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The great shake up has started. Google pissing their pants with AIs abrupt arrival, Twitter dying a death by a million cuts, Facebook in mid-air making their VR
by Cardinal7167 3y ago
The great shake up has started. Google pissing their pants with AIs abrupt arrival, Twitter dying a death by a million cuts, Facebook in mid-air making their VR play, the tech skyline will look very different in 5 years.
- jimsimmons 3y agoYou should look up global search volumes and Google share of it. There’s no dent
- dmix 3y agoPeople like to be predictors of doom before the hard evidence comes out.
- cfeduke 3y ago> There’s no dent By the time there is a dent, it's too late.
- andy_ppp 3y agoSounds great but you’ll have to provide some logic because I don’t automatically follow your extremely confident opinion…
- lenkite 3y agoPeople here are praying very hard for Twitter to fail. Nearly any social media post nowadays has 50-100 comments predicting Twitter's failure and ranting about Musk. He is living rent-free in many heads now. Its utterly ludicrous how so many intelligent and rational people are becoming un-hinged whenever Twitter/Musk is mentioned.
- bandyaboot 3y agoApparently the people that have Musk living rent free in their heads are living rent free in your head.
- SketchySeaBeast 3y agoMental subletting.
- gessha 3y agoAny publicity is good publicity it seems like. People don’t get that hating is not the opposite of love, it’s indifference. Mute and forget.
- andy_ppp 3y agoI just sent the second part of this to my friend WRT his ex-wife…
- theturtletalks 3y agoHate is just confused admiration
- Nathanba 3y agoIt reminds me of the Trump thing, it seems people really lose all rationality when they are faced with a man who publically doesn't care and does whatever he wants and is successful at it. I wonder if we will one day have a psychological name for this. It must be related to something in the human brain that touches on social repression and decades of instilled moral codes like "Don't say this, nobody will like you" and then when somebody does it anyway, you feel like it's an invader from a different tribe or a tribe member violating the fabric of what holds together the tribe. When really, he's not doing much different at all and they'd privately do the same exact jokes as a kid like "Twitter is Titter! haha! Like titties get it?" I bet lots of people had such a dumb thought but repressed it and when a supposed adult and major social figure acts like that, it evokes anger that the tribe is in danger.
- inpdx 3y ago"and is successful at it." Overpaying, creating a mass exodus, destabilizing the platform, and losing tons of advertisers is "successful?"
- Nathanba 3y agoThe Twitter thing is still in progress and probably his first project where you could say that he has a problem
- phs318u 3y agoI’d argue that one of the reasons Tesla and SpaceX are successful is not just because Elno is a “visionary” (or functional equivalent). It’s because he was/is supported by a cadre of “true believers” (eg that we must disrupt the auto industry in order to do something radical about climate change). Those true believers (like all true believers), are willing to put up with lots of strange behaviour in the name of that belief. Twitter on the other hand was bought with a management layer that could fairly be characterised as the opposite of true believers in whatever Elon is selling. Hence the implosion.
- 4ggr0 3y ago
- sanderjd 3y agoI actually think the "living rent free in heads" peaked awhile ago. At this point it's just clear in a more pedestrian way that things aren't going well over there.
- laratiede 3y ago[dead]
- emodendroket 3y agoThe fear of investors and, to some extent, Google, is that LLMs will supplant traditional search and by the time enough people are catching on to affect metrics the momentum will be too great to stop. My experience with LLMs has not led me to believe that is all that likely but opinions differ there.
- andy_ppp 3y agoWe need search to be able to fact check the LLMs, but this might become extremely difficult once all the content is written by them…
- wolpoli 3y agoJust like how it is hard to fact-check Wikipedia now that it's used a reference. A thought came to me - perhaps it's Wikipedia that should be worried that it'll be supplanted by LLMs.
- jrmg 3y ago[citation needed]
- jamilton 3y agoThe phenomenon they're referring to is when something spurious is posted on Wikipedia with no or poor citations, then used as the source for a "reputable" article (without citations), then the article is cited by Wikipedia, making the spurious information look more trustworthy.
- callalex 3y ago1) that hardly ever happens, it hasn’t caused any widespread issues in the decades Wikipedia has existed. 2) All sources are cited so they can be easily verified by the reader.
