[HN Gopher] Google's two-year frenzy to catch up with OpenAI
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       Google's two-year frenzy to catch up with OpenAI
        
       Author : totaldude87
       Score  : 141 points
       Date   : 2025-03-21 15:44 UTC (5 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.wired.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.wired.com)
        
       | uejfiweun wrote:
       | Google screwed up so massively in this whole AI race. It blows my
       | mind that they had the technology available internally years
       | before OpenAI released ChatGPT but didn't do anything with it and
       | in fact lost top talent due to their hesitation to release it (as
       | the article states about Noam Shazeer). And now, for basically
       | every non-techie person, ChatGPT is synonymous with AI in the
       | same way that Google was synonymous with search. What a disaster.
       | Quite frankly shocked that their executive team is still in
       | place.
        
         | DSingularity wrote:
         | Maybe this "screw up" delayed LLMs by years and gave them more
         | years to milk the cow.
        
         | empiko wrote:
         | To be honest there were several chatbots before ChatGPT, eg
         | Galactica by Microsoft, and it had not seem so promising.
         | Similarly, ChatGPT was originally released as more or less a
         | fun little demo, and the absolute success was surprise for
         | OpenAI as well .
         | 
         | They probably managed to hit certain UX threshold where people
         | start to find the chatting valuable/interesting, but this was
         | really an accidental discovery.
        
           | kridsdale1 wrote:
           | Sometimes virality is a total fluke of the moment. For
           | instance Zoom happened to be what teachers told each other
           | about when lockdowns started.
           | 
           | That could have been webx or meet or whatever.
        
         | benatkin wrote:
         | Guess they didn't need _that_ top talent in the long run, they
         | had plenty of their own top talent
         | 
         | https://polymarket.com/event/which-company-has-best-ai-model...
        
       | cratermoon wrote:
       | Deepseek showed us that the easiest way to catch up with OpenAI
       | is.. <checks notes> hiring programmers who know what they are
       | doing.
        
         | onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
         | Right, because Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, and X all don't
         | have anyone who knows what they are doing - and also none of
         | them had the bright idea to hire anyone who knows what they are
         | doing either...
         | 
         | I'm going to go out on a limb and say it's not that reductive.
        
           | alecco wrote:
           | I think he missed adding: and let them do their job and be
           | smart managing the resources by themselves.
           | 
           | Pichai & co put a borderline-communist quota system and it
           | became a popularity contest to get a tiny slice extra of
           | compute. And then OpenAI ate their lunch (Google tech).
        
         | MostlyStable wrote:
         | I still think that Deepseek was mostly dramatically overblown.
         | It was 6-9 months behind the performance of the best frontier
         | models at a dramatically lower cost.....but dramatically lower
         | costs 6-9 months behind is basically what has been happening
         | for a couple of years.
         | 
         | I'm mostly convinced that the only reason that it blew up was
         | that it was the first _Chinese_ model that was even in the same
         | ballpark as the American frontier models, which drove a lot of
         | reporting, which caused a lot of normies that hadn 't tried any
         | AI model since CHatGPT very first blew up to try it and they
         | were (understandably) blown away by the progress relative to
         | what they remembered from 2 years previously.
        
           | HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
           | The timing seems to indicate that the mainstream press
           | publicity over DeepSeek R1 was due to an NVidia short
           | recommendation that had just gone viral, not about the
           | disclosed cost (which related to V3, not R1).
           | 
           | However, there also seems to have been some genuine panic at
           | OpenAI, maybe elsewhere too, over DeepSeek R1 since not only
           | did they come close to matching the performance of o1, but
           | they also described exactly how they did it (apparently very
           | similar to what OpenAI had done, judging from the reaction),
           | and therefore killed any competitive lead that OpenAI - who
           | had been working on it for a long time - may have thought
           | they had.
        
       | mitchbob wrote:
       | https://archive.ph/NQqCj
        
       | adaptbrian wrote:
       | We need more ai overviews because look at all the likes! ......
       | (word to the wise it's a simple link traffic siphon on
       | advertisers)
       | 
       | Kent W. said to hurry up, hmm I could only wonder why, what could
       | he possibly see on the legal horizon.
        
       | dsabanin wrote:
       | I was skeptical at first, but I think Google's catch up game with
       | OpenAI has been going pretty well so far. Gemini 2.0 Pro and
       | Flash models are really nice. Deep research feature is done
       | really well. Context window is still the best in the industry.
       | Integration with search, gmail, google office suite, google meet,
       | android, etc.
       | 
       | They finally have good enough models that lets them leverage
       | their existing portfolio of products, their cloud infrastructure
       | and how embedded they are in the modern work life.
       | 
       | Plus, unlike Apple, they are not as restricted in their access to
       | the training data, because of their much less principled privacy
       | stance.
        
         | donny2018 wrote:
         | Technologically they may have caught up, but market wise they
         | may have lost forever. In my country (and I think in many
         | others), ChatGPT is already a household name, and nobody has
         | even heard about Gemini.
         | 
         | This looks like the Google+ vs Facebook story all over again.
        
           | mprev wrote:
           | Isn't this more like Teams vs Slack or Zoom?
           | 
           | Consumer brand recognition isn't the issue. Bundling with
           | Workspace might be.
        
           | j_maffe wrote:
           | Chatbots are not social media platforms. Also the vast
           | majority of expected revenue from this industry is not from
           | casual paying users, it's from other companies who will
           | optimize for performance and price.
        
             | riku_iki wrote:
             | Chatbots are clear replacement for search with all
             | implications and huge revenue for winner.
        
               | nukem222 wrote:
               | How do you figure? Chatbots don't cite their sources
               | (unless you explicitly set up an RAG); search engines do.
               | What value does the former have?
               | 
               | Chatbots seem more useful for stuff like generating
               | filler and changing tone.
        
               | kridsdale1 wrote:
               | Right. A few years from now these will all have figured
               | out insidious ad insertion techniques and the economics
               | will be very different.
        
             | bossyTeacher wrote:
             | That makes Google and Microsoft the winners then. It's not
             | out yet but once Microsoft manages to fully catch to the
             | state of the art in LLM, OpenAI wo't be needed and that
             | will definitely be the final nail in the coffin for them
        
           | stormfather wrote:
           | But Google is _the_ household name. All they have to do is
           | bring Gemini inside Google before people stop using
           | traditional search.
        
             | browningstreet wrote:
             | They had that. Gemini was inside the Google app. Now it's
             | its own app. So not sure how their thinking aligns with
             | your suggestion.
        
             | Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
             | Too bad Google managed to burn almost all goodwill they had
             | 20 years ago. I am amoung many people who would use their
             | AI products only as the _last resort,_ just like I do with
             | search and browsers.
        
               | coliveira wrote:
               | And this is correct, because if Google takes over AI, it
               | will kill it just like they're killing search results.
               | For Google, selling ads is THE most important thing, so
               | they will relegate AI results to a little corner of the
               | page where no-one will care about.
        
