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0 pointsnmfisher1y ago0 comments

That's the conventional take, but (as far as I can tell), the TPU program was also started under Sundar, which would have been a bold investment at the time, and looks like absolute genius in retrospect.

OpenAI might be well-capitalized, but they're (1) bleeding money, (2) no clear path to profitability, and (3) competing head-to-head with a behemoth who can profitably provide a similar offering at 10-20x cheaper (literally).

Google might be slow out the blocks, but it's not like they've been sitting on their hands for the past decade.

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griomnib1y ago

No they’ve been acquiring layers upon layers of middle management for a decade.

That’s the core issue, and they’ve also pissed off a non-zero percentage of top talent by ditching what still existed of Google culture and going full “Corporate Megacorp” a few years ago.

Google is having to pay a ton to retain the talent they have left and it’s often not enough.

nmfisherOP1y ago

That might be true, but I'm not sure it will matter that much. They've put out two very compelling* products in the last month (Flash 2 & Veo), and hints that another Gemini Pro model is in the pipeline. When it comes to AI, they're in a very good position, no matter what middle-management shenanigans are going on behind the scenes. Their core ad business is also so absurdly profitable that overpaying for talent won't even register as pocket lint.

Google's biggest threat isn't OpenAI. It's the FTC (which I admit is a very real danger).

* from a developer/platform perspective, at least. The "consumer" facing side of things (e.g. the AI Studio UI) is still pretty awful.

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