[londons_explore]

One could imagine an 'ideal' allocation of TPU's, where compute time is allocated to the project that earns the most dollars per FLOP.

Minor improvements to Google Books OCR might not be worth much, whereas better search result scoring would be worth lots. An automated system would decide where it was most efficient to spend the TPU's. Management would set how many dollars a 10% performance improvement was worth.

I'm sure the reality is a bunch of middle managers arguing over why their team deserves them more than another.

[visarga]

> One could imagine an 'ideal' allocation of TPU's, where compute time is allocated to the project that earns the most dollars per FLOP.

That's a short sighted, immediate benefit or bust mentality. Not to mention that projects have a ramp-up time where they are not profitable yet, but still very valuable strategically.

[tpetry]

You mean better ad revenue, because search results are getting worse and worse. So search results can't really be google's primary focus anymore.