- abathur 3y agohttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Innovator%27s_Dilemma https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Innovator%27s_Dilemma
- Nathanba 3y agoWhen Chrome launched, it only launched with ~2-3% market share in the first week compared to Firefox. Everyone thought that Chrome wasn't that good and Firefox would be fine. However I knew on day one that Firefox was in serious trouble and I switched browsers immediately. But what I didn't know is that Firefox would do nothing to compete for 10 years.
- taeric 3y agoChrome launched with an absurd amount of money to burn, though. And... I don't recall this "everyone" that you are citing. Chrome launched when Google had a ton of good will.
- TechBro8615 3y ago> Chrome launched with an absurd amount of money to burn OpenAI has $100bn+ from Microsoft, and millions of paying subscribers.
- datpiff 3y ago$100bn+? https://www.cnbc.com/2023/04/08/microsofts-complex-bet-on-openai-brings-potential-and-uncertainty.html https://www.cnbc.com/2023/04/08/microsofts-complex-bet-on-op... "Microsoft’s $13 billion bet on OpenAI carries huge potential along with plenty of uncertainty"
- TechBro8615 3y agoYeah, no idea where I got this $100bn number in my head... I guess that does sound pretty ridiculous now that I think about it!
- jshen 3y agoHow many of the companies with the largest market cap (top 15) were also in the top 15 20 years ago? Why do you think Google will be an exception to this reality?
- boo-ga-ga 3y agoI think the answer is network effect. As soon as there appears a properly working easy accessible alternative (not Mastodon), people with will start moving to it. At first it won’t be visible in twitter’s popularity, but when the new service reaches some critical mass of users - the popularity will start falling quickly. Let’s see if Notes is this alternative.
- ekianjo 3y agoBy the time someone makes a bad argument its too late. We are beyond reason.
- markstos 3y agoI used Bing today. I’m denting.
- nicenewtemp84 3y agoI used bing chat (supposedly using gpt4) and it was far more annoying than openai free chatgpt (supposedly using gpt3.5) Somehow Microsoft found a way to make it worse?
- 6031769 3y agoOf course they did. That ought to be their slogan. "Microsoft: finding a way to make it worse since 1975"
- coliveira 3y agoYes, I wonder why is so difficult for people to understand this. Microsoft wants to make your life worse, even when they have good software.
- nicenewtemp84 3y agoI find it hard to believe that they WANT to make my life worse. I think that they are simply ok with making my life worse if it makes their life better at all.
- heckerhut 3y agoAgree, prefer to pay for chatgpt then using Microsoft’s free crapware.
- redmaverick 3y agoexactly.. its not very usable. They don't even have to innovate anything. just copy ChatGPT interface and display the results.
- Karrot_Kream 3y agoI have access but don't have a box with Edge running on it nearby to use it. What about it was worse? A few friends tell me that uniting chat with the LLM makes it hallucinate a lot less and makes it easier to check its work, but they only used it a couple times.
- pantalaimon 3y agoIf AI assisted search gets larger it might be to Google what Google was to AltaVista
- mrkramer 3y agoGoogle controls distribution on Web through Google Chrome. How would AI assisted search even reach casual web users? Word of mouth is not enough.
- gremlinsinc 3y agoI switched to edge on all my devices (in hopes of getting early access to Bing Chat), and honestly there's a lot more features and it performs better, so they won't get anything from me except whatever they can milk from gmail. I haven't searched using them in over a year, used to use Brave Search, and You.com for awhile.
- ceejayoz 3y ago> You should look up global search volumes and Google share of it. There’s no dent. "You should look up global search volumes and Yahoo's share of it. There’s no dent" was once a valid statement. Same for Altavista, MySpace, etc. You can go from on top to the bottom very fast in this realm.
- geraneum 3y agoSame could be said when iPhone came out. Now look where Android is. The fact that something happened to others means nothing. Could go either way. edit: typo
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- wpietri 3y agoWell, it means it could go either way. Which with respect to Google and search is quite a novelty, as Google has been on top for 20 years, without a serious competitor for most of that time.
- nr2x 3y agoKey difference is Google pays a FUCKTON of money to be default search provider. The US Department of Justice is going after this. Once Google can’t pay-to-play in Safari and iOS they are in very deep shit. This is the classic thing with monopolies: eventually the “innovation” is just leveraging market power to deepen the moat by burning cash. This is what happens when the CFO runs the damn company. Sundar has no vision, at all, and Ruth’s vision is the same boring Wall Street play book that put a hundred tech companies in the ground.
