• maegul (he/they)@lemmy.mlEnglish
    28·
    7 months ago

    Good to see the post from the former Google Engineer. Everyone not able to read between the lines ATM should read that … cuz that’s exactly what’s going on.

    It’s like if a bunch of empires or feudal states heard rumour that there was super rich gold mine somewhere in the mountains … they’d all be madly clamoring to conquer those mountains first so hard you’d get pure feverish chaos.

    That’s what this AI moment is … all of big tech … they just want to win the platform war even if it doesn’t exist yet.

    First Microsoft Windows in the 90s, then Apple and Google with smartphones and Facebook with social media … they are all lessons for the industry. Winning a platform war gets you at least a decade of printing money.

    And it seems like a pernicious consequence of allowing and enabling monopolies. The more they succeed, then the bigger (and more inefficient) the fight is to become one.

    • Godort@lemm.ee
      7·
      7 months ago

      In all those cases, it was mostly the better product that won.

      Microsoft won with PCs in the 90s because its office suite was the best. Apple and Google were lightyears ahead of BlackBerry and Palm, and Facebook was a much better user experience than Myspace.

      Google is going to lose this battle because their model is simply less useful than Copilot or ChatGPT(and those aren’t really great to begin with)

      • maegul (he/they)@lemmy.mlEnglish
        12·
        7 months ago

        In all those cases, it was mostly the better product that won.

        I’d suspect it’s not quite clean cut as that. Sure there may be reasons why a particular victor wins, but as for being “better”, I’d bet it’s always more complex than that. Windows Phone, for instance, probably a lot going for it but AFAICT, had a poor app dev experience or something, and so never took off.

        Google is going to lose this battle because their model is simply less useful than Copilot or ChatGPT(and those aren’t really great to begin with)

        Well, Google have a more clear path to monetisation with their ads business and more opportunities to leverage the internet with their search supremacy. Given that all AIs tend to be a bit crappy, being “good enough” may be enough for Google to be the last one standing.

        • AnalogyAddict@lemmy.world
          5·
          7 months ago

          Yeah, it’s never the best tech that wins. It’s the cheapest viable tech that wins. VHS/Beta, Windows/Mac, Nintendo/Turbografx, Kitchenaid/Viking. The list goes on.

  • Optional@lemmy.world
    17·
    7 months ago

    Wow plus was thirteen years ago? Seems longer. That’s when i gave up on google. They had wrecked the + operand so that it only gave you google+ site results. It was insanity to do so and whatever grudging respect i had for them was immediately defenestrated.

    After months of outcry they added a tiny advanced tools menu option called “verbatim” that you had to use just to get something like the AND function. Total idiocy.

    Later, it failed.

    • VubDapple@lemmy.world
      7·
      7 months ago

      Upvoting for excellent usage of the word ‘defenestrated’ in a sentence that doesn’t refer to Russian tactics for getting rid of political opponents.

    • dustyData@lemmy.worldEnglish
      15·
      7 months ago

      It’s the same concept but with a third of the amount of letters. What is wrong with a word that exist in the language being used for its intended meaning?

      • Ephera@lemmy.ml
        2·
        7 months ago

        I guess, because it’s not necessarily known by everyone speaking the language. I didn’t know it. I’m not a native speaker, but neither are most English speakers.

        • dustyData@lemmy.world
          2·
          7 months ago

          I feel excited every time I find a new word, it means an opportunity to learn has just presented itself. I still semi regularly find new words, even in my native language. I love opportunities to grow and learn. I learn new languages explicitly to experience this more often.

          • Ephera@lemmy.ml
            1·
            7 months ago

            I mean, I do, too. I love reading up on etymology. After a while, various words become self-explanatory, because you’ve seen their individual parts before.

            But for actually communicating with others, obvious words are really great. There’s beauty to “shortsightedness”, because even someone who’s never heard it, will have a guess what it means. They don’t need to look up the etymology, it’s smacked right into their face.