| ▲ | hsuduebc2 7 hours ago | |
I don’t think it’s comparable to today’s AI race. Google has a monopoly, an entrenched customer base, and stable revenue from a proven business model. Anyone trying to compete would have to pour massive money into infrastructure and then fight Google for users. In that game, Google already won. The current AI landscape is different. Multiple players are competing in an emerging field with an uncertain business model. We’re still in the phase of building better products, where companies started from more similar footing and aren’t primarily battling for customers yet. In that context, investing heavily in the core technology can still make financial sense. A better comparison might be the early days of car makers, or the web browser wars before the market settled. | ||
| ▲ | ghm2199 6 hours ago | parent [-] | |
> ... stable revenue from a proven business mode... In that game, Google already won. But if they were to pour that money strategically to capture market share one of two things would happen if google was replaced/lost share: 1. it would be the start of the commoditization of search. i.e. search engine/index would become a commodity and more specialized and people could buy what they want and compete. 2. A new large tech company takes rein. In which case it would be as bad as this time. Like what I don't get is that if other big tech companies actually broke apart monopoly on search, several google dominos in mobile devices, browser tech, location capabilities would fall. It would be a massive injection of new competition into the economy, lots of people would spend more dollars across the space(and ad driven buying too) money would not accrue in an offshore tax haven in ireland To play the devils advocate, I think the only reason its not happening is because meta, apple, microsoft have very different moats/business models to profit off. They all have been stung one time or another is small or big ways for trying to build something that could compete but failed. MS with bing, Meta with facebook search, Foursquare — not big tech but still — with Maurauder's Map. | ||