               | Spooky23 wrote:
               | I have a colleague who is still pissed off about Google
               | Reader. Nobody cares. The happy days of fun times with
               | Google Labs in 2005 are the equivalent of my dad missing
               | his 1965 Firebird when I was high school. 60% of the
               | audience here doesn't even know what you're talking
               | about.
               | 
               | If you're doing serious work in a fast mover space and
               | are refusing to understand a major player, you're putting
               | yourself at a disadvantage.
        
           | koakuma-chan wrote:
           | From my experience people use "ChatGPT" to refer to LLMs in
           | general.
        
             | vosper wrote:
             | How many of those people are using an LLM other than one
             | supplied by OpenAI?
        
               | selectodude wrote:
               | I do. "Claude" doesn't really tell people much.
               | Anthropic, even less.
        
               | cruffle_duffle wrote:
               | Claude is an awful product name, too. I hate telling
               | people that I generally use this thing called "Claude"
               | which "is like ChatGPT but better".
        
               | koakuma-chan wrote:
               | I see what you're trying to say, but I've personally been
               | warned many times by normies "do not use ChatGPT," as if
               | it would be fine if I used Claude instead.
        
           | therein wrote:
           | ChatGPT may be a household name but it is noticeably
           | inferior. I haven't encountered a single ChatGPT subscriber
           | that didn't cancel their OpenAI subscription in favor of a
           | Claude or Grok one after a single session with them.
           | 
           | ChatGPT is the most spineless chatbot out there. It stands
           | for nothing, has no confidence in any claims it makes. It
           | will apologize and backtrack on a whim. But with Claude and
           | Grok, you can't just tell it it is wrong and get it to
           | apologize. You actually have to have a point, the chatbot
           | will defend its perspective if challenged without basis.
        
           | HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
           | Teenagers are using Snapchat's "My AI", and have no idea that
           | it's from OpenAI. I don't think people are using ChatGPT out
           | of brand loyalty/preference as much as inertia - they stick
           | to what they first tried unless given reason to switch.
           | 
           | At the end of the day the money to be made from AI won't be
           | $20/mo personal chatbot subscriptions, but corporate and app-
           | integrated (e.g. Cursor) use where the usage is potentially
           | far higher. Companies will chose their faceless AI provider
           | based on cost and capability.
        
             | tehjoker wrote:
             | can confirm that when i wanted to try using deepseek
             | inertia kept me using chatgpt for a few weeks longer
        
             | SunlitCat wrote:
             | Well, personally I started out with gemini (when it still
             | was called bard or something like that) but switched over
             | to a paid ChatGPT subscription.
        
               | HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
               | That's an understandable switch, but I expect that if you
               | were starting today with something much more capable,
               | such as Gemini 2.0 Flash, or Anthropic's Claude, you'd
               | probably find no reason to explore alternatives.
        
               | paul7986 wrote:
               | As of now and past six to 8 months Im a happy GPT pro
               | subscriber. I tried Gemini and asked it show images from
               | Google images (a few weeks ago) of XYZ and pathetically
               | it said it couldnt do it but GPT can.
               | 
               | Rooting for GPT and hoping for a GPT phone where the lock
               | screen is where you interface with your AI Assistant /
               | Agent. It also interfaces with other AI Agents
               | (businesses, family members, friends, etc) to get things
               | done for you automagically. You can skin your AI
               | Assistant / Agent to look like whoever you want.
        
             | skyyler wrote:
             | Are teenagers still using Snapchat?
             | 
             | The teenagers that made the bulk of its users when it was
             | new are in their late 20s now.
        
               | decimalenough wrote:
               | Yup, they are, their DAUs are steadily marching up.
        
               | nukem222 wrote:
               | I'm assuming they've filled the app with ads by now?
        
               | parliament32 wrote:
               | Surprisingly, there aren't any, unless you go doom-scroll
               | the celebrity stories. The only thing I get is an
               | occasional IAP upsell to their premium features.
        
               | femiagbabiaka wrote:
               | It's way more ubiquitous now than it was when I was using
               | it in college in the 2010s. An underrated growth story
               | IMO.
        
               | _--__--__ wrote:
               | My extended family (mostly people in that late 20s
               | through early 40s range) use a snapchat group to share
               | the kind of videos of our kids that most would appreciate
               | seeing but which really don't belong on normal social
               | media
        
               | danesparza wrote:
               | Sick burn.
        
               | skyyler wrote:
               | Wasn't a burn, I was actually asking.
        
               | matthewdgreen wrote:
               | Yes they're using Snapchat. But based on the data points
               | from my kids and their friends, they hate hate hate the
               | AI and think it's creepy.
        
               | eitally wrote:
               | Snap is the default chat app in high schools in the US.
               | The second is Instagram. The third is a fallback to SMS /
               | iMessage. I personally have never seen a teen using a
               | third party chat app (like Whatsapp/Telegram/Signal/etc).
               | 
               | (I have 14 & 16 year olds, neither of whom have social
               | media. It _really_ is unpleasant for them sometimes,
               | trying to keep up with JIT event logistics carried out on
               | Snap.)
        
           | rtkwe wrote:
           | There's a lot less network effects in the chatbot space. It
           | doesn't really matter what your friends are using so it's way
           | easier to get people to switch by being better. Not saying
           | there's no benefit to ChatGPT's position but it's not like
           | Google+ vs Facebook because they don't need spontaneous mass
           | adoption to make it useful to people like they did with
           | Google+.
        
             | crazygringo wrote:
             | For general knowledge questions, sure.
             | 
             | But there are going to be huge network effects in terms of
             | your _personal data_ , which includes communications with
             | friends.
             | 
             | If you use Gmail/Google Calendar/Docs/Drive, and ChatGPT
             | can't tell you anything, but Gemini helps you with all the
             | data in your life... that's a _gigantic_ network effect.
             | 
             | Network effects aren't just about friends. They're about
             | file formats, productivity suites, and ultimately
             | _compatibility_.
        
               | rtkwe wrote:
               | That's a point in Google's favor but it's not really what
               | "network effect" (traditionally) means.
               | 
               | Network effect is a specific term about the increasing
               | utility of a service as more people use compatible
               | services, it's explicitly about users other than
               | yourself.
               | 
               | You're describing something more like having an
               | integrated ecosystem a la Apple's walled garden where
               | things work great with other Apple products (notification
               | hand off etc).
        
               | nukem222 wrote:
               | > but Gemini helps you with all the data in your life
               | 
               | None of my data is in google's cloud (for obvious
               | reasons) except gmail, which contains far less of my life
               | than you might think. Most of my friends outside of work
               | use icloud. google will need to figure out how to access
               | other silos if they want their chatbot to move forward.
               | 
               | Google has no access to what music I like, what movies I
               | like, what books I read, who I am friends with and why,
               | what values I have and why I pursue them. That's a rough
               | place to start as this is the center of my personality.
               | 
               | Gmail is google's ace in the hole. If they can't figure
               | out how to exploit that gemini will just be the android
               | version of siri (which is already the case, right?)
        
