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by NitpickLawyer 2 days ago
> 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.
3 comments
merelydev 2 days ago
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.

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brendoelfrendo 2 days ago
This is a very persuasive argument that Google should have been broken up years ago.
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bombcar 2 days ago
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.

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SR2Z 22 hours ago
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.
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jaytxng 2 days ago
In some alternative timeline, the Anthropic team would still be at OpenAI...but alas, not this timeline.
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dansquizsoft 2 days ago
2 top labs...
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NitpickLawyer 2 days ago
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.

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dansquizsoft 2 days ago
> 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.

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