Bill Gates says "AI could kill Google and Amazon" | Hacker News Reader

Bill Gates says "AI could kill Google and Amazon"

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3 pointsdavidsvida10 comments

The guy who couldn't see the web being a big thing (and MS came late to the game after Netscape), who missed the turn to Linux (and MS had to catch up decades later), and who failed at the web search and the mobile space?

I wouldn't bet on his prediction skills past the early 90s...

And who also has a modest vested interest in Amazon's/Google's competitor.

And who is also talking about companies that are literally AI chip producers...

The desktop operating system he championed still rules the roost. While not every bet is a winner, it would be hard to argue that MS or Bill himself were bad at predicting the future of PCs. As they say, the best way to predict the future is to invent it.

This "prediction" is based on the idea that AI is antithetical to both Google's surveillance-based advertising business model and to Amazon's lock-in monopoly distribution system. You don't need to be a genius to see that's true.

I’m not sure your accounts are quite right.

MS didn’t invent PCs, superior marketing and deal making ensured their place in government and public facing industries (Apple had academia and design, Sun had manufacturing and fabrication, etc.)

And lastly Google and Amazon are placed for success on these terms, if they can deliver “the most usable product”.

The mob populous only complains as though conscientious and self determined. In practice they want things done for them, done reliably, and kept ahead of novel trends. Prosperity and convenience will silence the lot.

They invented the Wintel monopoly that's still going strong. Bill championed individual developers and got mindshare which perists to this day in the business world. I think one gets props for that, not a dismissal.

>They invented the Wintel monopoly that's still going strong

That's not something they "invented" (in any definition of the term). This is something they achieved. Through a combination of luck/right place/right time (the IBM deal), good-enough corporate-oriented software, and a number of good business moves, and a hell of a lot of shady businesses practices and under the table deals.

It was meant allegorically. Despite many attempts to standardize small business computing before Microsoft, it was Bill's efforts that brought all the pieces together. In that way, his company "invented" the desktop computer as we know it and ended the era of everyone making their own incompatible systems.

>The desktop operating system he championed still rules the roost. While not every bet is a winner, it would be hard to argue that MS or Bill himself were bad at predicting the future of PCs.

I would argue that he didn't predict anything.

He got lucky with the IBM deal, and then been competent (and shady) in keeping it up and expanding. But not through any visionary predicting ability.

>AI is antithetical to both Google.. and to Amazon.

With Google I can understand the argument (though I think a huge company has a lot of ruin in it and Google will trudge along with perhaps reduced profits). Buy why Amazon? Amazon will still have a logistics advantage over most competitors, and AWS should do just fine.

I think his theory that Amazon, as supplier of everything to everyone, manipulates the market in a way that can be circumvented by an AI shopping assistant.

You're right on logistics, though, and the cloud. They can provide those services for others even if the store itself wanes.

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