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fxtentacle
I feel like those articles all look at the wrong aspect: once AI companies are forced to compete on price (i.e. in 6 months), then Google’s TPU is going to be a massive advantage that’s almost impossible for Amazon or Microsoft to replace.
Yizahi
Even bigger advantage Google has, in addition to TPUs and other stuff, is bundling. Bundle paid AI tiers with other products and entice users with clever pricing tiers, and you're golden. In fact this is what Google already does. Cheapest paid AI tier - 4$ and you also get two hundred gigs of cloud storage and photo backup and office and stuff. You want more storage - sure we have that, plus some higher AI usage limits on top of that, or maybe you want average storage but much more AI tokens? We have that too. Family packs? Sure. And so on. OpenAI doesn't have a photo editor or a music streaming or or funny reels network to bundle their expensive AI with.
chneu
Googles bundling really is ingenious and possibly illegal.
I bet a significant chunk of folks reading this have a recurring charge from Google for extra storage, compute, hosting, YouTube, etc.
Google became really good at nickel/diming people
baq
Amazon has its own hardware in the pipeline, Microsoft would be stupid to not work on one, so best to assume they are at the very least a buyer of such a thing from AMD/Intel.
phonon
Microsoft has https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2026/01/26/maia-200-the-ai-... already.
esperent
> i.e. in 6 months
Why are Amazon or Microsoft going to be forced to compete on cost in six months?
datadrivenangel
If the big cloud players slowly agree to compete on price then that means that OpenAI and Anthropic are suddenly in a much weaker negotiating position.
spwa4
Google has never competed on having a price advantage.
eddythompson80
Don’t know about catching up to AWS, but given the state of Azure, anyone with enough data center investment should be able to overtake it.
pjmlp
Azure secret juice are Microsoft shops.
When you are already into some combination of Office, Windows desktops, Active Directory, .NET, SQL Server, Github Copilot, then Azure feels like the natural cloud transition.
eddythompson80
Azure is exceptionally broken though. It only exists for those who don’t want to put all their eggs in the Amazon basket, and because Microsoft has an old relationship with many large enterprises and is good at selling to them. No body is picking azure based on a technical reason as all services are horrific to use.
pjmlp
Amazon is hardly anything amazing.
I much rather deal with Azure than the complexity maze of AWS products, IAM configurations, primitive Web based IDE tooling and shell.
Amazon would never had come up with something like VSCode, which was born as the Azure Web IDE.
quanto
> Only Nvidia currently rivalled Google’s combination of AI hardware and integrated chip software, he added.
Does the phrasing imply that Google sees itself as #1 and Nvidia as a close #2 that may rival its greatness? not to mention other big contenders.
_pdp_
In a highly competitive markets, consumers win.
chneu
This isn't really true but keep thinking that.
This is one of those things capitalists tell themselves so they can keep believing the shtick. This is a good example of "head in the sand on purpose" thinking.
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ViktorRay
Whenever I read about how powerful these companies are, it sends chills down my spine.
tt24
Saying this about a compute rental service is hilarious
They have the power to do what exactly? Sell you some EC2 instances at reasonable prices? lol
There’s organizations that have the power to openly kidnap and execute people and we’re being melodramatic about a few buildings with computers in them
siliconc0w
They'll buy your politicians who will give them zero checks on raising energy prices or poisoning your children's minds
tt24
Have they been doing this? Evidence?
sublinear
Apathy is not evidence of anything, not even ignorance.
100ms
That's not an ideal tone for here. From my perspective the most incredible thing is the concentration of IO. I might like at some point for elements of my computer usage to remain private, it would be nice if that ability were preserved. A bit hard to accomplish when 1 out of 4 bits processed globally all run through the same network
delbronski
Wasn’t it just a few months ago that a big tech CEO used his powers to gain access to all the US government data he wanted? Did you forget that already?
Did you see any clips from Trumps inauguration? Weren’t the CEOs of these big tech companies sitting right behind him?
Shall we even talk about Palantir?
I think it’s pretty obvious what the power of these companies are. You have to have your head pretty deep in the tech hole to think this is just about fair ec2 pricing. What I’d do to have that kind of ignorance again.
tt24
Palantir makes dashboards haha, if anything they’re the least scary one on the list
> Wasn’t it just a few months ago that a big tech CEO used his powers to gain access to all the US government data he wanted
You’re so close! The organization you want to criticize here is the government. Hope that helps :)
modo_mario
>There’s organizations that have the power to openly kidnap and execute people and...
