Thread

1. atleastoptimal · 1785947160 · focus · HN ↗

   I think there's one weirdly simple reason DeepMind isn't doing as well as OpenAI and Anthropic. I may be wrong on this.

   OpenAI and Anthropic went from tiny startups to huge companies. As a consequence the stock options/RSU's offered to the employees paid off a far higher percentage ROI than any stock options a DeepMind (and thus Google) employee would get (since Google is already huge). This disincentivizes people who truly believe in the economically transformative power of AI to work at Google since their benefits will be capped by Google being large + having public company obligations.

   1. overgard · 1785948724 · focus · HN ↗

      I think something that doesn't get talked about a lot is how bad most large tech companies are at creating new products, in general. Like, if you look at most big tech companies, they have their core offering that got them to be really large and rich, and a few other products that are somewhat successful, and then a really long tail of markets they try to enter and failed at, or projects that were modestly successful but got killed because they weren't game changers (RIP Google Reader). Most of the time when a large company does something new that succeeds, it's via an acquisition of a smaller company (ie, Google with Android or Meta with Instagram and Whatsapp)

      It's funny, because I think the company that's going to be best positioned coming out of this bubble is in fact google, because they have the expertise and the capital. But I honestly can't tell you right now what their AI product even is -- I've seen so many things go into the graveyard a few months after its launched that I'm utterly confused what their offering even is at this point.

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