[merelydev]

In the last week Alphabet has positioned itself to go on the offense, going after exccess liquidity and excess compute.

I fear that OpenAi and Anthropic would not be able to compete against an adveserial Alphabet which owns it's own models, hardware, large corpus of data, talent and network effects. My prediction is that OpenAI and Anthropic will eventually be crushed by Alphabet as they run out of investment and compute, leaving Alphabet to have a monopoly on AI, at least in the west.

This is why I think OpenAI and Anthropic should really be one company, if they join forces and pool together investments and compute they'll stand a chance.

[NitpickLawyer]

> This is why I think OpenAI and Anthropic should really be one company

I think the more companies there are, the better. Having 3 top labs competing, with 2 more trailing is better for consumers than having a monopoly/duopoly in goog or goog vs. the world. There'll be pressure on innovation, cost, availability and so on.

[merelydev]

I agree, generally competition is a good thing, but in this case I think we're having a divide and conquer scenario that works in Google's advantage.

We're seeing that compute and investment liquidity is effectively a zero-sum game and by having Google go after the excess compute and liquidity (which they don't really need) will most likely weaken the competitors to the point where they aren't competitive. But if OpenAI and Anthropic merge they can pool resources and be more competitive.

[brendoelfrendo]

This is a very persuasive argument that Google should have been broken up years ago.

[bombcar]

Google selling ads on their search to people using their browser and phone was way more anti-trustful than anything Microsoft ever did, tbh.

Especially when you consider that they bribe Apple and Firefox to funnel users to them, too.

[SR2Z]

To be fair the fact that Google overcame not being the default browser is incredibly impressive. It's easy to forget now just how dark the days of IE6 were.

[jaytxng]

In some alternative timeline, the Anthropic team would still be at OpenAI...but alas, not this timeline.

[dansquizsoft]

2 top labs...

[NitpickLawyer]

Huh? I don't think there's much doubt out there that there are 3 top labs that are mostly at the same level - oAI, Anthropic & Goog (not necessarily in this order, depending on the month, but they've been trading SotA status on various verticals for a while now).

There's also 2-3 other trailing labs in MS, xAI and Meta. All of them are blundering behind, but at one point or the other they've been up there for some verticals as well.

I think this is good. Having one clear winner would be worse than this SotA of the week rotating thing they've got going on. For us as consumers anyway.

[dansquizsoft]

> Huh? I don't think there's much doubt ...

I am doubting. I will be very surprised if Google ends up top or second place (again?) at any point in the next few years.

> I think this is good. Having one clear winner would be worse than this ...

I agree that it would be better to have 3+ top labs as well.

[bigfatkitten]

> I fear that OpenAi and Anthropic would not be able to compete against an adveserial Alphabet which owns it's own models, hardware, large corpus of data, talent and network effects.

Many people thought Google+ would stomp all over Facebook, and that GCP would kill Azure and AWS for most of the same reasons.

[bombcar]

Has Google stomped on anyone since their Search squished hotbot and their email blew up hotmail?

[bigfatkitten]

My point is that Google’s enormous talent and resources often fails to translate into an ability to execute.

In fact, they probably see major success with new products less often than not.

[hugs]

not many people talk about mapquest anymore.

[merelydev]

That's a fair argument.

[lelanthran]

> My prediction is that OpenAI and Anthropic will eventually be crushed by Alphabet as they run out of investment and compute, leaving Alphabet to have a monopoly on AI, at least in the west.

It's the other way around (but the result would be the same): Alphabet has no need to make a 100x exit for the investors, and so can offer the service at cost + %markup, while Anthropic and OpenAI are VC funded, meaning that they need to show 10x - 100x exit for the investors.

IOW, there is no moat, Alphabet would have market-related pricing while VC-backed corps cannot offer market-related pricing.

[benterix]

While you're probably right, reading your comment from a consumer perspective it makes me think how much we've normalized bait & switch.

[logicchains]

>It's the other way around (but the result would be the same): Alphabet has no need to make a 100x exit for the investors, and so can offer the service at cost + %markup, while Anthropic and OpenAI are VC funded, meaning that they need to show 10x - 100x exit for the investors.

If this was true, Alphabet wouldn't currently be charging more for a worse product than OpenAI and Anthropic.

[Spartan-S63]

I think the ideal, but politically infeasible outcome would be passing regulation to prevent hyperscalars from hosting their own models (or requiring wholesale leasing of infra), akin to other country’s telecom line-sharing regulations. Essentially convert machine intelligence to a regulated-utility industry rather than a competitive enterprise.

Consolidation is inevitable, so let’s lean in and ensure society, not shareholders, reap those benefits.

[logicchains]

>I fear that OpenAi and Anthropic would not be able to compete against an adveserial Alphabet which owns it's own models, hardware, large corpus of data, talent and network effects.

You might as well say the same about GCP vs AWS. At the end of the day, in spite of how much superior engineering prowess it has, Google still treats its customers like it views them as a steaming, fly-covered pile of crap. This reflects just as much in Gemini as in their other products; after their initial competitive Gemini 2.5 Pro release, they just kept dumbing it down and reducing quality of service while charging the the same amount, trying to pull a bait-and-switch, and with their latest Gemini Flash release they're charging customers even more for a worse product. No amount of engineering or hardware can overcome such a customer-hostile corporate culture.

[s1artibartfast]

Fun idea, but they may be better competition coming Competing with Google with different teams, models, and business strategies. Im sure google will also be happy selling the adds they put in their models for 1/3 of the revenue.

The scary thing for google is if the AI companies start moving into ad targeting and open sales portals.

[dansquizsoft]

> owns it's own models, hardware, large corpus of data, talent and network effects

How's that talent been working out for them the last few years?

[benterix]

As it happens in large orgs, with mixed results. The biggest irony being the whole Transformer architecture being actually conceived at Google, only to be implemented as a product/service by another company.

[icepush]

This is relatively common historically. Two examples I can recall to mind without doing any research are Xerox/Apple and IBM/Oracle. I can only imagine there must be millions of other instances.

[LadyCailin]

No, this is why anti trust regulation should be created and/or enforced. It’s insane to me that the “free market” simps don’t understand that you cannot have a free market without regulation. If you get rid of these regulations, you end up with corporate socialism, which is the absolute worst form of economy.