- ceejayoz 3y ago> Key difference is Google pays a FUCKTON of money to be default search provider. Yahoo used to pay for that, and to package the Yahoo Toolbar pretty much everywhere. I remember when it used to try to install itself with MySQL. I'm sure it helps, for a while, until it suddenly doesn't.
- redmaverick 3y agoyou should look at all the blockbuster stores and Netflix's share of it. There's no dent. ~ Someone in 1997.
- jonathankoren 3y agoYou should look at all CD sales and minidisk’s share of it. There’s no dent.
- nr2x 3y agoKodak had pretty strong film sales when the first digital cameras hit the market as well.
- thrashh 3y agoYeah but that doesn’t mean anything. Kodak saw a train coming, did a study that told them that they had to do something, but then sat on the tracks. Fuji, who was also big in the chemical film business, came out just fine.
- nr2x 3y agoI take it you don’t work at Google?
- mgfist 3y ago> Kodak saw a train coming, did a study that told them that they had to do something, but then sat on the tracks. Replace "Kodak" with "Google" and that's the exact impression I get from friends who work there
- nr2x 3y agoI just resigned from Google. There’s no future with current leadership. I was a at high level (6), with an incredibly broad scope of responsibility, making an absurd amount of money. But life is too short to spend my days propping up a dying monopoly when there’s bigger game to chase. It’s also institutionally arrogant, they really think they are the best, Jeff Dean and Urs are Gods, and no other company can do what Google does. OpenAI just destroyed that myth, yet on the inside they haven’t woken up to the change.
- gremlinsinc 3y agoHey, myself and an ex-microsoft dev (like 2007-2008, not recent), with some VP experience have teamed up. We're working on memory solutions for AI, as well as creating better agents, workflows, etc... In the early days it'll mostly be a GUI over langchain/autogpt/babyAGI, eventually it might morph to creating our own in-house brain-like database, something beyond vectors (or built on top of them w/ a better ranking/indexing based on frequency/recency). Hit me up, if you'd consider partnering up.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- QuantumYeti 3y agoI actually just switched all our default search engines to Bing yesterday. Google is showing "Sponsors" that link directly to a full screen page with tons of warnings telling you to call some 800 number so you can get scammed. And that's after nearly downloading a fake Blender install a few weeks ago. I'm done with it.
- jononomo 3y agoI just switched to Bing about three months ago -- I haven't noticed any difference, to be honest.
- spaceman_2020 3y ago1. ChatGPT is very, very new, and habits change slowly 2. For non plus users, chatGPT UX is poor with slow responses, captchas and random logouts 3. All of this will eventually change There is no more major growth for Google, which is all that matters to Wall Street. It will go down slowly, but it will go down.
- drexlspivey 3y ago> For non plus users, chatGPT UX is poor with slow responses, captchas and random logouts There are tons of free custom UIs to chatGPT by now, all vastly superior to OpenAI’s. No captchas or login screens, just paste your API token once and it gets stored in local storage.
- sundarurfriend 3y agoThanks for mentioning this. I'd assumed this was the case, but I'd been wary of using them because I wasn't sure which of them would be reliable and non-sketchy. Your comment made me take a second look, this time specifically for FOSS custom UIs, and https://chatwithgpt.netlify.app/ https://chatwithgpt.netlify.app/ seems pretty decent (and is FOSS).
- drexlspivey 3y agoYou can also put a hard dollar limit on OpenAI just to be safe.
- mrkramer 3y agoGoogle wanted to be an Answer Machine before ChatGPT hence "I'm Feeling Lucky" button but road to there is long and hard. I think the biggest Google's problems are SEO spam often coupled with scams and fraud and last but not least, lack of transparency on how exactly they rank their search results.
- gonzo41 3y agoI don't think we should pretend that google doesn't have the power to crush spam today if it wanted to. They have chosen to let scrappers have top spots in their search results and their reputation is dying as a result.
- doublerabbit 3y agoDiscord attacking Twitch too
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- tracker1 3y agoRelatively happy to see it... though I do tend to lean towards the free speech side of the coin, and kind of miss the relative wild west that was IRC in the 90's. I feel like centralized social media is a blessing and a curse. What's old is new again.
- emodendroket 3y ago“Free speech” is a term that’s been completely abused and used in bad faith.
- tracker1 3y agoIs your assertion that I'm using it in bad faith?
- emodendroket 3y agoNo, but rather that Musk has been using it in bad faith (I’m assuming “I support free speech” was meant to qualify the criticism of Twitter under Musk’s leadership).
