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How did Google blow their AI lead? Why is Google the 2nd or 3rd tier player in the AI coding market? Why can't GCP supplant AWS? Because google can't help but

by Sevii 4mo ago

How did Google blow their AI lead? Why is Google the 2nd or 3rd tier player in the AI coding market? Why can't GCP supplant AWS? Because google can't help but constantly shoot its customers and itself in the foot.

satvikpendem 4mo ago
No, it's more that Gemini models are simply not very good for coding compared to the top two. Even with Antigravity I use Claude models.
- fluffyspork 4mo ago
  Gemma 4 31b is better for coding than Gemini in my limited testing on a small C project single source file project, less than 1000 lines. Setting temperature to 0 gives better results for me. It seems like Gemini ignores the system prompt more and the default reasoning output seems more incoherent.
  - onlyrealcuzzo 4mo ago
    > Gemma 4 31b is better for coding than Gemini Is there a fine-tuned Gemma coding model? I'd assume that would perform quite well.
    - fluffyspork 4mo ago
      I don't know, but for me setting temperature to 0 has a noticeable impact. I don't think you need a fine tune.
  - _fat_santa 4mo ago
    Their open weight on device models are really impressive. Partly because I think they are the only ones out of all the frontier labs even working on local models.
- pelorat 4mo ago
  Depends on the language. Gemini and Claude are far superior when it comes to C# for instance, compared to anything that OAI offers.
  - dahcryn 4mo ago
    Yaah I feel the same way. Gemini is great at and Django and AI backends, OpenAI better at making something visually pleasing in React and Claude for everything else or across frontend and backend. At least, that's my heuristic that tends to work for my workflow. I use a combination of Gemini-CLI, Claude Code, and Github Copilot, but across those, the underlying model choice works best according to which part of the applicaiton I am messing with
- deleted 4mo ago
  [deleted]
embedding-shape 4mo ago
> How did Google blow their AI lead? What lead? Maybe because I'm mostly using AI/LLMs for development, but neither Google, Anthropic, xAI or anyone else has ever been in the lead, OpenAI always had the best models in my mind, as long as you're comparing the "top" plans between all of them. Besides, they all seem to shoot themselves in the foot, OpenAI included, seems the only thing that differs is how often and how big the damage is.
- MisterKent 4mo ago
  Wow. Didn't realize OAI was astroturfing hacker news now...
  - embedding-shape 4mo ago
    All the labs astroturf all the social media, HN is not unique and OpenAI wouldn't be the only ones. I even receive offers sometimes on my email put in my HN profile, asking me to post about their project in exchange for money. Be skeptical of anything you read online, not just what you think is "obvious astroturf".
    - Imustaskforhelp 4mo ago
      Wait what? Why don't I get emails like this too? /s (on a serious note, do you feel comfortable naming and shaming such companies, this is sort of a serious accusation imo and if not then how much money they are trying to give. It would be an interesting discussion and feel free to mail me if its confidential, waiting for your response and have a nice day :-D)
      - embedding-shape 4mo ago
        Nah, maybe one day I do a collective public post of it, for now I just try to get their company and/or name first, then forward it to HN themselves so they can ban them and keep an eye out for them.
cush 4mo ago
They had the lead for maybe a week or two. Now, only Apple is further behind.
- repeekad 4mo ago
  Apple may be behind, and even getting sued for false advertising around AI features, but at least they haven’t spent hundreds of billions of dollars with no indication of how they’ll make their money back.
  - cush 4mo ago
    You’re right, they’re simply playing a different game. That said, Apple sold millions of phones with the promise that 3 months later users would be able to use AI to automate their phones and use Siri similar to how they use ChatGPT. That was summer 2024, and it still hasn’t shipped.
- svachalek 4mo ago
  I'll give them images. Gemini/Nano Banana is notably better at understanding and generating images than OpenAI, imo, and Claude can't even generate. While I'm at it I've got to give them credit for Gemma as well. Stellar, first class model for the size.
  - vunderba 4mo ago
    It's a toss-up - NB Pro (and NB2) were in the lead for a long time, but gpt-image-1.5 and then particularly gpt-image-2 pretty much closed the gap on my GenAI Image Showdown benchmark site. NB still generates better looking images though for the most part - gpt-image series is still affected by the yellow saturation issues though its been heavily mitigated.
    - basch 4mo ago
      gpt-image-2 still has a very visible banding/artifacting, but nb2 and gpti2 each have their strengths to the point that its momentarily worth running the same prompt through both and grabbing the better result, then feeding it to the opposite model to tweak it. both of them do a better job of not "getting stuck" regurgitating the same thing over and over when the base image comes from the opposite model. i tend to try and limit how many edits i make with gpti2 because successive iterations degrade the image much much faster. huge waste of firefly credits tho.
elorant 4mo ago
Because their strategy wasn’t to become leaders but to be as good as it takes to erode the lead of others. They have the cash cow of search so they don’t rely on AI to succeed. All they need is to keep publishing new products/services to keep OpenAI from taking the initiative. Between that and the Chinese models all they have to do is wait for the bubble to burst at which point every major AI lab would go bust.
vl 4mo ago
Because for awhile they had access to infinite money printing press (search ads), and in the situation like this it’s impossible to focus and seriously compete in other areas. Essentially all Google efforts were in protection of search ad revenue.
Andrex 4mo ago
They really just hate doing migration plans, especially longer ones (1+ year). Google seems like an outlier but I don't have real data to prove it.
hunterpayne 4mo ago
Where have you been? Google has always been terrible with enterprise products. They are in the low cost, small company part of the analytics/enterprise market. The medium or large sized customers have been burned by them too many times to ever go back at this point. If you use them, you deserve what you get these days. No idea why you think Google was ever some quality provider of enterprise tools. They were declining even before they entered those markets. It isn't 2008 anymore and the Google you remember hasn't existed in well over a decade.
tartoran 4mo ago
> How did Google blow their AI lead? Google is not an "AI company", they just happened to have been 10 steps ahead of everyone but slept on it for too long, now scrambling to catch up..
- upbeat_general 4mo ago
  If by "happened to" you mean pour significant resources for well-over a decade on many different AI research groups then yes, that's accurate. Depending on your definition of AI, it might even be two decades. In fact, OpenAI was founded largely with the direct goal of preventing Google from being the sole winner in AI...
- Flere-Imsaho 4mo ago
  Alphabet owns DeepMind, who are an AI company. In fact alphabet are lots of things, which is fine.
  - tartoran 4mo ago
    Yes, you're right, but Google are not an AI company in the same sense Anthropic or OpenAi are and are focused on their products differently and it kind of shows..
themafia 4mo ago
> Why can't GCP supplant AWS? Both GCP and AWS are just relabeled corporate dogfood. It turns out most people have operations that share more traits with retail than with big data.
krzyk 4mo ago
> Why is Google the 2nd or 3rd tier player in the AI coding market? 2nd, 3rd? No way. You either use Claude Code or Codex, the 3rd option usually was Github Copilot. The only time I heard someone used google for code writing it was Linux Torvalds in one of his commits.
- dmix 4mo ago
  Cursor is also definitely more popular than Gemini CLI

