[sumoboy]

I think Google is a bit sandbagging here knowing they have all the data and likely better models hiding. My theory is it's a bit of not disrupting the stock market direction by exposing whose really the boss. If they can do it cheaper, faster, and better, people start asking questions, especially with upcoming IPO's.

[mgfist]

This makes no sense. Google is beholden to its own shareholders, not the markets at large.

In any case, it's well known that devs in Google have liked anthropic/openai models for coding more than gemini, so unless they're hiding their best models from the people within, I think it's just the case that they're behind.

[hattmall]

It's more that they know they can eventually clone any successes the other companies have and steal their market share. Their really is no moat. In a more normal environment they would be buyout candidates but that's a bit too far gone at this point, so you just let them run until they are out of gas and Google can benefit from any advances without upfronting the cost.

Even with anthropics record breaking revenue growth I don't see how the pure AI companies can sustain, but the catch-22 is that any obvious pivot proves that. This puts the more traditional tech companies in position to ride the back of the wave until the growth curve tops.

[JumpCrisscross]

> they know they can eventually clone any successes the other companies have

Google has gone all in on AI. To the point of challenging their own core product. Apple is waiting and seeing. Google is building and distributing, albeit with terrible marketing.

[gizajob]

Apple isn’t waiting and seeing on the hardware side, only implementing AI on the software side, which there doesn’t seem to be much of a demand for them to do. Apple are well set for on-device LLMs and agents with their Mx Max cpu/gpu, and their wait on the rest is saving them hundreds of billions by not burning all their profitability to the ground building Nvidia-filled datacenters the same as everyone else, which is why Google is now having to hunt for extra money by raising capital like this.

[0gs]

search is not their core product though, it's ads. they ain't challenging anything.

[surajrmal]

Ads are meaningless without a surface to show them on. Search is absolutely a core product.

[lukeschlather]

Coding is a pretty small slice of the markets in play. Google's models are driving cars right now. Using coding agents doesn't give much insight into performance in the broader world; I would assume assume Google is performing better in general even if Claude or Codex is currently outperforming for coding.

[mgfist]

> Coding is a pretty small slice of the markets in play.

I don't think that's true, mostly in that a lot of usecases are solved via coding models + a harness.

> Google's models are driving cars right now.

Yes + other models like alphafold. But those are (relatively) specialized models. Besides, the comment I was responding to was saying Google is sandbagging the market to keep it calm or something. I don't disagree that Google is doing well overall and has some clear advantages

[s1artibartfast]

Google also owns 15% of anthropic.

[swores]

Pedantic correction that doesn't change anything other than accuracy: it was reported over a year ago to be closer to 14% than 15%.

https://www.theverge.com/news/627849/auto-draft

But I believe since then Anthropic have raised more money, almost certainly diluting Google's stake (I could be wrong and misremembering that Google didn't partake in the additional fundraising). I have in the back of my head that Google is down to something like 10% now, but don't have time to go and find details to fact check that, sorry!

[WarmWash]

It's important to remember that the cloud division, rapidly becoming Google's golden goose, does not give one fuck about Gemini and would happily sell out all of Gemini's compute to Anthropic and OAI if given the opportunity.