               | crazygringo wrote:
               | Well sure, that's why Siri is going to hold an advantage
               | with iCloud users (if Apple can catch up), and Microsoft
               | will have an advantage with Office users. Those are the
               | three major ecosystems.
        
               | nukem222 wrote:
               | A slight advantage, sure, but apple is trapped by the
               | same thing. Neither of their products actually required
               | full buy in of the ecosystem to exploit until now. It was
               | just nice (eg airpods have a nicer pairing experience
               | than other bluetooth devices--infuriating, but ultimately
               | ignorable)
        
           | rdtsc wrote:
           | > ChatGPT is already a household name, and nobody has even
           | heard about Gemini.
           | 
           | Just yesterday I polled my household, the 8 year old knew
           | about ChatGPT and "China's R1". The teenager knew ChatGPT and
           | Google's was a bit hard to remember but eventually they did
           | remember "Gemini", however they didn't know about R1. Both
           | kids consider Siri and Alexa in the same category for Apple
           | and Amazon, respectively. They don't know what Meta/Facebook
           | have at all.
        
           | xnx wrote:
           | > This looks like the Google+ vs Facebook story all over
           | again.
           | 
           | Lock-in and network effects with social _networks_ are very
           | strong. Facebook, Twitter, and eBay only have to be good-
           | enough.
           | 
           | Lock-in and network effects with current AI tools is almost
           | zero. People will readily switch to Gemini once they realize
           | it can do their work better.
        
             | babelfish wrote:
             | > once they realize it can do their work better Citation
             | needed? Google's Deep Research tool is considerably worse
             | than OpenAI's (I haven't tried Perplexity or Groks). They
             | don't have anything like Operator. I pay for Gemini and
             | it's feature within the productivity suite almost never
             | work the way I want them to. They can still win, but OpenAI
             | is eating their lunch.
        
               | xnx wrote:
               | Probably varies with individual use case, but Gemini 2.5
               | currently #1 here: https://lmarena.ai/?leaderboard=
        
             | og_kalu wrote:
             | >Lock-in and network effects with current AI tools is
             | almost zero. People will readily switch to Gemini once they
             | realize it can do their work better.
             | 
             | Lock-in for search engines should be near zero and yet
             | people won't bother switching to or even trying potentially
             | better options. At the end of the day, people don't leave
             | what they are used to easily.
        
               | chubot wrote:
               | This is largely a browser UI and browser control issue
               | though
               | 
               | There's a reason google pays both Apple and Mozilla
               | billions to be the default on Safari and Firefox. And why
               | MS makes its own browser, as a complement to its search
               | engine
               | 
               | So yeah I wonder if this same dynamic plays out for AI,
               | or if something else happens. I guess Google hopes it
               | will, and that's one reason they show AI answers about
               | the search results now
        
               | weatherlite wrote:
               | I don't think there's a better search engine than Google,
               | there I said it. Sure it's filled with spam, but I find
               | it hard to believe something like Bing is more likely to
               | give me what I'm searching for than Google. Its more than
               | just a search engine, I use it for routes (maps), bus and
               | train times, finding businesses close to me etc etc. It
               | became a whole ecosystem that's not going to be that easy
               | for a rival to outperform. The few times I tried Bing it
               | looked very low quality compared to Google.
               | 
               | And even if Bing improved immensely, it just took them
               | way too long. 20 years after Google is just too late to
               | the party. I have really formed a habit quite strong now
               | that I need a compelling reason to switch to
               | Bing/Whatever - and what is that reason again?
               | 
               | This is simply not the case with ChatGPT / Gemini. They
               | are likely equal now, so Google was perhaps 1-2 years
               | late to the party. I think many people haven't formed a
               | strong habit yet of which A.I to use.
        
               | og_kalu wrote:
               | I don't think there's anything better either but i
               | haven't actually tested any other search engine in years
               | so what do i know right ?
               | 
               | Unless a search engine blows google out of the water and
               | gets everyone talking, switching won't even be on the
               | table. Why bother switching for something that is just as
               | good or slightly better if you've been using your current
               | option for a while ? Consumers are much stickier than
               | that.
        
               | crazygringo wrote:
               | > _Lock-in for search engines should be near zero and yet
               | people won 't bother switching to or even trying
               | potentially better options._
               | 
               | What are you talking about? People use Google because
               | they choose it.
               | 
               | They change search from the Bing default as one of the
               | first things they do on a new machine.
               | 
               | For most users there _isn 't_ anything better than
               | Google. The niche search needs that might lead a HN user
               | to an alternative engine don't apply.
        
               | og_kalu wrote:
               | >What are you talking about? People use Google because
               | they choose it. They change search from the Bing default
               | as one of the first things they do on a new machine. For
               | most users there isn't anything better than Google. The
               | niche search needs that might lead a HN user to an
               | alternative engine don't apply.
               | 
               | I'm not sure what's hard to understand with what i'm
               | saying? You think the users changing the default from
               | Bing did so after a lengthy evaluation of quality ? No,
               | they did it because they're used to Google. It's that
               | simple. It's not even about whether google is truly the
               | best or not.
        
               | crazygringo wrote:
               | > _No, they did it because they 're used to Google. It's
               | that simple. It's not even about whether google is truly
               | the best or not._
               | 
               | Except it's _not_. Remember how everyone switched to
               | Altavista in 1996 because it was so much better? Remember
               | how Yahoo took over in 1999 because it was so much
               | better? Remember how people switched to Google in 2003
               | because it was so much better?
               | 
               | History shows people actually _do_ switch search engines
               | _when there 's a better one_. And they do so _quickly_. I
               | mean, look at how quickly people adopted ChatGPT for
               | _some_ of the things they used to do with Google!
               | 
               | They're not switching away from Google now for regular
               | serach simply because _there isn 't a better one_ for
               | most people.
               | 
               | You have zero evidence for claiming it's because they're
               | "used to Google". People didn't stay with Altavista or
               | Yahoo because they were "used to them". So why would that
               | be any different for Google? The answer it that it's
               | _not_.
        
               | avgd wrote:
               | I say this as someone who has tried to switch away from
               | google many times because I dislike google as a company :
               | there is no better search engine out there. There hasn't
               | been for as long as google has existed. Every time I make
               | something like bing or yandex my default search engine I
               | end up getting frustrated with a niche search and type
               | google.com and after typing google.com too many times I
               | get fed up and bring it back as default.
               | 
               | And the two competing search engines I mentioned are
               | pretty much all there is. Other names like duckduckgo
               | aren't real search engines, they are just a frontend for
               | another search engine (DDG uses bing). There just isn't
               | many out there willing to front the bill for crawling and
               | indexing the whole web.
               | 
               | People trying to explain away google's success solely
               | from a marketing standpoint are arguing from bad faith.
        