- tracker1 3y agoYeah, Musk's definition of supporting free speech wasn't much to speak of... better than the old guard, but really weird in ways too. For me, short of threats or calls for violence I'm pretty open to whatever... As long as you're able to as an individual block/filter. Though the NSFW content on Twitter can be pretty bad and wouldn't mind being able to selectively filter that as a user too.
- emodendroket 3y agoI don’t think it is better than “the old guard” at all. I would agree with this piece (which contains examples to make the point), that all he’s done is boost ideas he likes hearing and suppress ones he doesn’t in nakedly partisan fashion: https://apple.news/ANuPT612pRca2DdolgCyu1g https://apple.news/ANuPT612pRca2DdolgCyu1g And it does neatly summarize what I meant about the term “free speech” being abused: “ For them, free speech is when they can say what they want, and when you can say what they want.”
- chipgap98 3y agoI don't think Facebook really belongs in this conversation. As much as the VR stuff is silly their core business is still doing very well
- jabradoodle 3y agoAnd so is googles, Facebook are spending more than $10B a year on VR. For context that is more than Nvidia's quite large R&D budget, which they have ramped up on consistently over years. Facebook has gone from 0 to 10B real fast.
- wordpad25 3y agopeople treat facebook as if it were like their myspace, something dumb they did in their youth that's not longer relevant and is dying reality is pretty different, fb business is doing great despite all their missteps
- wvenable 3y agoI use Facebook more than ever these days but oddly for none of things I used to use it for. It's now got some obscure technical community groups that are too niche and too small for reddit or discord. Facebook Marketplace has replaced craigslist. My friend feed is totally incidental to my use of Facebook.
- bigger_cheese 3y agoPersonally in my circle I still use Facebook messenger service - my extended family has a group chat and some of my friend groups still use messenger chats (I'd say post pandemic discord is used more then messenger now) my parents use messenger to video chat with their grandkids. It's essentially become skype. The actual facebook.com friend feed etc. is essentially dead for me at least.
- ninth_ant 3y agoGoogle’s core businesses are doing just fine too. Twitter has suffered financially but I’ve seen little evidence that they’ve lost substantial numbers of users — Twitter posts are still in news articles and sites like HN as if it’s still serving it’s original purpose despite the noise.
- greyman 3y agoBut is twitter really dying? The fields I watch (AI, software engineering, writers), all thought leaders are still there, still posting regularly.
- sleepybrett 3y agoIn my communities most people are double posting on mastodon and twitter. So much so that I only check twitter every few days for the stragglers.
- AJ007 3y agoI have multiple communities I follow on Twitter and the ones that don't care about the elon stuff, they do now.
- jdminhbg 3y agoMastodon only has about 1.2M active users, so if most of your community is on there, it’s an unusual community. https://mastodon-analytics.com/ https://mastodon-analytics.com/
- lapcat 3y agoMost of the iOS developer community has moved to Mastodon. They're the reason I joined Twitter originally. The community is what I care about, not the social media platform.
- sleepybrett 3y agoI mean sure, my mom doesn't have a masto account, she does have a twitter account. It's down to posters vs reply guys vs rubberneckers. If those 1.2M active users are posters and higher quality reply guys, great.
- bee_rider 3y agoMy post will sound like a stupid gotcha but… what’s a thought leader, how do you measure them? Is it possible that the twitter crew skews more toward talking than doing?
- evo_9 3y agoAnd patient Apple waiting it all out to see whose lunch to eat next.
- slowmovintarget 3y agoWhat do you think those 16-core Neural Processing Units that ship in every Mac are for? They're not waiting to see, they're waiting for everyone to discover their lunch has already been eaten. How do you get around privacy concerns for using the big AI models? Run your own. How do you get around the compute requirements for training? Push to the leaf nodes. How do you solve for personalizing AIs? Have personal AI models running locally... And wouldn't it be nice if there was some dedicated hardware those AI models could inhabit...
- abathur 3y agoWith umptillion gigs of shared memory, too. Really the only reason I'm entertaining moving up from an mba to an mbp, but I haven't convinced myself it's worth the splurge yet.
- okdood64 3y agoSo are you going to take large short positions on Google and Facebook?
- Cardinal7167 3y agoI won’t be predictive or prescriptive about the markets. But it’s clear that tech giants will soon have to fall or evolve.