| ▲ | layoric an hour ago |
| This critique is leaning really hard on their interpretation of "dying". They take the literal company is going to fail type of dying where as I have always taken it the same way he has presented it in his "rot-economy" context. They can remain financially "successful", but more and more people hate their products, their products are getting worse, their products are "dying". Google Search is still a good example, the old Google search is "dead" if you like, a know many people, including myself who no longer use it. More people hate and getting off Facebook. More people are jumping from Windows to macOS or Linux. These tech giants need AI to continue to grow, and that growth at the moment seems to be coming from just two AI companies who are burning a record about of investments. OpenAI has raised nearly $200B, that is more money than Australia's tax revenue.. and they are getting further from being profitable as Chinese models are getting better and much cheaper. The article linked seems right, but you have to take these morbid analogies in a very specific way, and assume that the only way to measure these companies is revenue/profits/money rather than their products. I wish people would hold actual professional media economists to the same standards, along with journalists who just repeat press releases without actually challenging statements. His main argument has been the numbers don't make sense, and can't see how this won't end badly for a lot of people. |
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| ▲ | jxcole an hour ago | parent | next [-] |
| If many people hated their products, they wouldn't use them. If they didn't use them they would not be financially successful. Google is not dying just because you personally have a feeling the results are worse than before and there is no definition of dying that would be consistent with Google's current state. If Google were to die they would die the way Yahoo did, because a competitor was demonstrably better than them and everyone switched off. There is no realistic evidence that this might occur in the near future. |
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| ▲ | agentultra an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | > If many people hated their products, they wouldn't use them This might be true in a true, free market without monopolistic collusion and the abandonment of antitrust regulation and enforcement in the US. In many cases people don’t switch to something else because there isn’t an alternative. Or because they don’t know how to change the defaults that come installed on their computer. Or they get a big scary warning if they figure it out and try. I would have a hard time believing anyone who said Google was competing fairly and not juicing their numbers with Gemini. Like with search and ads, they have a lot of vested interest in profits and little regard for much else. There’s no reason to. Almost all safeguards on corporate behaviour have been taken off in the last bunch of years. Google jumped at renaming Lake Ontario. Of course they’re going to shove AI mode as the default on search and claim every user loves it. | |
| ▲ | pixelatedindex 32 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > If Google were to die they would die the way Yahoo did This might be true 20 years ago where Google had one true product, Search. Since then, they have diversified and got their fingers a million pies. I don’t think you can get true competition with the way MS,GOOG,AMZ have grown. You’ll get a duopoly, or maybe a triopoly. | |
| ▲ | layoric an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > If many people hated their products, they wouldn't use them. If they didn't use them they would not be financially successful. I think this incorrect diminishes the success of product lock-in and also doesn't consider that the world is moving more and more into concentrated wealth where consumers have less and less to offer. Google's financial success could be sustained or even continue to grow with fewer ad buyers targeting fewer people. > Google is not dying just because you personally have a feeling the results are worse than before and there is no definition of dying that would be consistent with Google's current state. Again, "dying" is being used as a proxy for financial success. I don't disagree that Google/Microsoft/Meta will continue to grow their revenue or even profit, but I do argue that their products are becoming worse for consumers. That may or may not lead to real competitors, but that is a whole other regulatory capture discussion. > If Google were to die they would die the way Yahoo did, because a competitor was demonstrably better than them and everyone switched off. I think you mean "die" here in a product/usage sense, which I think their current path seems to be going that way, but I think it will matter FAR less to Google/Alphabet than it did too Yahoo. | |
| ▲ | j2kun an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | You must not talk to a lot of retired people, for whom every tech product is a bewildering nightmare. | |
| ▲ | taurath an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | > If many people hated their products, they wouldn't use them You do understand how drugs work right? |
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| ▲ | pocksuppet an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| If I have a billion trillion dollars but 20% of the population hates me, but I get to live in a giant solid gold mansion with an army of servants keeping the 20% away from me, have I really failed? |
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| ▲ | domador an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | It'd depend on what specifically that 20% of the population hates that hypothetical you for. Maybe their hate in this scenario turns out to be an accurate signal that you are an awful human being. In that case, you'd be a very rich, awful human being. Have you really failed in this case? Not at making money and living a decadent, hedonistic life, if that was your goal, but yes at being a good human being, one who is good to others and is worthy of their respect, admiration, and support. | |
| ▲ | kshri24 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Still a failure because it is propped up by an inflated US dollar. Those trillions would mean nothing when the US economy collapses due to a cumulative effect of massive national debt, unending wars and inflation. At least if you have the population by your side, you wouldn't have "guns, gold, potassium iodide, antibiotics, batteries, water, gas masks from the Israeli Defense Force, and a big patch of land in Big Sur I can fly to" [1] They are all willing to risk everything to see if their bet on achieving "singularity" fructifies. I don't see us getting anywhere close (at least with the current tech). [1]: https://futurism.com/the-byte/openai-ceo-survivalist-prepper | |
| ▲ | dosisking 11 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | That depends. Do you think that H itler was successful? | |
| ▲ | LucasOe 39 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Yes. | |
| ▲ | ghostk an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | type shit Louis the XVI would ponder about | | |
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| ▲ | Joel_Mckay 16 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| >tech giants need AI to continue to grow You mean increase the -$2.50 lost for every $1 in revenue, or the $2Tn in debt disclosed 60 pages into the reports as a footnote. Let us be clear, the only "growth" is in the LLM ectoparasite living rent free in peoples imaginations. The fact is when (not if) the peak of inflated LLM use-case expectations corrects, a lot of the industry won't survive. Facebook has a founders-syndrome problem, and a product line catering to creeps. Note most normal people aren't creeps, but the ones that are creepy will buy creep-ware at a rate necessary to sustain the founder creeps ego. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Founder%27s_syndrome Google hasn't built a successful product in decades, and acquired most of its successes like YT. There are 3 reasons this occurs, and 2 are related to corporate cult culture. One would have to fire 70% of the company to fix that problem, and one day someone will have to do just that. >wish people would hold actual professional media economists to the same standards OpenAI will go public soon, and the hype-cycle can finally settle down. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gartner_hype_cycle LLM do have basic utility in search and pattern recognition, but only the delusional believe it will hyper-scale unconstrained forever. =3 |
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| ▲ | oofbey an hour ago | parent | prev [-] |
| Was Microsoft dying under Balmer? I think we’d say yes. Even if the SEC filings indicated otherwise. |
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