obststacles for even Chinese models. Even if they would become as good as their American counterparts, the distribution and inference is mostly in the ballpark of Anthropic and OpenAI. But I don’t know anything, so I would love to hear other opinions.
- alfalfasprout 2mo ago
  If anything, it's becoming more true. In the last month you already have Kimi K3 reaching competitive frontier performance (in practice, a bit behind Fable/Sol but close enough). Sure, it's a chinese model but the reality is it puts dramatic pricing pressure on the main players. And these models are now getting good enough to actually help accelerate further AI model research which would suggest the gap might close even more in the near future.

dolmen 2mo ago

What about revenue if people aren't using the search engine directly anymore, also consuming content through chats (not made by them), not on the web where ads are displayed?

alfalfasprout 2mo ago

On the flipside, Apple has realized AI models are quickly becoming a commodity. By not blowing hundreds of billions in speculative capex, they get to focus on the bits that likely have higher ROI: the touchpoints with AI and how it's used.