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I think the 3.8 Flash release shows they are doing just fine at AI. Unlike OpenAI and Anthropomorphic, Google doesn’t have to release new models to capture VC s

I think the 3.8 Flash release shows they are doing just fine at AI. Unlike OpenAI and Anthropomorphic, Google doesn’t have to release new models to capture VC sentiment every three months. They have the hardware, data and money. And when they release a model it’s very good. Now their product strategy however…

alfalfasprout 13d ago
very HN take. Reality is 3.8 flash is good at what it does (being fast + cheap)... but that market is becoming very saturated and google is not competing at all at the frontier where major spend lies.
- Citizen_Lame 13d ago
  So just ignore the reality, that Gemini (and yes even 3.8 Flash) is worst of all major LLMs across most metrics? But that's fine, because reasons?
  - econ 13d ago
    Today search results are a page full of ads. They can't get away with that unless they completely corner down the LLM market. I forget the name but I see one LLM chatbox that looked like one of those old world news media websites plastered from top to bottom with jumpy obnoxious ads. It did offer some good models for free. I honestly might even consider using it if I could remember what it was called. If they turned Gemini into that today I think people would just laugh, shake their head and close the app.
  - ipsod 12d ago
    It's ridiculously fast, and generally very good with real-world knowledge. It's my go-to for anything non-coding, and for quick fixes/questions/prototypes. If metrics measured what most people need from an LLM, it's competitive, IMO, and with their TPU chips, it's probably economically competitive.
jjallen 13d ago
They can be doing fine at AI models but not so well with AI revenue. Although I am curious if they are not worried and playing the long game confident that their distribution will eventually help them catch up (and worst case they own some of Anthropic). But obviously Anthropic and OpenAI have their own distribution now too.
- jjallen 13d ago
  I do wonder if the more they goose their ad business the faster it eventually falls. I know I am more and more reluctant to view many normal Web page ads at all and usually immediately click away the second a site gets annoying
  - ungreased0675 13d ago
    I block ads because I don’t want my family exposed to scams, clickbait, and offensive content. If ads weren’t so annoying, I wouldn’t put too much effort into blocking them.
    - jjallen 12d ago
      I don’t see many these days thankfully. I Use happily YouTube premium and mostly AI for web browsing-equivalent activities.
    - Terr_ 12d ago
      Also: Creepy surveillance, and a delivery mechanism for malware/viruses. Online advertising has completely broken from anything resembling the traditional social-contract of magazine ads, billboard, signs, etc. They're preying on your safety and privacy, not just your attention.
- dspillett 13d ago
  > but not so well with AI revenue Nobody is doing well enough with AI revenue ATM (https://isaiprofitable.com/ https://isaiprofitable.com/). At the moment it is probably more about market share of users, that is where the investment capital will need to be clawed back from when it starts to be called back (or replacement money will need to come from if the investment cycle simply stops giving generously).
soundworlds 13d ago
A large chunk of the population don't use Google to search anymore. They go straight for the GenAIs. That's got to be scaring a lot of managerial folks at Google.
- charmd 13d ago
  Slide 65 of this (very nice) set of slides [1] broke down search vs genAI use to get information. "Mostly genAI was not breaking 25% in all age brackets... Curious to see how that will evolve [1] https://readwise-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/media/wisereads/articles/ai-eats-the-world/1285.pdf https://readwise-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/media/wisereads/art...
  - Gareth321 12d ago
    25% market share after a few years is insane. If this growth continues, Google’s entire business model is under existential threat.
- myko 12d ago
  truly Google's on fault. Their results have been shit for at least 2 years now
- chrischen 12d ago
  The Gen AIs are doing the search for people. So hopefully this forces google to switch their business model from manipulative ads against human users to just charging for API access for Gen AI models.
  - otabdeveloper4 12d ago
    No, Google will just do "product placement" in the AI output. P.S. Google's real problem is that their web search is absolutely atrocious and completely broken. Even Qwen is better at searching the web than Google's AI search box.
franczesko 12d ago
It's not about releasing models. Consumer market share of chatgpt is still >60%, if not more. Their search engine was hit and as soon as product search starts declining on Google this will be a code red. They're in an extreme nicle and dime mode.
rawgabbit 12d ago
Google’s cash cow is ads. I think the writing on the wall is ChatGPT and other AI search engines will dominate. It is to be seen how Google will respond. But in the end, their monopoly on web search is coming to an end.
tomrod 12d ago
I think Google's big bet (and Microsoft's before them) is in centralization of AI services, hosted using their model, and that AI at the edge will always be a bit player. But what I see and hear from technical consumers, businesses, and govts is that they would prefer their data stay local, and like the idea of edge compute being used for AI. Claude/OpenAI's direction with their Apps enabling deeper integration is a good direction, but the trust with data is still a growing concern. OpenAI's math actions on the NS problem degrades their reputation a lot.
- deleted 12d ago
  [deleted]
csomar 12d ago
How are they going to generate revenue if their old model is Ads on search and the new model is yet to show how revenue can be generated. ChatGPT (on free) is showing ads now but they are not targeted and I highly doubt they are worth anything.
- conception 12d ago
  Alphabet just reported another blowout quarter for Google Cloud — revenue jumped 82% year-over-year to $24.8 billion
  - fsh 12d ago
    So after chasing AWS for two decades, they are still dwarved by them.
hadlock 12d ago
open router isn't the whole market, but open router shows google is struggling for market share in the limited window we can see
- dakolli 12d ago
  Openrouter isn't even 00.01% of tokens used on a daily basis. China alone uses 500 Trillion tokens a day and they're only 1/8th of the world. Much of the world has a google account, use your brain.
kamma4434 12d ago
They also invented the whole big data Ai industry, and managed to become a second tier company there. So…
- conception 12d ago
  By what measure? Alphabet just reported another blowout quarter for Google Cloud — revenue jumped 82% year-over-year to $24.8 billion.
  - paganel 12d ago
    Generated via ChatGPT, as google-ing it would have taken too much time: Rank Cloud Approx. annual revenue Growth My assessment 1 AWS ~$129B ~20% Clear leader 2 Microsoft Azure ~$90B ~40%+ Strong #2, rapidly closing 3 Google Cloud ~$59B 36% Fastest-growing historically, but smaller which is to say that Google is still way behind AWS and Azure. Also, lots and lots of people have switched to using AI-interfaces now, I'm not hearing "I've googled that and that's what I found" anymore, it's all "I've chatgpt-ed and this is what it told me".
enraged_camel 12d ago
>> I think the 3.8 Flash release shows they are doing just fine at AI. If you use it for even 15 minutes you will see this is not true. At all.