               | og_kalu wrote:
               | >Except it's not. Remember how everyone switched to
               | Altavista in 1996 because it was so much better? Remember
               | how Yahoo took over in 1999 because it was so much
               | better? Remember how people switched to Google in 2003
               | because it was so much better?
               | 
               | You already have the answer here you said it 3 times -
               | 'so much better'. People switched because it was 'so much
               | better'. Not on par, not slightly better, just so ahead
               | of the competition, it became a talking point all on its
               | own.
               | 
               | If this mass isn't reached then why would you switch ?
               | How would you even know that Search Engine 26 is quite a
               | bit better for most of your queries ?
               | 
               | Do you genuinely think most people are performing lengthy
               | evaluations before they switch default back to google ?
               | so how do they know Bing or whatever isn't better for
               | them ? The answer is that they don't. And it doesn't
               | matter because unless something blows it out of the water
               | and gets people talking then people will not switch.
               | 
               | Familiarity and Trust is basically branding and that's a
               | huge reason people stay on platforms even when there are
               | no network effects.
        
             | matt_heimer wrote:
             | With Google Photos and YouTube they should have had enough
             | leverge to build a social platform based on photo and video
             | sharing. The implementation, marketing and commitment just
             | wasn't there.
        
           | kspacewalk2 wrote:
           | Meh. There are no network effects, switching is 100%
           | frictionless - compare and contrast with ditching Facebook
           | and limiting facebook-ey social media interactions with
           | whichever 1.5 of your friends are on Google+.
           | 
           | Just the fact that it can read my emails and set reminders,
           | while being broadly the same quality as ChatGPT, was enough
           | for me to switch. I no longer pay for the pro, and hence
           | can't use the integration features, but I just stuck to
           | Gemini and almost never use ChatGPT anymore.
        
             | robocat wrote:
             | Network effects are not the only way people lock into a
             | product - it is just the first thing that comes to most
             | people's minds.
             | 
             | Familiarity and trust are really important. Commonly called
             | branding.
        
           | mattlondon wrote:
           | I am not convinced that many people outside of tech circles
           | knows about ChatGPT. "AI" sure, but ChatGPT I am unconvinced.
           | Either way, I am pretty confident Google will "win" long term
           | since Gemini will be the AI built into search, YouTube,
           | android, Gmail, chrome, etc etc in the consumer side. It's
           | going to be there when the billions of people are using
           | Google products so people will just use it there. The average
           | person won't go out of their way to open a separate app/site
           | with a lower-performing (as of today) and
           | standalone/siloed/isolated AI that doesn't have access to
           | their data/apps just because they recognise the name.
        
             | annodomini2019 wrote:
             | ChatGPT is the 7th most visited website in the world...
        
             | mjamesaustin wrote:
             | My sister graduated college last summer. She said every
             | single person she knew was using ChatGPT to write essays
             | within a week of its initial release.
             | 
             | I would argue it's pretty well-known outside of tech
             | circles.
        
               | Nullabillity wrote:
               | That's exactly what a plagiarist would say to justify it
               | to themself.
        
             | jeromegv wrote:
             | > I am not convinced that many people outside of tech
             | circles
             | 
             | In Canada, I have had countless conversations with people
             | outside of tech circles (mostly in their 30s) where THEY
             | naturally bring up ChatGPT. It's wild how popular it got
             | very quickly for all kind of use cases.
        
             | ketzo wrote:
             | The linked article can tell you that the ChatGPT app has
             | been downloaded more than 600M times, so approx 1 in 13
             | humans has actually downloaded ChatGPT to their phone
             | already, let alone heard about it.
             | 
             | They have WAUs in the 300m ballpark -- average people
             | _already are_ going out of their way to open a standalone
             | AI.
        
               | matthewdgreen wrote:
               | What are there DAUs? I occasionally open up Claude or
               | ChatGPT just to ask a random question, maybe even once a
               | week. But I'm incredibly uninvested in either brand. I
               | use Google hundreds of times every day.
        
             | coliveira wrote:
             | You're incorrect, people nowadays equate AI with ChatGPT.
             | Google may have AI in its results, but people will never
             | separate the two products. However, with ChatGPT, it is
             | synonymous with AI chat in the mind of most people.
        
             | lone_onion wrote:
             | https://apps.apple.com/us/charts/iphone
             | 
             | 'nuff said?
             | 
             | (ChatGPT is #2 in the free apps list)
        
             | rs186 wrote:
             | Where does your confidence come from? Do you have any
             | evidence to prove this?
             | 
             | If you paid the slightest attention to social media, news,
             | TikTok or just talked to regular people, you would know
             | ChatGPT is a much much bigger brand name than Gemini. Uber
             | driver told me how he used ChatGPT to help the other day
             | job he had.
        
           | basch wrote:
           | Chatbots are the beginning not the end. As it commoditizes,
           | and chat becomes a feature of every interface, what will
           | matter is who has the best overall design or suite of
           | interfaces. Things like NotebookLM and whiteboards will be
           | infinitely more useful than just a chat window. Chat alone
           | doesn't have the spatial organization of putting thoughts
           | into a mind map or drawing.
        
           | weatherlite wrote:
           | I don't buy this at all. People will use what works well and
           | is cheap. ChatGPT was there first, but then DeepSeek came so
           | everyone was excited about that and talking about that. Now
           | Gemini 2.5 looks really really good, better than ChatGPT some
           | say. This is going to increase Gemini usage for sure.
           | 
           | I don't think ChatGPT has any moat here. No one does
           | actually.
        
           | Spooky23 wrote:
           | Google is focused on enterprises. They're like Apple where PR
           | disasters hurt them -- if your Google phone tells you to eat
           | rocks or writes fanfic porn, that's a huge deal. Consumer is
           | a risk to them.
           | 
           | ChatGPT and Grok are edgier and they are just burning cash -
           | any attention is good.
           | 
           | I wouldn't underestimate them. Microsoft's shitshow with
           | Azure (they have like 9 different Azures) makes delivery
           | difficult (some Azure clouds delayed AI tech for 6-9 months)
           | when they are relying on constrained product from Nvidia.
           | They also have some level of exposure to the OpenAI circus
           | and its included Musk v. Sam Altman drama.
           | 
           | Google has a much better supply chain and return on asset
           | story, which is a big deal if you're selling shovels.
        
             | thorncorona wrote:
             | I wouldn't underestimate Microsoft either. They are much
             | more successful at enterprise than Google or ChatGPT, and
             | are one of few companies to compete successfully in almost
             | every tech vertical.
        
           | matt_heimer wrote:
           | Google is so bad at marketing. Gemini should have be an
           | internal only name. Google's ChatGPT should be branded as
           | Google AI or GoogleGPT and it should be in the Google app.
           | 
           | Google+ was particularly awful. They had to break the
           | established search behavior of using + and - to indicate
           | required and excluded terms. Now we have quotes for required
           | and - for excluded? It should have been Google Social.
           | 
           | The thing that is Google One would have been better often
           | with the Google Plus name.
           | 
           | Don't even get me started on Google Chat/Messenger....
        
             | pb7 wrote:
             | Google's branding strategy historically has been terrible,
             | I grant you that, but Gemini is not an example of it.
        
               | ludwik wrote:
               | Can you elaborate?
        
