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Comment by cdf | Hacker News Reader

On paper, Google should never have allowed the ChatGPT moment to happen ; how did a then non-profit create what was basically a better search engine than Google?

Google suffers from classic Innovator's Dilemma and need competition to refocus on what ought to be basic survival instincts. What is worse is the search users are not the customers. The customers of Google Search are the advertisers and they will always prioritise the needs of the customers and squander their moats as soon as the threat is gone.

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Google allowed this to happen because they listened to their compliance department and were afraid of a backslash if LLM says something that could anger people.

Sergey Brin interview: https://x.com/slow_developer/status/1999876970562166968?s=20

This attitude also partially explains the black vikings incident.

Exactly, Google's business isn't search, it's ads. Is ChatGPT a more profitable system for delivering ads? That doesn't appear so, which means there's really no reason for Google to have created it first.

There was a very negative "immune" response from the users when they perceived suggestions from ChatGPT as ads.

This will be hard for them to integrate in a way that won't annoy users / will be better implemented than any other competitor in the same space.

Or perhaps we just deal with all AI across the board serving us ads.... this makes more sense unfortunately.

There’s a very negative immune response to the idea of Netflix running ads.

And yet they’re there, in the form of prominent product placement in all of their original series along with strategic placement in the frame to make sure they appear in cropped clips posted to social media and made into gifs.

Stranger Things alone has had 100-200 brands show up under the warm guise of nostalgia, with Coke alone putting up millions for all the less-than-subtle screen time their products get.

I’m certain AI providers will figure out how to slyly put the highest bidder into a certain proportion of output without necessarily acting out that scene in Wayne’s World.

I suspect google can last much longer in regards to an AI model chat engine that competes with open AI and other companies, without needing a profit from that particular product in a timely manner. I can's say the same for the others. Google is using it's own money to fund this without mch pressure for immediate profit in a time deadline. They can rely on their other services for revenue and profit for the meantime.

Google had an in-house chatbot that was never allowed to launch. I used to think that they were wrong but now I'm pretty sure they were right to not launch it. Users are very forgiving with a newcomer but not with an established company.

Think about it in terms of the research they put out into the ether though. The research grows into something viable, they sit back and watch the response and move when it makes sense.

It's like that old concept of saying something wrong in a forum on purpose to have everyone flame you for being wrong and needing to prove themselves better by each writing more elaborate answers.

You catch more fish with bait.

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