by Sevii 4mo ago

satvikpendem 4mo ago

No, it's more that Gemini models are simply not very good for coding compared to the top two. Even with Antigravity I use Claude models.

fluffyspork 4mo ago
Gemma 4 31b is better for coding than Gemini in my limited testing on a small C project single source file project, less than 1000 lines. Setting temperature to 0 gives better results for me. It seems like Gemini ignores the system prompt more and the default reasoning output seems more incoherent.
- onlyrealcuzzo 4mo ago
  > Gemma 4 31b is better for coding than Gemini Is there a fine-tuned Gemma coding model? I'd assume that would perform quite well.
  - fluffyspork 4mo ago
    I don't know, but for me setting temperature to 0 has a noticeable impact. I don't think you need a fine tune.
- _fat_santa 4mo ago
  Their open weight on device models are really impressive. Partly because I think they are the only ones out of all the frontier labs even working on local models.
pelorat 4mo ago
Depends on the language. Gemini and Claude are far superior when it comes to C# for instance, compared to anything that OAI offers.
- dahcryn 4mo ago
  Yaah I feel the same way. Gemini is great at and Django and AI backends, OpenAI better at making something visually pleasing in React and Claude for everything else or across frontend and backend. At least, that's my heuristic that tends to work for my workflow. I use a combination of Gemini-CLI, Claude Code, and Github Copilot, but across those, the underlying model choice works best according to which part of the applicaiton I am messing with
deleted 4mo ago
[deleted]

embedding-shape 4mo ago

> How did Google blow their AI lead? What lead? Maybe because I'm mostly using AI/LLMs for development, but neither Google, Anthropic, xAI or anyone else has ever been in the lead, OpenAI always had the best models in my mind, as long as you're comparing the "top" plans between all of them. Besides, they all seem to shoot themselves in the foot, OpenAI included, seems the only thing that differs is how often and how big the damage is.

