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NYT piece by John Markoff: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/04/technology/google-puts-money-on-robots-using-the-man-behind-android.html http://www.nytimes.com/201

by cryptoz 13y ago

NYT piece by John Markoff: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/04/technology/google-puts-money-on-robots-using-the-man-behind-android.html http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/04/technology/google-puts-mon...

shmageggy 13y ago
And discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6845178 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6845178
mccr8 13y ago
Yeah, this IEEE link is just a blogspam wrapper around the NYT story.
swalsh 13y ago
Google's not an ad company, they're an AI company. Ads just support them as they develop the tech. Articles like this keeps reinforcing that world view for me.
- programminggeek 13y ago
  Nope, Google is an Ad company, they sell ads via tech, but you take away the ads, and Google can't afford to do tech. Almost every product and service they do is to sell ads either directly or indirectly. Even Google Apps is about selling ads. How? Well, if small businesses don't have decent tech infrastructure, they aren't likely going to be using AdWords as much are they and they'll use traditional ads like Yellow Pages. In case you aren't aware, Yellow Page ads and newspaper ads charge hundreds or thousands of dollars per month for minimal effective exposure. Google ads can be much more effective, but good luck selling toe people who can't even get decent email accounts setup for their business. Yeah, $5/user/month is decent money when you have 50+ employees on the system, but that's peanuts compared to the $5,000-10,000+ a month that company is likely paying in advertising. Google desperately wants those kinds of accounts and whether they are building a browser, an operating system, an email service, a social network, or a self driving car, it's always going to come back to selling advertising to businesses because that is worth far more than just about anything else Google can do to make money. Google, like Microsoft and Apple completely understands where they make their money and what business they are in, even if they do a lot of things to make techies happy. It's the ads. Always the ads.
  - swalsh 13y ago
    How is Googles self driving car a ploy for more ads?
    - gaius 13y ago
      Because you'll consume media while your car drives you around.
    - rebel 13y ago
      You have to tell it where to go. Presumably from something similar to a search interface. That will absolutely have some recommendations on it.
    - programminggeek 13y ago
      Hrmmm lots of ways. You could sell ads that tell you about where to eat - Google Now, you could use the glass on the vehicle to project billboards and so forth, or just project ads inside of Google Glass. You could just use it as a way for people to consume more Android apps or read more of the web, both of which make Google money. The point is, it's all a giant machine to sell more ads in various forms. If you think Google won't sell ads on Google Now or Glass or inside the cars, or whatever, then you are kidding yourself.
    - majani 13y ago
      Location data.
  - psbp 13y ago
    I'm much more willing to believe that their new business model is driven by a small Google "tax". It's like Amazon's strategy of sitting on top of online commerce and charging a small fee to make those transactions more efficient (more profitable for both the buyer and seller). Google's ideal world is where you want to use google everything to carry out every transaction. In that world Google Glass, autonomous vehicles, AI, anything that makes commerce more efficient and profitable would benefit google. They want to sit on top of everything rather than just internet white space.

by cryptoz 13y ago

NYT piece by John Markoff: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/04/technology/google-puts-money-on-robots-using-the-man-behind-android.html http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/04/technology/google-puts-mon...

shmageggy 13y ago

And discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6845178 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6845178

mccr8 13y ago

Yeah, this IEEE link is just a blogspam wrapper around the NYT story.

swalsh 13y ago

Google's not an ad company, they're an AI company. Ads just support them as they develop the tech. Articles like this keeps reinforcing that world view for me.

programminggeek 13y ago
Nope, Google is an Ad company, they sell ads via tech, but you take away the ads, and Google can't afford to do tech. Almost every product and service they do is to sell ads either directly or indirectly. Even Google Apps is about selling ads. How? Well, if small businesses don't have decent tech infrastructure, they aren't likely going to be using AdWords as much are they and they'll use traditional ads like Yellow Pages. In case you aren't aware, Yellow Page ads and newspaper ads charge hundreds or thousands of dollars per month for minimal effective exposure. Google ads can be much more effective, but good luck selling toe people who can't even get decent email accounts setup for their business. Yeah, $5/user/month is decent money when you have 50+ employees on the system, but that's peanuts compared to the $5,000-10,000+ a month that company is likely paying in advertising. Google desperately wants those kinds of accounts and whether they are building a browser, an operating system, an email service, a social network, or a self driving car, it's always going to come back to selling advertising to businesses because that is worth far more than just about anything else Google can do to make money. Google, like Microsoft and Apple completely understands where they make their money and what business they are in, even if they do a lot of things to make techies happy. It's the ads. Always the ads.
- swalsh 13y ago
  How is Googles self driving car a ploy for more ads?
  - gaius 13y ago
    Because you'll consume media while your car drives you around.
  - rebel 13y ago
    You have to tell it where to go. Presumably from something similar to a search interface. That will absolutely have some recommendations on it.
  - programminggeek 13y ago
    Hrmmm lots of ways. You could sell ads that tell you about where to eat - Google Now, you could use the glass on the vehicle to project billboards and so forth, or just project ads inside of Google Glass. You could just use it as a way for people to consume more Android apps or read more of the web, both of which make Google money. The point is, it's all a giant machine to sell more ads in various forms. If you think Google won't sell ads on Google Now or Glass or inside the cars, or whatever, then you are kidding yourself.
  - majani 13y ago
    Location data.
- psbp 13y ago
  I'm much more willing to believe that their new business model is driven by a small Google "tax". It's like Amazon's strategy of sitting on top of online commerce and charging a small fee to make those transactions more efficient (more profitable for both the buyer and seller). Google's ideal world is where you want to use google everything to carry out every transaction. In that world Google Glass, autonomous vehicles, AI, anything that makes commerce more efficient and profitable would benefit google. They want to sit on top of everything rather than just internet white space.