alfalfasprout 13d ago

very HN take. Reality is 3.8 flash is good at what it does (being fast + cheap)... but that market is becoming very saturated and google is not competing at all at the frontier where major spend lies.

Citizen_Lame 13d ago
So just ignore the reality, that Gemini (and yes even 3.8 Flash) is worst of all major LLMs across most metrics? But that's fine, because reasons?
- econ 13d ago
  Today search results are a page full of ads. They can't get away with that unless they completely corner down the LLM market. I forget the name but I see one LLM chatbox that looked like one of those old world news media websites plastered from top to bottom with jumpy obnoxious ads. It did offer some good models for free. I honestly might even consider using it if I could remember what it was called. If they turned Gemini into that today I think people would just laugh, shake their head and close the app.
- ipsod 12d ago
  It's ridiculously fast, and generally very good with real-world knowledge. It's my go-to for anything non-coding, and for quick fixes/questions/prototypes. If metrics measured what most people need from an LLM, it's competitive, IMO, and with their TPU chips, it's probably economically competitive.

jjallen 13d ago

They can be doing fine at AI models but not so well with AI revenue. Although I am curious if they are not worried and playing the long game confident that their distribution will eventually help them catch up (and worst case they own some of Anthropic). But obviously Anthropic and OpenAI have their own distribution now too.

jjallen 13d ago
I do wonder if the more they goose their ad business the faster it eventually falls. I know I am more and more reluctant to view many normal Web page ads at all and usually immediately click away the second a site gets annoying
- ungreased0675 13d ago
  I block ads because I don’t want my family exposed to scams, clickbait, and offensive content. If ads weren’t so annoying, I wouldn’t put too much effort into blocking them.
  - jjallen 12d ago
    I don’t see many these days thankfully. I Use happily YouTube premium and mostly AI for web browsing-equivalent activities.
  - Terr_ 12d ago
    Also: Creepy surveillance, and a delivery mechanism for malware/viruses. Online advertising has completely broken from anything resembling the traditional social-contract of magazine ads, billboard, signs, etc. They're preying on your safety and privacy, not just your attention.
dspillett 13d ago
> but not so well with AI revenue Nobody is doing well enough with AI revenue ATM (https://isaiprofitable.com/ https://isaiprofitable.com/). At the moment it is probably more about market share of users, that is where the investment capital will need to be clawed back from when it starts to be called back (or replacement money will need to come from if the investment cycle simply stops giving generously).