MisterKent 4mo ago
Wow. Didn't realize OAI was astroturfing hacker news now...
- embedding-shape 4mo ago
  All the labs astroturf all the social media, HN is not unique and OpenAI wouldn't be the only ones. I even receive offers sometimes on my email put in my HN profile, asking me to post about their project in exchange for money. Be skeptical of anything you read online, not just what you think is "obvious astroturf".
  - Imustaskforhelp 4mo ago
    Wait what? Why don't I get emails like this too? /s (on a serious note, do you feel comfortable naming and shaming such companies, this is sort of a serious accusation imo and if not then how much money they are trying to give. It would be an interesting discussion and feel free to mail me if its confidential, waiting for your response and have a nice day :-D)
    - embedding-shape 4mo ago
      Nah, maybe one day I do a collective public post of it, for now I just try to get their company and/or name first, then forward it to HN themselves so they can ban them and keep an eye out for them.

cush 4mo ago

They had the lead for maybe a week or two. Now, only Apple is further behind.

repeekad 4mo ago
Apple may be behind, and even getting sued for false advertising around AI features, but at least they haven’t spent hundreds of billions of dollars with no indication of how they’ll make their money back.
- cush 4mo ago
  You’re right, they’re simply playing a different game. That said, Apple sold millions of phones with the promise that 3 months later users would be able to use AI to automate their phones and use Siri similar to how they use ChatGPT. That was summer 2024, and it still hasn’t shipped.
svachalek 4mo ago
I'll give them images. Gemini/Nano Banana is notably better at understanding and generating images than OpenAI, imo, and Claude can't even generate. While I'm at it I've got to give them credit for Gemma as well. Stellar, first class model for the size.
- vunderba 4mo ago
  It's a toss-up - NB Pro (and NB2) were in the lead for a long time, but gpt-image-1.5 and then particularly gpt-image-2 pretty much closed the gap on my GenAI Image Showdown benchmark site. NB still generates better looking images though for the most part - gpt-image series is still affected by the yellow saturation issues though its been heavily mitigated.
  - basch 4mo ago
    gpt-image-2 still has a very visible banding/artifacting, but nb2 and gpti2 each have their strengths to the point that its momentarily worth running the same prompt through both and grabbing the better result, then feeding it to the opposite model to tweak it. both of them do a better job of not "getting stuck" regurgitating the same thing over and over when the base image comes from the opposite model. i tend to try and limit how many edits i make with gpti2 because successive iterations degrade the image much much faster. huge waste of firefly credits tho.

elorant 4mo ago

Because their strategy wasn’t to become leaders but to be as good as it takes to erode the lead of others. They have the cash cow of search so they don’t rely on AI to succeed. All they need is to keep publishing new products/services to keep OpenAI from taking the initiative. Between that and the Chinese models all they have to do is wait for the bubble to burst at which point every major AI lab would go bust.

vl 4mo ago

Because for awhile they had access to infinite money printing press (search ads), and in the situation like this it’s impossible to focus and seriously compete in other areas. Essentially all Google efforts were in protection of search ad revenue.

Andrex 4mo ago

They really just hate doing migration plans, especially longer ones (1+ year). Google seems like an outlier but I don't have real data to prove it.

hunterpayne 4mo ago

Where have you been? Google has always been terrible with enterprise products. They are in the low cost, small company part of the analytics/enterprise market. The medium or large sized customers have been burned by them too many times to ever go back at this point. If you use them, you deserve what you get these days. No idea why you think Google was ever some quality provider of enterprise tools. They were declining even before they entered those markets. It isn't 2008 anymore and the Google you remember hasn't existed in well over a decade.

tartoran 4mo ago

> How did Google blow their AI lead? Google is not an "AI company", they just happened to have been 10 steps ahead of everyone but slept on it for too long, now scrambling to catch up..

upbeat_general 4mo ago
If by "happened to" you mean pour significant resources for well-over a decade on many different AI research groups then yes, that's accurate. Depending on your definition of AI, it might even be two decades. In fact, OpenAI was founded largely with the direct goal of preventing Google from being the sole winner in AI...
Flere-Imsaho 4mo ago
Alphabet owns DeepMind, who are an AI company. In fact alphabet are lots of things, which is fine.
- tartoran 4mo ago
  Yes, you're right, but Google are not an AI company in the same sense Anthropic or OpenAi are and are focused on their products differently and it kind of shows..

themafia 4mo ago

> Why can't GCP supplant AWS? Both GCP and AWS are just relabeled corporate dogfood. It turns out most people have operations that share more traits with retail than with big data.

krzyk 4mo ago

> Why is Google the 2nd or 3rd tier player in the AI coding market? 2nd, 3rd? No way. You either use Claude Code or Codex, the 3rd option usually was Github Copilot. The only time I heard someone used google for code writing it was Linux Torvalds in one of his commits.

dmix 4mo ago
Cursor is also definitely more popular than Gemini CLI