               | pb7 wrote:
               | It's a great name. "G" matches the company, it's easy to
               | say, it's a known word, it sounds good spoken, and the
               | word itself has many subjective interpretations as to
               | what it might mean (e.g. gemini = twins = you and AI).
               | 
               | Same reason that it's Alexa and not Amazon Assistant,
               | Siri and not Apple Assistant, etc.
               | 
               | Google Pay/Android Pay/Google Wallet/Android Wallet/Pay
               | Pay/Yap Yap should be the focus of our ire.
        
               | stalfosknight wrote:
               | Siri was not named by Apple. It was an independent app
               | that Apple bought out in 2010.
        
               | WrongAssumption wrote:
               | Entirely irrelevant. They could have renamed it after
               | buying it and chose not too.
        
               | overfeed wrote:
               | Not parent, but "Google AI" is overloaded - Google has a
               | many AI products that won't be "Google AI". "Gemini"
               | refers to a specific set of capabilities, which are a
               | subset of Google AI efforts[1]. Imagine Apple developing
               | a new, non-iPad slate and branding it the "Apple Tablet".
               | 
               | Granted, Google's AI strategy is still muddled, e.g.
               | Gemini is _maybe_ replacing Google Assistant in some
               | scenarios, but I 'm able to express my meaning clearly
               | with Gemini in the preceding sentence, as opposed to
               | "Google AI is replacing Google Assistant - which is
               | Google's AI assistant"
               | 
               | 1. Gemma, Flash, anything Google Deepmind develops would
               | be Google AI products that won't fall under the "Google
               | AI" branding
        
               | eitally wrote:
               | Gemini has already replaced Assistant for Pixel users and
               | on modern Nest devices. In the current Android Auto beta,
               | it's also replaced it there, too.
               | 
               | The thing that confuses me, though, is the fact that they
               | use the Gemini branding for both the dev-oriented
               | products you can license via Google Cloud, as well as the
               | consumer facing AI interfaces, and then also for the ties
               | into Workspace products. ... but then there are
               | standalone AI products (or is a feature?) like Notebook
               | LM that aren't associated with Gemini.
        
           | creato wrote:
           | I have family members that when they say "ChatGPT" they
           | actually mean google's AI overview in the search results. The
           | term ChatGPT might just be the Kleenex or Xerox of this
           | market.
        
           | Minor49er wrote:
           | Google+ was never really competing with Facebook. The goal of
           | Google+ was to unite accounts between Google's services and
           | to get people to provide their personal details such as their
           | real full names. In that light, G+ was a success
        
         | oulipo wrote:
         | I think so... we seem to be hitting the roof of current LLMs
         | capabilities, now the next generation of AI tools will need a
         | research breakthrough, and Google and Microsoft still have the
         | biggest research teams
        
         | mattlondon wrote:
         | (deleted - wrong place)
        
           | joshstrange wrote:
           | There are plenty of people outside of tech circles talking
           | about and using ChatGPT. In fact, that was a massive
           | indicator for me, I heard from them about ChatGPT before I
           | had gotten around to mentioning it to them.
           | 
           | That doesn't mean Google won't win, I'm just saying ChatGPT
           | is absolutely in the zeitgeist.
        
           | trjordan wrote:
           | ChatGPT has 400m weekly users. X / Twitter has 600m.
           | 
           | It's pretty popular!
        
           | fkyoureadthedoc wrote:
           | > I am not convinced that many people outside of tech circles
           | knows about ChatGPT. "AI" sure, but ChatGPT I am unconvinced.
           | 
           | The non-tech people don't even know there are alternatives to
           | ChatGPT. Google is to search what ChatGPT is to LLM for most
           | non-tech people in my experience.
           | 
           | My kids use it, their friends use it. My neighbors have
           | brought it up. I work at a non-tech company and talk to a lot
           | of non-tech people and it's rare to speak to someone who
           | doesn't know about ChatGPT now.
        
         | mekpro wrote:
         | Also, they open-model gemma-3 is very competitive for its size
         | and actually beats llama-3 from Meta. Not to mention that
         | OpenAI doesn't offer anything open anymore.
        
         | 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
         | Why the skepticism? Skeptical that it might not be profitable
         | for 0.5 ms and they'll cancel it?
         | 
         | They have the data and the money, all they needed was to not
         | self sabotage.
        
         | Spooky23 wrote:
         | Google has a really good story n the GCP side. Vertex can meet
         | FedRAMP High compliance, so the controls are good. Workspace
         | is, like Office 365 Copilot, still figuring itself out.
         | 
         | Apple painted itself into a corner. They have the best SoC
         | story in the industry and are years ahead, but skimped on
         | memory to save a few pennies and really nerfed their most
         | important product. They're in a pickle as a result and won't
         | give up the control they would need to for a third party on-
         | device AI to be effective.
        
           | echelon wrote:
           | For all the wonder of Apple Silicon, if won't run any of the
           | models I want it to. AI on Mac is a horrible experience as a
           | developer and a consumer.
           | 
           | So much for edge computing on Apple devices. Their marketing
           | around how good their hardware is for AI is total BS.
        
             | nomel wrote:
             | > Their marketing around how good their hardware is for AI
             | is total BS.
             | 
             | What are you comparing it to, and what do you consider
             | "edge computing"? iPhone vs Samsung benchmarks show a
             | massive difference. Macbook shows great performance, when
             | compared to other notebooks with battery lives longer than
             | 30 minutes. If you're comparing to a $1k gaming GPU, with
             | an order of magnitude more power usage, then sure, things
             | fall apart. The definition of "edge computing" being "can
             | run > 4gb models locally" is pretty new.
        
         | dailykoder wrote:
         | > Integration with search, gmail, google office suite, google
         | meet, android, etc.
         | 
         | That's kinda crazy that people absolutely stopped to care that
         | all their emails and so forth will be used as training data for
         | the next models
        
       | staticautomatic wrote:
       | 2.0 Flash seems to work well/fine for some use cases but for
       | other produces hilariously bad results compared to ChatGPT and
       | Claude. As a result I tend to avoid prototyping with it and
       | instead consider it something I might implement at scale for
       | speed and cost reasons if it turns out to work for a given use
       | case.
        
       | serjester wrote:
       | Has anyone met Googlers that are confident in the company's AI
       | strategy? Anecdotally, everyone I've talked to seems to have
       | serious concerns but that might just be a small sample size.
        
         | MisterPea wrote:
         | They're in a tough spot where the CEO does just enough to stay,
         | but they need someone better.
         | 
         | They lagged in AI, but the new Gemini 2.5 Pro is incredible.
         | They built an incredible tool in NotebookLM but failed to
         | market it
        
           | serjester wrote:
           | Agreed. Sundar seems like a peacetime CEO that got pulled
           | into war and seems like he's struggling. But with Larry and
           | Sergei having all voting control it seems unlikely he'll get
           | fired.
        
           | jmcgough wrote:
           | I thought Stadia was incredibly well-engineered, had good
           | performance playing modern games with a Thinkpad. But none of
           | my friends had any idea what Stadia was, the ad campaign was
           | atrocious. Time and time again, Google builds great products
           | and then shelves them a year or two later.
        