soundworlds 13d ago

A large chunk of the population don't use Google to search anymore. They go straight for the GenAIs. That's got to be scaring a lot of managerial folks at Google.

charmd 13d ago
Slide 65 of this (very nice) set of slides [1] broke down search vs genAI use to get information. "Mostly genAI was not breaking 25% in all age brackets... Curious to see how that will evolve [1] https://readwise-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/media/wisereads/articles/ai-eats-the-world/1285.pdf https://readwise-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/media/wisereads/art...
- Gareth321 12d ago
  25% market share after a few years is insane. If this growth continues, Google’s entire business model is under existential threat.
myko 12d ago
truly Google's on fault. Their results have been shit for at least 2 years now
chrischen 12d ago
The Gen AIs are doing the search for people. So hopefully this forces google to switch their business model from manipulative ads against human users to just charging for API access for Gen AI models.
- otabdeveloper4 12d ago
  No, Google will just do "product placement" in the AI output. P.S. Google's real problem is that their web search is absolutely atrocious and completely broken. Even Qwen is better at searching the web than Google's AI search box.

franczesko 12d ago

It's not about releasing models. Consumer market share of chatgpt is still >60%, if not more. Their search engine was hit and as soon as product search starts declining on Google this will be a code red. They're in an extreme nicle and dime mode.

rawgabbit 12d ago

Google’s cash cow is ads. I think the writing on the wall is ChatGPT and other AI search engines will dominate. It is to be seen how Google will respond. But in the end, their monopoly on web search is coming to an end.

tomrod 12d ago

I think Google's big bet (and Microsoft's before them) is in centralization of AI services, hosted using their model, and that AI at the edge will always be a bit player. But what I see and hear from technical consumers, businesses, and govts is that they would prefer their data stay local, and like the idea of edge compute being used for AI. Claude/OpenAI's direction with their Apps enabling deeper integration is a good direction, but the trust with data is still a growing concern. OpenAI's math actions on the NS problem degrades their reputation a lot.

deleted 12d ago
[deleted]

csomar 12d ago

How are they going to generate revenue if their old model is Ads on search and the new model is yet to show how revenue can be generated. ChatGPT (on free) is showing ads now but they are not targeted and I highly doubt they are worth anything.

conception 12d ago
Alphabet just reported another blowout quarter for Google Cloud — revenue jumped 82% year-over-year to $24.8 billion
- fsh 12d ago
  So after chasing AWS for two decades, they are still dwarved by them.

hadlock 12d ago

open router isn't the whole market, but open router shows google is struggling for market share in the limited window we can see

dakolli 12d ago
Openrouter isn't even 00.01% of tokens used on a daily basis. China alone uses 500 Trillion tokens a day and they're only 1/8th of the world. Much of the world has a google account, use your brain.

kamma4434 12d ago

They also invented the whole big data Ai industry, and managed to become a second tier company there. So…

conception 12d ago
By what measure? Alphabet just reported another blowout quarter for Google Cloud — revenue jumped 82% year-over-year to $24.8 billion.
- paganel 12d ago
  Generated via ChatGPT, as google-ing it would have taken too much time: Rank Cloud Approx. annual revenue Growth My assessment 1 AWS ~$129B ~20% Clear leader 2 Microsoft Azure ~$90B ~40%+ Strong #2, rapidly closing 3 Google Cloud ~$59B 36% Fastest-growing historically, but smaller which is to say that Google is still way behind AWS and Azure. Also, lots and lots of people have switched to using AI-interfaces now, I'm not hearing "I've googled that and that's what I found" anymore, it's all "I've chatgpt-ed and this is what it told me".

enraged_camel 12d ago

>> I think the 3.8 Flash release shows they are doing just fine at AI. If you use it for even 15 minutes you will see this is not true. At all.