Like banana companies?
tt24
No, I’m not aware of any banana companies that currently have the power to murder people.
fnordpiglet
When their customers start using those buildings with computers in them to autonomously determine who to kidnap and execute, I suspect you might understand their point. I’d also note we are one refusal away from the US president declaring DPA control over frontier model providers and their infrastructure a national defense necessity and under his personal control.
tt24
Then complain about the US president forcing Microsoft to do X rather than just preemptively criticizing Microsoft for doing nothing
raincole
Wait until you learn what governments are.
applfanboysbgon
Governments are companies that have accountability to the public, wherein the public has direct influence over their decisionmaking, unlike regular corporations where people have no influence whatsoever (without lobbying the government to regulate them, anyways).
To the extent that governments work against the people, it is largely because people in some countries are collectively very stupid and willingly support such governments.
victorbjorklund
oh, yes, Trump famous for being held accountable.
tt24
Seriously
I don’t understand how this is even a remote comparison lol
If we’re worried about power there are other much scarier organizations to criticize first
TitaRusell
I am worried about these batshit insane billionaire tech bros. They are already in the White House.
SilverElfin
Yep. They can make every mistake imaginable and not work as hard but still win. It’s the power of concentrated capital and monopolistic behavior and what people call “moats” but really is just an unfair advantage. Why should Google or Apple be allowed to copy everyone’s AI tech and just win because of distribution through Chrome or iPhones?
We need new antitrust laws and heavy taxes just on the megacorps worth $500B or more. And aggressive enforcement.
jfrbfbreudh
You mean, the inventor of the transformer technology that made ChatGPT possible, is copying ChatGPT’s technology?
SilverElfin
Gemini is a copy of ChatGPT. And ChatGPT was a product invented on top of many previous ideas. The fact that one paper among many was written at Google isn’t relevant to my point.
Google entered the competition in AI products late. And now they will use their power unfairly to try and make it win. When they bundle an AI Chatbot into their existing contracts for Google workspace, they are competing unfairly. When the Chrome browser steers you towards Google properties by default, they are competing unfairly. Etc. Those unfair monopolistic actions let them come into the market years late with a viable competitor to ChatGPT or other products.
And let’s not give them too much credit for transformers. A handful of researchers were paid by Google while they came up with that paper. Google didn’t really do anything to push for it and neither Google leaders nor shareholders cared much about it at the time. Not to mention, transformers themselves were just a continuation of other prior steps in ML, from what I’ve read.
nl
There are many valid criticisms of Google, but copying AI tech isn't one of them.
SilverElfin
Everything it’s building now - Gemini in its various forms, and all the other AI products - are copies of other products. If they weren’t Google but another startup with the same products, they would be irrelevant and ignored. It’s their capital and anticompetitive practices that let them get away with missteps that no one else can survive.
georgemcbay
Not that I'm opposed to new laws, but just having enforcement of the laws we already have would go a long way to fixing the problems.
The problem is how to get to the point where there is enforcement.
It definitely isn't going to happen with Republicans in power, and it also isn't a sure thing with Democrats in power either.
Lina Khan was a good start for a bit there, but she certainly didn't have universal Dem support. Establishment Democrats are going to have to grow a spine and tell the Reid Hoffmanesque donor class to get fucked.
keeda
I will preface by saying that someone with Lina Khan is sorely needed; Big Tech and other monopolies have gotten way too Big and seriously need to be reined in.
That said, from all the informed takes I've seen, Lina Khan was seriously... flawed (putting it charitably) in her strategy and tactics. To the extent that some observers wondered if she was deliberately sabotaging the agency just to highlight the need for new, more effective laws. She did have a novel theory of consumer harm, but that requires new legislation to enforce. Instead the way she went about it -- including by flouting due process -- was extremely counter-productive.
That was a big reason she was neither very effective in her goals (other than creating a lot of noise) nor have high political support from any side.
SilverElfin
The current set of laws lead to the current situation in my opinion. Enforcement within the current laws means a court case that will take years and span multiple administrations, which gives it a lot of time to be killed. It doesn’t provide enough authority to immediately bring enforcement actions.
IncreasePosts
What AI tech did Google just copy?
bigyabai
AdSense is the one that people underestimate. It's a piranha pool of liquid cash, billions-scale impressions and near global outreach. Any sane nation would have banned it decades ago, unless it was propping up a global influence campaign for their government.
j16sdiz
I am more concern with how they make scam much less detectable.
You can hyper-target your ad or scam to vulnerable individual.
Unlike traditional media, like newspaper, you can post an ad with no visibility outside your target group -- which is hard to discover.
