So does Pichai... Every time there is something new, he forces Google to pivot, upending everything without much to show for it.

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rorads 6 days ago | parent | next [-]

Google basically invented modern AI (the 'T' in ChatGPT stands for Transformer), then took a very broad view of how to apply broadly neural AI - AlphaGo, AlphaGenome being the kind of non-LLM stuff they've done).

A better way to look at it is that the absolute number 1 priority for google since they first created a money spiggot throguh monetising high-intent search and got the monopoly on it (outside of Amazon) has been to hold on to that. Even YT (the second biggest search engine on the internet other than google itself) is high intent search leading to advertising sales conversion.

So yes, google has adopted and killed lots of products, but for its big bets (web 2.0 / android / chrome) it's basically done everything it can to ensure it keeps it's insanely high revenue and margin search business going.

What it has to show for it is basically being the only company to have transitioned as dominent across technological eras (desktop -> web2.0 -> mobile -> (maybe llm).

As good as OpenAI is as a standalone, and as good as Claude / Claude Code is for developers, google has over 70% mobile market share with android, nearly 70% browser market share with chrome - this is a huge moat when it comes to integration.

You can also be very bullish about other possible trends. For AI - they are the only big provider which has a persistent hold on user data for training. Yes, OpenAI and Grok have a lot of their own data, but google has ALL gmail, high intent search queries, youtube videos and captions, etc.

And for AR/VR, android is a massive sleeping giant - no one will want to move wholesale into a Meta OS experience, and Apple are increasingly looking like they'll need to rely on google for high performance AI stuff.

All of this protects google's search business a lot.

Don't get me wrong, on the small stuff google is happy to let their people use 10% time to come up with a cool app which they'll kill after a couple of years, but for their big bets, every single time they've gone after something they have a lot to show for it where it counts to them.

	▲	msabalau 6 days ago \| parent [-]
		Yeah, and Google has cared deeply about AI as a long term play since before they were public. And have been continuously invested there over the long haul. The small stuff that they kill is just that--small stuff that was never important to them strategically. I mean, sure, don't heavily invest (your attention, time, business focus, whatever) in something that is likely to be small to Google, unless you want to learn from their prototypes, while they do. But to pretend that Google isn't capable of sustained intense strategic focus is to ignore what's clearly visible.

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42lux 6 days ago | parent | prev [-]

When did Google ever pivot?

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chubot 6 days ago | parent | next [-]

I haven't followed that closely, but Gemini seems like a pivot based on ChatGPT's market success

Google is leading in terms of fundamental technology, but not in terms of products

They had the LLambda chatbot before that, but I guess it was being de-emphasized, until ChatGPT came along

Social was a big pivot, though that wasn't really due to Pichai. That was while Larry Page was CEO and he argued for it hard. I can't say anyone could have known beforehand, but in retrospect, Google+ was poorly conceived and executed

---

I also believe the Nth Google chat app was based on WhatsApp success, but I can't remember the name now

Google Compute Engine was also following AWS success, after initially developling Google App Engine

	▲	itsoktocry 6 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		>I haven't followed that closely, but Gemini seems like a pivot based on ChatGPT's market success "AI" in it's current form is already a massive threat to Google's main business (I personally use Google only a fraction of what I used to), so this pivot is justified.
	▲	sabas123 6 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Is it really such a pivot when they invested a lot in AI already? They bought DeepMind in 2014 and always showed of a ton of AI research.

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swiftcoder 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

https://killedbygoogle.com

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devin 6 days ago | parent [-]

None of these are pivots. The core business has always been the core business.

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swiftcoder 6 days ago | parent [-]

If you are defining "pivot" as "abandon all other lines of business", then no, none of the BigTechs have ever pivoted.

By more reasonable standards of "pivot", the big investment into Google Plus/Wave in the social media era seems to qualify. As does the billions spent building out Stadia's cloud gaming. Not to mention the billions invested in their abandoned VR efforts, and the ongoing investment into XR...

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msabalau 6 days ago | parent | next [-]

G+ was a significant effort that was abandoned.

I'd personally define that as Google hedging their bet's and being prepared in case they needed to truly pivot, and then giving up when it became clear that they wouldn't need to. Sort of like "Apple Intelligence" but committing to the bit, and actually building something that was novel, and useful to some people, who were disappointed when it went away.

Stadia was always clearly unimportant to Google, and I say that as a Stadia owner (who got to play some games, and then got refunds.) As was well reported at the time, closing it was immaterial to their financials. Just because spending hundreds of millions of dollars or even a few billion dollars is significant to you or I doesn't mean that this was ever part of their core business.

Regardless, the overall sentimentality on HN about Google Reader and endless other indisputably small projects says more about the lack of strategic focus from people here, than it says anything about Alphabet.

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veidr 6 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Well, "pivot" implies the core business has failed and you're like "oh shit, let's do X instead".

Stadia was just Google's New Coke, Apple's Mac Cube, or Microsoft's MSNBC (or maybe Zune.

When they can't sell ads anymore, they'll have to pivot.

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swiftcoder 6 days ago | parent [-]

> Well, "pivot" implies the core business has failed and you're like "oh shit, let's do X instead".

I mean, Facebook's core business hasn't actually failed yet either, but their massive investments in short-form video, VR/XR/Metaverse, blockchain, and AI are all because they see their moat crumbling and are desperately casting around for a new field to dominate.

Google feels pretty similar. They made a very successful gambit into streaming video, another into mobile, and a moderately successful one into cloud compute. Now the last half a dozen gambits have failed, and the end of the road is in sight for search revenue... so one of the next few investments better pay off (or else)

	▲	devin 5 days ago \| parent [-]
		The link you posted has a great many very insignificant investments included in it, and nothing I've seen Google doing has felt quite like the desperation of Facebook in recent years. I didn't really see it at first, but I think you are correct to point out that they kind of rhyme. However to me, I think the clear desperation of Facebook makes it feel rather different from what I've seen Google doing over the years. I'm not sure I agree that Google's core business is in jeopardy in the way that Facebook's aging social media platform is.

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ethbr1 6 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Social. User-facing AI.

	▲	earth2mars 6 days ago \| parent [-]
		Social: YouTube User facing AI: Gemini, Google photos, NotebookLM and plenty of products.