"Google has had a slew of failed projects, and Meta's metaverse stuff tanked, and they're still fine. They can afford to experiment."
Only with the blessing of shareholders. Frankly Google's search box and ad-tech has been carrying all of its failed bets but at some point people will start questioning if Google is returning enough cash given the results of new investments. Google's management does not own the cash - it holds the cash on behalf of the owners.
Which shareholders do you mean? Mark Zuckerberg holds >50% of voting rights for Facebook. Sergey Brin and Larry Page hold >50% of voting rights for Google. That means management gets to do what it wants, within very broad legal limits.
On the other hand, how the stock does will matter to other employees because they’re shareholders and they have a stake in the outcome.
But if there aren't enough returns soon the money will eventually dry up for OAI and Anthropic and Google will not be trusted with their cash balance.
Its amazing how people here think that money is a play-thing and this dance can go on forever. It cant and wont and the fear-induced marketing doesnt work forever either.
This is a false equivalence. Models get better with more & better data.
Both more data and better data are very expensive. Procuring... Handling... All of the above...
You can spend bottomless piles of cash and by not doing the right things not get there. I can count on one hand the number of times I've seen business/investor incentives line up with r&d incentives.
There's no guarantee that there is enough or good-enough data, regardless of how much money you have.
Only with the blessing of shareholders. Frankly Google's search box and ad-tech has been carrying all of its failed bets but at some point people will start questioning if Google is returning enough cash given the results of new investments. Google's management does not own the cash - it holds the cash on behalf of the owners.
reply