The report button is just some generic "second look" and automation within the same organization, there are no oversight.
pixelpoet
I am deeply saddened that it was developed by the hero of modern rendering, Eric Veach.
parineum
> Any sane nation would have banned it decades ago
Why?
bigyabai
AdSense uses a sealed-bid auction system with arbitrary number of lots that Google controls. It's a FOMO market driven by artificial scarcity, and since Google contractually forbids AdSense-enabled websites from using competing services, it forces ad buyers to go through their closed, controlled system.
echelon
Google owns 92% of all "URL bars".
They turned this into "search".
Every brand or product has to competitively bid for its own identity in a monopoly competitive bidding market.
It's downright evil.
Look at Google's AI rivals having to spend hundreds of millions just so customers can find them. Google Anthropic or OpenAI and see what you get.
The next admin needs to break Google up horizontally (not vertically) into competing browsers, clouds, and search products. They all need to fight. Healthy capitalism is fiercely competitive. Not whatever this invasive species that preys on everything else is.
They also need to make it illegal to place ads for registered trademarks. The EU should get in on that too.
inquirerGeneral
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majormajor
"Possibility for abuse" seems like the right reason here. Does the benefiting of reducing a specific possibility of abuse outweigh the cost of an intervention? And here in particular, is there much cost to the intervention other than just shifting the money distribution from a zero-sum advertising arms race from one player to several?
I frequently see calls to not intervene if there's not bulletproof evidence of existing abuse, but why wait? Would you want Google to own a bunch of nuclear missiles just because they might not have misused them yet?
i_love_retros
Collectively we have the power to do something about it if enough people care to. It's called democratic socialism.
TulliusCicero
DSA would be a great org if they could fix their foreign policy takes.
Doing the whole "it's both sides, really" thing after Russia invaded Ukraine just makes them look like useful idiots.
siren2026
I pray for Google to completely fail the pivot to AI. We don't need another surveillance capitalism company using AI to make us even dumber and more addicted to screens.
I so hope that Google goes down. (And I pray the same for Facebook and a couple others).
bitpush
Huh? Why are you railing against Google? Because of YouTube? How's Google Search making you addicted to screens.
At this rate, you'll hate Apple for making iPhones so damn good, or Starlink for giving really good internet access.
You line of thinking is - gosh, these companies are providing an excellent service, and I hate them for that?
siren2026
The incentive for those Adtech is to keep you hooked as long as possible so they can sell you more ads, and making you lose your only real currency in life: time.
The incentive for Apple or Microsoft is to make a good product that you will gladly pay for. This is very different.
A good restaurant makes an excellent product bit it doesn't mean that I will spend 5 hours there.
abenga
I use Google products. Between YouTube premium and uBlock origin, I don't really see any ads at all.
Rekindle8090
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irishcoffee
I’ve always thought “man it would have been a great job selling shovels and pickaxes during the gold rush” back in the day.”
I know, I know, it’s really hard having these insights. We all have our crosses to bear. <giggling emoji>
kirubakaran
Even the original gold rush pickaxe guy Sam Brannan went broke, and he practically had a monopoly on pickaxes by buying up the entire supply: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Brannan
nadermx
Went broke "Following the divorce, he became a brewer and developed a problem with alcohol."
khuey
TIL who Brannan Street in SF is named after.
jeffbee
The "picks and shovels" people from the dotcom days all went broke. The stuff they had convinced themselves and their investors was crucial turned out to be not important.
TitaRusell
Nobody actually goes broke anymore man. They'll still be multi millionaires. They will still have a contact list. Hell you will receive a pardon if it comes to that.
It's actually really hard for the aristocracy to end up in a Florida trailer park.
GuB-42
I guess they failed at the "during the gold rush" part.
Selling picks and shovels after the gold rush is a terrible idea.
cyberax
Cisco is doing great. Sun got acquired by Oracle. Oracle itself is also fine (apart from it is Oracle). Akamai is doing fine.
From the pure software side, Macromedia got acquired. RedHat was doing fine before IBM gobbled it up. But I honestly can't remember any other "picks and shovels" software companies from pre-dotcom.
bryanlarsen
> Cisco is doing great.
shellwizard
3Com / US Robotics - dead
Nortel - dead
Global crossing - dead
jeffbee
The glass-in-the-ground people went spectacularly broke. I also suggest you look up the stock price chart for JDSU. On the software side, Ariba and Commerce One.
warkdarrior
Microsoft - doing fine
Netscape - dead (server) and/or dying (Mozilla)
Intel - almost dead
Palm - dead
Qualcomm - still around
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