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Comment by tandr | Hacker News Reader

And they are producing what exactly? "Better ads"?

Google's contribution to society (if I may be bold) are products that they are not selling directly - search, maps, and gmail. Maps and gmail are replaceable, search is not yet. Their influence on how we are consuming information is nothing short of amazing and incredible, and it has long-lasting effect on all levels of current (western?) life.

But... is it something "sellable" to a consumer? Not as third eye to a big organizations/governments, or tensor-something-analytics to a research tank, but something to an everyday Joe and Marta?

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They are producing a lot of things. I use a lot of them personally. Just love YouTube TV. It is not just a lot cheaper but a far better user experience.

Have a Pixel Book and with Google "producing" GNU/Linux support it is ideal for me.

Have a Pixel 2 XL which I just love. Best smart phone I have ever owned and barely carry my iPhone any longer.

We have Google Homes throughout our house that they produced.

But lots of tech. K8s, TensorFlow, Gvisor been playing with.

But the biggest thing for me personally is the Google research papers. It is just amazing what Google shares and I really appreciate how much they give back and how they are willing to share their secrets.

I am shocked they decided to basically share Borg to the world but more power to them. We just never had a tech company as generous as Google. I am old and been in tech for almost 40 years.

Only company I can think of that would be even close is Bell Labs. But no where near the scale of what Google gives away.

> But... is it something "sellable" to a consumer?

If tomorrow ads were deemed illegal, and google charged for their suite of services, I believe they would be valuable.

Just look at the powerlessness of the EU in dealing with this company (and facebook) because they can't untangle it from their populace without anything short of a riot.

Are you trying to argue that google products are not profitable?

No, that's not what I am saying.

Profitable today != profitable tomorrow. They have "the power" now, I am not sure they will have the same endless income tomorrow. I am of the opinion that unless you sell something to a wider public, you will exhaust that niche supply chain eventually [1]. This will first limit, and then end an expansion sooner or later, and since niches tend to collapse more often than wast "general public", and you run out of income. How soon that will happen, and in what form will it ends is a totally different question. BTW, becoming evil is one sad, but valid outcome.

[1] Of course unless you make this "niche" bigger through different means, be that by making product more accessible for wider audience, or making changes that your product becomes a "must have" in societal terms, thus growing the audience instead of your specialization niche.

Just Waymo will likely be more valuable down the road than all of Google today. Just all their AI stuff even more so. SDC is just one application. A big one but just one.

Self driving vehicles is over a trillion a year opportunity.

But the benefits to people is so much bigger. Less traffic deaths. Make it possible for people to get to places that could not before.

A big one is drunk driving could become a think of the pass.

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