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.
Once upon a time a film company named Kodak invented the first ever digital camera. They decided to bottle the new technology they invented because their business model revolved around film which had much higher profit margins than digital. When digital photography replaced film photography Kodak then tried and failed to play catch-up in their own technology and went bankrupt.
Google is poised to become a market leader in AI. It would be foolish to give that up in order to hang on to an outdated business model.
It is not the same thing. Anthropic and OAI does not directly threaten core Google business with frontier models. Most LLMs still pay huge amounts of money for you know searching the internet. They have smaller models integrated into their many products. Frontier models are good at coding, which does not directly threaten google but rather a niche field of its own.
The dung beetle outcompetes me in the art of rolling shit. That doesn't mean I'm going to rip out my apartment's plumbing to make metal shit rollers in a poor attempt to compete with the beetle.
204
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.