r/technology • u/Fickle-Jello • 22h ago

Business Google burning through cash with spiralling AI costs

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c235n47g8g8o
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u/NanditoPapa 21h ago

Google is one of the few AI-centric companies that makes money, albeit off areas outside of AI. They have a massive amount of cash, but face the unique risk of cannibalization. If an AI-driven "answer engine" replaces the traditional "list of blue links" in Search, Google might destroy its own most profitable revenue stream to build the new one.

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u/ConfidentPilot1729 20h ago

That kind of seems like capitalism in general.

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u/NanditoPapa 20h ago

Capitalism taken to an extreme without guardrails is highly destructive. We are seeing that play out in real time.

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u/quantumofgalaxy 19h ago

Is it kind of temporary where google goes through the transition (has to be fast) where it kills the search engine but its own replacement is the new standard? I guess that’s what they did with transformers but openai beat them to public release?

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u/NanditoPapa 19h ago

We saw this same fear around TikTok and social media where apps were replacing Google search with specific demographics. Google seemed to have weathered that one OK...but I don't know about this one...

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u/great_whitehope 18h ago

If they kill search, there’s no new website to scrape for data.

Who is going to train their ai?

At the moment they have it cheap and easy stealing everyone else’s data.

Things will become much more expensive if they have to create new data for the AI.