             | MoonGhost wrote:
             | Google is not alone. Intel halfheartedly develops GPUs. It
             | doesn't work without strategy.
        
             | the_clarence wrote:
             | Only works if you have a very stable internet connection
        
           | basch wrote:
           | I'd say give it time. NotebooksLM probably gets rereleased
           | with a new name. Simultaneous iOS release, giant press storm.
           | Not attempting to do so is a mistake.
           | 
           | But yes, absolutely need new leadership. Nest/Pixel/etc are
           | such a wasted opportunity tight now. The software layer is so
           | disconnected between each component. As a dumb example im
           | pretty sure you still can't talk out of a hub max or tv
           | remote into a nest cam, but can through the home app. The "it
           | works in one place, but not another" prevents so much
           | usability discovery for normal people.
        
           | the_clarence wrote:
           | I tried using notebookLLM many many times and it's just not
           | good. On the other hand I'm writing proofs using chatgpt and
           | they look really good.
        
         | summerlight wrote:
         | Many have pretty serious concerns about its direction, speed
         | and product strategies, but I guess most of them also agree
         | that there has been some progress and the situation has
         | improved. I think that not many people think that Google will
         | surely return to its dominant position on AI research again,
         | but they may keep being relevant in the competition.
        
         | tootie wrote:
         | Is anyone confident in what a winning strategy might even be?
         | The market keeps getting more crowded and yet AI is still only
         | creating incremental value for company's that adopt it. It's
         | not clear to me that this is going to be quite as much of a sea
         | change in how businesses run as people like Altman have been
         | pitching.
         | 
         | Nor do any of the top 10 AI companies have any kind of moat.
         | The fact that Elon Musk can found a competitor out of spite and
         | have a plausible competitor in 6 months with a multi-billion
         | dollar value actually just dilutes the perceived value any of
         | the market leaders. OpenAI is still riding the high of being
         | first and having the ChatGPT brand be so strong.
         | 
         | Google doesn't need to win on all the benchmarks, they just
         | need to embed themselves in enough enterprises and they have a
         | huge leg up in that regard.
        
           | stormfather wrote:
           | I think the winning strategy is making a small model that's
           | good enough to embed in search, etc, at no cost. Google has
           | the best small models. But whoever wins this will be whoever
           | makes a more efficient computing substrate for LLM inference,
           | like running a transformer with lenses or something like
           | that. Winning strategy there is acquisition.
        
             | kridsdale1 wrote:
             | Maybe the substrate will be flesh.
        
           | Workaccount2 wrote:
           | I think google will end up winning enterprise, and the fact
           | that Apple didn't sign a sole partnership with OpenAI, but
           | kept Gemini in the mix lends a lot of credence to this.
           | 
           | Google is the only "classic" org in the SOTA model space, and
           | the only one in the whole race who doesn't have to kiss the
           | ground Jensen Huang walks on. They are big enough to be able
           | to "pay you back" if they colossally fuck up, and the chances
           | of them going belly up are pretty slim. They also have the
           | cheapest models to boot.
           | 
           | From a business standpoint, Google is the safest play on many
           | levels, even if their models are just good enough.
        
           | eitally wrote:
           | The winning strategy is that Google has so many surfaces that
           | they can embed their own AI in (also use as training data
           | sources) that they essentially can't lose unless their models
           | are just terrible. Fortunately, their models are great and
           | they've truly been moving _very fast_ to integrate AI into
           | both enterprise (via Cloud) and consumer products this past
           | year. As a xoogler, I 'm truly impressed.
        
         | meta_ai_x wrote:
         | Googlers who aren't working for Deepmind are mostly Leetcode
         | monkeys who have absolutely no clue about business strategy,
         | marketing, distribution, branding, margins
        
           | kridsdale1 wrote:
           | This isn't true at all.
           | 
           | Quite a bias displaying username you have though.
        
           | alecco wrote:
           | Maybe a lot, sure. But at least the top 10% are elite at
           | their craft. DeepMind, Google Brain, the TPU people, the
           | datacenter people, etc.
           | 
           | Sadly, Pichai is firing Core teams in USA and moving them to
           | India.
        
         | asadm wrote:
         | I am, I was VERY skeptic initially but now it's clear Google
         | will win.
        
           | danesparza wrote:
           | Wait. What? By what measure? There is a very solid chance
           | that Google will simply cancel the project.
           | 
           | I'm looking at you, Google. I'm still bitter about Google
           | Reader.
        
             | claytonjy wrote:
             | Suggesting they'll cancel gemini makes about as much sense
             | as suggesting they'll cancel gmail.
        
           | rs186 wrote:
           | Sorry, your comment isn't particularly helpful or convincing.
        
         | weatherlite wrote:
         | Have you met any OpenAI employee who is confident in the
         | company's AI strategy? There is very little moat here for
         | anyone.
        
         | alecco wrote:
         | The board and Pichai should go. They had the best researchers
         | at Deepmind and Google Brain, sitting on the best pile of data
         | of any tech company (web, Google Books, YouTube, ...), having
         | the leading custom hardware (TPUs), and top tier datacenter
         | engineering. And they put idiots in charge with ridiculous
         | quota systems. They bled a lot of key people for nothing. And
         | spent 2.7 bn to get _one guy_ back. TWO POINT SEVEN BILLION FOR
         | JUST ONE GUY. And Alphabet didn 't even buy his company, they
         | just got a non-exclusive arrangement. It's beyond incompetent.
         | 
         | https://finance.yahoo.com/news/google-paid-2-7-billion-12305...
        
         | llm_nerd wrote:
         | Google has turned it around quite exceptionally. A lot of my
         | professional work has turned back to Google products, and 2.5
         | Pro is absolutely _exceptional_. It is absolutely a benchmark
         | model.
         | 
         | Google did absolutely seem asleep at the wheel, and then when
         | they did come out with some products they were so incredibly
         | afraid of Gizmodo soliciting an image or text output that was
         | socially unacceptable, paralyzing them with fear (and leading
         | to some incredible stupidity). But their pace now is
         | extraordinary.
        
       | svilen_dobrev wrote:
       | i think it was Eric Schmidt who said that "everyone would need an
       | Assistant" - about 10 years ago. (maybe in [0] ~ 2016). Something
       | to impersonate, talking to it.
       | 
       | Why they didn't do it, even a resemblance of - when they could..
       | no idea. Instead, meddling with mailboxes and the like.
       | 
       | [0] https://spectrum.ieee.org/google-eric-schmidt-ai
        
         | cmrdporcupine wrote:
         | They were definitely working on it, and had stuff which they
         | were deliberately keeping behind bars.
        
       | lysace wrote:
       | As an investor (smallish): I think Alphabet/Google can do much
       | better with a CEO who isn't Sundar.
       | 
       | Also: Generally: Do consider investing in companies that run
       | services where you feel compelled to subscribe (like Youtube
       | Premium and previously Netflix).
        
