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Comment by lvl100 | Hacker News Reader

OK, but you realize you can say that about all the big techs now? Google is not an ad company. It’s really an “AI” company with far more valuable R&D. Same with Facebook.

If we are looking at tech companies purely from research assets accrued, I have to say Facebook is a bargain here. And even more so with Google.

Tesla on the other hand is more of a marketing company. Their R&D spend does not match all the hype. If they’re rolling out a revolutionary humanoid robot, I have to think that’s going to cost them more than $2B per year to develop.

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>Google is not an ad company. It’s really an “AI” company with far more valuable R&D.Same with Facebook.

And which AI products do Google and Facebook sell to their customers for revenue?

Google and Facebook are ad companies plain and simple and invest into AI R&D to further improve their ad targeting capabilities.

Leads me to think you’ve not paid attention to ML space in the past decade.

Please correct me on what I said wrong.

Google Cloud has ML\AI offerings. Most of the Google hardware probably utilizes ML in some way. There's also the bets: Waymo, Deepmind etc.

Waymo and Deepmind are currently money sinks for Google constantly running at a loss and only supposed by Google's massive ad-funded war-chest. Same for Facebook's/Meta's endeavors into VR where Quest goggles are sold at a loss to consumer.

Please wake me up when Waymo and Deepening generate any profit on their own, without any funding from the mother ship, that doesn't revolve around ad targeting.

Well you didn't ask for profitable businesses, this is just to dispute that AI efforts are only for better ad targeting.

I wouldn't be surprised if Tesla is operating it's AI efforts at a loss as well.

Of course I asked for profitable business when I challenged your claim that Google is an AI/ML company. If that business line is not profitable but ad revenue is the main engine that keeps the lights on, then Google is first and foremost an ad company that also happens to fund AI/ML and other endeavors but at a loss.

What generates revenue is what defines a company straight and simple not what they want to call themselves, since they all say their mission is making the world a better place and other such BS.

So what makes Tesla not a car company? most of it's revenue is selling cars, no?

Where did I mention anything about Tesla?

This whole thread started from GP arguing that Tesla is not a "car company" :)

Anyway, no point in continuing it.

Please check that I only rebutted the claims that Google and Facebook ares ad companies and not ML companies, that's it. I didn't reply to anything mentioning Tesla and I can't be held accountable for other discussions in this thread, that I didn't take part in.

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