[sah2ed]

> Microsoft, the company they nearly vanquished a decade ago, is releasing better products.

Google nearly vanquished Microsoft a decade ago? Where can I read more about this bit of history :) ?

IMO, Axios [0] seem to do a better job of criticizing Google's Duplex AI claims, as they repeatedly reached out to their contacts at Google for answers.

0: https://www.axios.com/google-ai-demo-questions-9a57afad-9854...

[dogprez]

I think they are overselling Google's contributions a bit. It was more "Web 2.0" that shook Microsoft's dominance in tech. Google was a big curator and pushed state-of-the-art. Google was built on a large network of commodity hardware, they were able to do that because of the Open Source Software. Microsoft licensing would have been prohibitive to such innovation. There was some reenforcement that helped Linux gain momentum in other domains like Mobile and Desktop. Googled helped curate "Web 2.0" with developments / acquisitions like Maps and Gmail. When more of your life was spent on the web, the operating system meant less and that's also why Apple was able to make strides with their platforms. People weren't giving up as much when they switched to Mac as they would have previously.

Microsoft was previously the gatekeeper to almost every interaction with software (roughly 1992 - 2002). I don't know of good books on it but Tim O'Reilly wrote quite a bit about Web 2.0.

[sah2ed]

My question was actually tongue-in-cheek, which I tried to communicate with the smiley face.

I'm quite familiar with Google's history and would not characterize them as having vanquished Microsoft.

For the most part, Microsoft doesn't need to lose for Google to win (except of course in the realm of web search and office productivity).

[varelse]

You're right, it was Steve Ballmer who nearly vanquished Microsoft at a time when Google was the company to work for in tech and kept doing amazing things. At least IMO.

Unfortunately, by the time of my brief stint at Google, the place was a professional dead-end where most of the hirees got smoke blown up their patooties at orientation about how amazing they were to be accepted into Google, only to be blind allocated into me-too MVPs of stuff they'd read about on TechCrunch. All IMO of course.

That said, I met the early Google Brain team there and I apparently made a sufficiently negative first impression for one of their leaders to hold a grudge against me 6 years later, explaining at last who it was that had blacklisted me there. So at least that mystery is solved.

PS It was pretty obvious these were voice actors in a studio conversing with the AI. That is impressive, but speaking as a former DJ myself, when one has any degree of voice training, one pronounces words without much accent and without slurring them together. Google will likely never admit anything here: they don't have to.

But I will give Alphabet a point for Waymo being the most professionally-responsible self-driving car effort so far. Compare and contrast with Tesla and Uber.