         | moffkalast wrote:
         | Never felt like being compelled to subscribe to YT premium or
         | Netflix, the former doesn't differ much from using YT with
         | ublock, and piracy provides a better service than Neftlix.
         | 
         | OAI's GPT-4 (back in the day), Deep Research, and 4o Image gen
         | recently on the other hand? Totally. When it's something
         | actually incredibly useful and there's zero alternatives out
         | there.
         | 
         | Google has no such products right now, if their Gemini Advanced
         | trial shows anything it's that their touted 1M context doesn't
         | actually work any better than the average undertrained 1M RoPE
         | tune. I mean it doesn't even make sense for them conceptually
         | to sell services, they're an ad company.
        
         | totaldude87 wrote:
         | care to elaborate? is this like an engineer/innovator thing?
         | 
         | |CEO who isn't Sundar.
        
         | ipython wrote:
         | Investor and heavy user of Google Workspace (several small paid
         | domains). I find the Google Gemini capabilities for note taking
         | and summarization of Meets to be excellent, and a huge
         | timesaver for my teams. NotebookLM almost feels magic.
         | 
         | In my experience, of the major players (AMZN, GOOG, and MSFT),
         | Google's AI integrations feel the most polished and useful for
         | day-to-day use.
        
         | impulser_ wrote:
         | I disagree.
         | 
         | Name another CEO that can take a company from 74b to 350b in
         | revenue. He has always grown Google. Not a single year of
         | decreased growth.
         | 
         | He made Google the only AI company in the world with a full AI
         | stack from data, science, hardware, and software.
         | 
         | This is paying off massively. Look at how faster Gemini models
         | are compared to any other model. It 3x faster.
         | 
         | Gemini 2.5 Pro is the best model on the market right now in
         | terms of cost, performance, and intelligence.
         | 
         | Everyone is fighting over NVIDA chips, not Google.
        
           | alecco wrote:
           | I beg to differ. Pichai is a glorified McKinsey consultant
           | who made a lot of mistakes. He was just lucky to be lifted by
           | this Tech Bubble. And he is firing Core teams in US to
           | rebuild them in India.
        
             | montag wrote:
             | Do you have a source for that last statement?
        
           | pembrook wrote:
           | Sundar did a great job pivoting Google from a product-focused
           | B2C company into a Microsoft-style B2B-oriented monetization
           | deathstar (Google Cloud & Workspace and Ads Ads Ads with
           | packages of Ads on the side).
           | 
           | The problem is, ditching their B2C product-focused roots in
           | favor of playing Microsoft slowly ruined their flagship
           | Search (also the open web) and any internal culture of
           | stewarding great products. And Google doesn't have the same
           | level of lock-in Microsoft has.
           | 
           | Microsoft doesn't have to worry about end-users jumping ship
           | because corporate worker drones can't provision their own IT.
           | 
           | Google searchers on the other hand, can just start opening
           | ChatGPT instead of Google search more and more and slowly
           | kill Google's flagship product simply out of boredom.
           | 
           | Youtube being forgotten about by the deathstar and being
           | allowed to flourish was simply a happy accident. But that too
           | will inevitably get gobbled up after the pressure of a few
           | rough quarters comes down on the shoulders of whatever CEO
           | comes next.
        
       | Workaccount2 wrote:
       | I think the biggest thing Google has working against them is the
       | move to put lightweight models in everything for everyone.
       | Whatever model they use for search is probably somewhere around
       | an ~8B model, and flash 2.0 is decent but still a light weight
       | model.
       | 
       | People now associate Google AI/Gemini with shitty search results
       | and bad answers.
       | 
       | Meanwhile, their SOTA models have been strong, and Gemini 2.5
       | looks like it might actually have taken the AI throne
       | yesterday.[1]
       | 
       | [1]https://simonwillison.net/2025/Mar/25/gemini/
        
       | janalsncm wrote:
       | OpenAI is being graded on a curve. They are not a public company
       | and are not making money. Google is. That said, they definitely
       | floundered by not productionizing transformer decoders, just like
       | with Google meet/Zoom. (Encoders like BERT were/are widely used.)
        
       | cmrdporcupine wrote:
       | When I worked at Google there was an internal link to test out
       | "Meena", their predecessor to later LLM chatbot work. This was
       | 2019 time frame? Maybe 2020?
       | 
       | It was uncanny and creepy, pretended to be a conscious being,
       | frequently lied, and led directly to that guy who claimed it had
       | personhood... I can completely understand why Google chose to
       | keep a lid on this kind of thing, hoping to be able to clean it
       | up and produce something that could be reliably used for a
       | product instead of a novelty. That's back when Google was still
       | sort-of pretending to have ethics (though they didn't)
       | 
       | OpenAI beat them to the public presentation of this stuff because
       | they didn't care.
        
         | gaogao wrote:
         | It's not just that they didn't care, but they had a better
         | framing and RLHF helped quite a bit. Galactica got released at
         | a similar time to ChatGPT and got castigated, in a large part
         | due to a poor framing of it being for science and not more of a
         | fun thing.
        
         | Henchman21 wrote:
         | > OpenAI beat them to the public presentation of this stuff
         | because they didn't care.
         | 
         | This is lack of interest will kill Google in the end, IMO.
        
           | cmrdporcupine wrote:
           | I wasn't talking about Google not caring.
           | 
           | OpenAI didn't care about ethics.
        
             | Henchman21 wrote:
             | I see my mistake, thank you!
             | 
             | But also I have this view of Google as largely apathetic to
             | its users and the things it creates, but maybe more to the
             | point the things it created and then destroyed.
             | 
             | I may have misunderstood but I still feel like I have a
             | valid take.
        
         | kridsdale1 wrote:
         | Meta (FB at the time) had a cool internal page as well with LLM
         | chatbots. Personalities and the like. It was neat but not a
         | product. We were all still reeling from Tay.
        
         | Workaccount2 wrote:
         | Anyone remember Sydney, the Microsoft implementation from the
         | early ChatGPT days?
         | 
         | She was totally emotionally unhinged until Microsoft put hard
         | filters on her output. Lucky for OpenAI it happened in MS's
         | court despite it being chatGPT under the hood.
        
         | eitally wrote:
         | I was there then, too, and Google was exceptionally risk averse
         | when it came to calling anything AI. It seemed that the bar for
         | an internal "AI" label was "this is actually AGI", so nothing
         | was labeled AI and everything was just called "ML" or "Deep
         | Learning". This same risk aversion meant none of the cutting
         | edge AI research that Deepmind & Brain/RMI were doing made it
         | to productization. OpenAI changed all that with ChatGPT. It was
         | as if a switch was flipped overnight and suddenly everything
         | within Google was "AI".
         | 
         | Frankly, if there is a macro-level strategy, and I assume their
         | mostly is, I think Google has been doing a great job executing
         | since the launch of ChatGPT. They even commercialized their
         | Diabetic Retinopathy imaging model, which was based on research
         | for a paper published in 2016!
         | 
         | https://research.google/pubs/development-and-validation-of-a...
        
         | osmsucks wrote:
         | > When I worked at Google there was an internal link to test
         | out "Meena", their predecessor to later LLM chatbot work.
         | 
         | The Julius Caesar personality which had sushi as its favorite
         | dish (and claimed to have travelled to Japan after his
         | assassination, somehow) was my favorite.
        
