Comment by fancyfredbot

Comment by fancyfredbot 3 hours ago

31 replies

Google are really firing on all cylinders recently. It's almost shocking to read all they've done in the last year.

The fact they caught up with OpenAI you almost expect. But the Nobel winning contributions to quantum computing, the advances in healthcare and medicine, the cutting edge AI hardware, and the best in class weather models go way beyond what you might have expected. Google could have been an advertising company with a search engine. I'm glad they aren't.

kace91 37 minutes ago

>Google could have been an advertising company with a search engine. I'm glad they aren't.

They kind of are though?

Like, there is indeed amazing research supported by the company. The core user facing products are really declining in quality by being user hostile.

A search right now results in a made up LLM output followed by 4 ads disguised as content, and then maybe followed by the wanted result.

I’m not sure what happens inside the company for those two things to be true at once.

  • ACCount37 21 minutes ago

    A big part of what makes Google Search awful is just the usual SEO shitters, trying their hardest to rig the game on any search result that's anywhere close to common or profitable.

    Google's main failing there is that they don't put enough effort into their search to keep up with that, and fail to raise the bar on garbage content and search engine manipulation.

    LLM output in search results I'm not against. Do we you need to open an entire website to learn how to sort an array in JavaScript with a lambda function? For many of the more common and more trivial requests, LLM output is well in "good enough".

    • dasil003 12 minutes ago

      No we don’t need to open an entire website to learn x simple thing. However we DO need meaningful competition among information providers. I am not looking forward to the enshittification phase of AI.

  • smurda 20 minutes ago

    In 2024, 78% of Alphabet’s revenue came from ads (72% in Q3 2025).

    Ads subsidize experimentation of loss-generating moonshots until they mature into good businesses, or die.

throw-12-16 9 minutes ago

>Google could have been an advertising company with a search engine. I'm glad they aren't.

Ads are 75% of their revenue and search has been getting progressively worse.

10xDev 2 hours ago

Meanwhile the economy is tanking. But yeah what a fantastic year it is to be a company worth trillions.

  • andsoitis an hour ago

    > Meanwhile the economy is tanking.

    NYT: US GDP Grew 4.3%, surging in 3rd Quarter 2025 - https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/23/business/us-economy-consu...

    WSJ: Consumers Power Strongest US Economic Growth in 2 years - https://www.wsj.com/economy/us-gdp-q3-2025-2026-6cbd079e

    The Guardian: US economy grew strongly in third quarter - https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/dec/23/us-economy-...

    • ryandrake 14 minutes ago

      I think we should start separating discussion of “The Economy” from “human prosperity and wellbeing.” Because they are essentially two different things, only slightly related. The Economy can grow wildly while normal people are poor, suffering, and barely holding it together. I don’t care if corporations are doing great or if the GDP is high, if everything I need costs 3X what it used to and Im not sure if I’ll be employed next week.

      While you are probably right in that The Economy, technically is growing, it doesn’t feel like it to normal people I know.

    • cj an hour ago

      Meanwhile, consumer debt is at record highs.

      https://www.newyorkfed.org/microeconomics/hhdc

      • andsoitis 20 minutes ago

        > consumer debt is at record highs.

        While consumer debt is at or near historical highs, it is in and of itself not a problem (broader economic risk).

        What you need to look at as well is debt burden ratios and repayment behavior, not just raw totals.

        Household debt service ratio (the share of disposable income spent on principal + interest payments) is well below historical crisis peaks (e.g., 2007–2008), suggesting households are currently spending a smaller share of income on debt payments than in past stress periods.

        While total household debt is at record levels (~$18 trillion+), debt as a share of income or GDP has not reached past crisis peaks like 2008. That means debt growth hasn’t outpaced income growth as dramatically as in previous crises.

        However, delinquency rates, especially for credit cards and student loans, are elevated, nearing or exceeding long-run highs outside recessions.

        Mortgage delinquency rates remain lower than unsecured debt categories, but have ticked up slightly. Because they're relatively stable, it mutes broader systemic risk for now.

        • jeffbee 5 minutes ago

          And you didn't even mention the population.

    • bawis 26 minutes ago

      The old problem with metrics like GDP, is that they consider the whole but not the parts, it is kinda saying that I and Musk have billions in wealth, but I am in debt.

      • andsoitis 19 minutes ago

        > The old problem with metrics like GDP, is that they consider the whole but not the parts, it is kinda saying that I and Musk have billions in wealth, but I am in debt.

        Does this mean you also think that "the (US) economy is tanking" OR do you agree with me that the economy is NOT tanking?

    • throw-12-16 8 minutes ago

      Anyone who trusts numbers coming out of the Trump admin is in for a big surprise.

  • fancyfredbot an hour ago

    I'm not sure that the rest of the economy really is "tanking" but OK. Are you implying it's distasteful to discuss success from a big company in such dark times?

    Google could really easily be a purely rent seeking business but they are innovating, and if you are worried about the economy then this should seem like good news.

  • cpursley 2 hours ago

    You don’t believe the recent economic numbers? I’m not disagreeing with you, just curious about other takes (and generally very skeptical of funny money printer go burrr economic things vs real economy meaning real output).

aatd86 an hour ago

Caught up...??? I do use gemini pro regularly but never for code. chatGPT wins all the time. I even use chatGPT to review gemini suggestions...

Seems that there has been a lot of hype because in many ways, they are still lagging behind.

  • mpalmer an hour ago

    Gemini 3 blows GPT 5.1 out of the water. Beats it on quality and price.

    • iamronaldo 38 minutes ago

      Sota is 5.2 pro or 5.2 codex or 5.2 extra high not 5.1 (I know I know it's confusing)

      • mpalmer 31 minutes ago

        Not least of all because I misread that as Sora at first, lol

  • PunchTornado 22 minutes ago

    What are you smoking? Gemini and Claude beat chatgpt at every metric.

    • aurareturn 11 minutes ago

      They don’t. GPT 5.2 and its variants are the best models right now.

Rebuff5007 40 minutes ago

Hot take: they have always been firing on all cylinders. The marketing it just a bit different now. Everything you mention is the result of significant long-term investments.

  • cjbgkagh 18 minutes ago

    They dropped the ball pretty hard with tensorflow.

    • jeffbee 4 minutes ago

      It is not very important to Google that people outside Google use tensorflow.