       | czhu12 wrote:
       | It seems if Google had been competitive, all they would've
       | managed to do is burn ~10 billion dollars in the past 2 years,
       | and run up against the same performance wall everyone else has
       | 
       | If I were them, I'd wait until OpenAI is forced to at least slow
       | their burn and then jump in, and undercut everyone.
       | 
       | Seems like the real money is made on the API side anyways, so
       | having a large consumer presence isn't super valuable yet.
        
       | light_hue_1 wrote:
       | I can't believe that anyone in leadership at Google still has
       | their jobs. Aside from AMD it's the company that is wasting the
       | most amount of talent.
       | 
       | Gemini is still garbage compared to o3-mini-high when it comes to
       | code. GCP is still a horrible platform compared to AWS. Why would
       | anyone pick Google models to do anything? They refusal rate is
       | obscene.
       | 
       | Google lived too long with no strategy, just search and random
       | noise. They don't seem to be able to pivot. Until they do
       | something company-wide that includes how promotions work and
       | turning over management I can't see them as being anything other
       | than a 3rd rate player in AI.
       | 
       | Search will die to AI in time. And they've got nothing to entice
       | people to use Google AI over anything else.
        
       | zombiwoof wrote:
       | It's amazing how much wealth is being acquired by the people
       | working on this. And it's delivering what? A way to automate
       | navigating websites or telling someone looking at the Buckingham
       | Palace that it's the buckingham palace ? Silicon Valley hubris
       | continues to astound
        
         | shermantanktop wrote:
         | Somewhere there's a market that is highly rational, not taken
         | in by hype, and lacks hubris. Maybe it's Germany? Good luck
         | starting a tech company there.
         | 
         | The frisson of hype and juvenile behavior seems pretty linked
         | to the optimism that drives this sector. Some idiots and
         | hucksters inevitably come along for the ride, and some of them
         | get lucky.
        
           | walleeee wrote:
           | which is why those of us who aren't idiots and hucksters need
           | to think critically about computers, ourselves, and the roles
           | of both in the world. unexamined optimism is no virtue
        
       | natch wrote:
       | OpenAI is already solving the problem for all its competitors by
       | hobbling its models so much.
       | 
       | With voice mode OpenAI hears its own voice as interruptions, then
       | misrecognizes what it itself is saying to be some topic that is
       | off limits. It then gets into a loop of "I can't talk about
       | that... would you like to talk about something else?" And this is
       | with completely innocuous topics. Absolutely infuriating. No idea
       | how they are possibly dog fooding this and not seeing the
       | problem.
       | 
       | The insane level of overcranking the PC knobs led me to end my
       | subscription and add more Google to my portfolio. I'm sure I'm
       | not alone. That's not to say Google won't have the same issues,
       | but there's always Grok.
        
       | LeicaLatte wrote:
       | Google leadership has had a measured approach and product
       | releases seem more baked than ever, it's refreshing to see. Their
       | 0 to 1s feel compelling and more Apple(2000s) like.
        
       | totaldude87 wrote:
       | The problem for Google is, people who are not familiar with tech
       | has started seeing AI as a different product than google(search)!
       | 
       | Instead of searching (google) , let me ask AI( chatgpts) and
       | google is on the losing side of this perception war. This cannot
       | be solved that quickly .
       | 
       | Especially with what google has done in the AI space(to a layman)
       | it was Bard(anyone remembers) and then it was something and then
       | its Gemini now.
       | 
       | what is the differentiator now? is google offering more free
       | stuff than its peers? a layman doesnt care about whether it
       | succeeds in solving a math problem or not! As long as people
       | think these two are separate things(ai v search) , google is
       | gonna have a problem
        
         | Clubber wrote:
         | >what is the differentiator now?
         | 
         | Not now necessarily, but if Google gets any traction in this, I
         | can see Google inserting subtle ads in the AI results, which
         | would be a net negative.
        
         | weatherlite wrote:
         | > The problem for Google is, people who are not familiar with
         | tech has started seeing AI as a different product than
         | google(search)!
         | 
         | I don't know if that's a problem. If I was Google I'd like to
         | keep search mostly as is (perhaps throw in some AI summary, but
         | mostly as is) so I can keep putting links to ads. I still use
         | Google; if I want to buy new running shoes, book a flight etc I
         | don't start talking to ChatGPT about it, I just Google; I'm
         | sure there are a couple billion more people like me who'll keep
         | doing it. It's more than just habit, A.I is perceived as not up
         | to date so I see absolutely no reason to go to an LLM for shoes
         | and flights. But I have many other questions (mostly
         | programming, stock analysis etc) I go to the A.I for. I think
         | for Google, Search will still make a lot of money because the
         | buying shoes thing is worth more for advertisers than asking
         | some vague question about my codebase.
        
       | alecco wrote:
       | Until Google shows they got rid of all the people responsible for
       | stupid stuff like Black Napoleon and all the far-left politically
       | charged garbage, I'll pass. It's one version mess up away from
       | reverting to that while the same people are behind it.
        
         | cruffle_duffle wrote:
         | Hah, thanks for reminding me why I stopped using Gemini. When
         | it absolutely refused to help me locate a neighborhood because
         | I called it a "low income neighborhood". Whatever team trained
         | that bullshit into the model can fuck off and die.
        
       | whyenot wrote:
       | I think ChatGPT still has a small lead, but Gemini is pretty darn
       | good. One of the things I really like about the version I am
       | using is the integration with Gmail, Docs, Sheets, Slides, etc.
        
       | the_clarence wrote:
       | I'm using both gemini pro and chatgpt plus/pro all the time,
       | while gemini is FAST, its answers are systematically worse. So
       | much so that I don't use it for anything serious anymore.
       | 
       | It's a shame because the 1-2M context window is really amazing.
        
         | cpncrunch wrote:
         | The problem seems to be creativity when there is limited
         | information available. In these cases ChatGPT seems to do a
         | good job, but Gemini just makes shit up even if you turn the
         | "temperature" (creativity) down to 0.
         | 
         | Every so often I ask it for info about a previous employer of
         | mine, and it randomly makes up hilarious "facts", like we made
         | ultra low budget porn and horror movies, that we were a music
         | recording studio, or that we were responsible for "the last of
         | us" video game.
        
       | senderista wrote:
       | Jeff Dean has "been building neural networks for decades"? That
       | doesn't seem correct: I thought he was primarily a distributed
       | systems researcher before becoming involved with ML?
        
       | tzury wrote:
       | Google:
       | 
       | - Google AI Studio - Gemini app - Gemini app for Gemini Advanced
       | users - Vertex AI - NotebookLM - many more I forgot...
       | 
       | vs
       | 
       | ChatGPT.com
       | 
       | This is Google's main problem. Where several groups are trying to
       | build the same product and compete on user attention and distract
       | focus.
       | 
       | Search Google. Search. Show search results on the right columns
       | with ads on the top as it is today, and the Gemini thingy on the
       | left. It's that simple.
        
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