Why Google IO 2018 squandered AI leadership to focus on copying Apple's innovations

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  • Reply 61 of 72
    tmaytmay Posts: 6,470member
    cropr said:
    By far the worst article DED wrote in the last couple years.  He completely misses the ball

    Google I/O and AI is about software not about hardware.  If DED wants to make article about that, that's fine, but here he only talks about hardware.  It only proves that DED has no clue whatsoever about AI and the strategy of Google.

    Apple has a clear strategy: putting premium hardware on the market. Apple is very successful in its hardware business and Apple tries to maximize its revenues by adding complementary SW and services to that excellent hardware.  And Apple is succeeding here as well, as the last quarterly figures show.  But the main focus of Apple remains always on the hardware.  The Homepod is the best illustration of it.   Excellent speaker quality but Airplay2 is lacking and Siri is facing an uphill battle to compete.

    Google has also a clear strategy, but a different one.  Googles main focus is services (Selling ads, Google Cloud Platform, ...).  Google is very successful with its services offering (like Apple with its hardware). On top of that Google tries to expand its services with some hardware (Pixel, wifi routers, ...)., but here Google is not that successful (you can't win them all).

    DED considers that the last point is the important issue in the strategy of Google, but it isn't.  Googles main focus remains on services, like Apples main focus is on hardware.

    And that's why in terms of AI Google has overtaken Apple in the voice assistant business, because the voice assistant of Google is crucial in its services portfolio, while for Apple Siri would become strategically important only if its poor performance would lead to loss of hardware sales.  I hope Siri will get a serious upgrade in WWDC, but I don't see Siri competing in the next 5 years with any AI driven service of Google.  Just because the strategic focus is not the same

    Let's hope that DED eventually understands that AI is about software, so he can start writing a more decent article about it.


    I'm thinking that you are missing the gist of the editorial by DED.

    Daniel is basically outlining how Google has been unable to leverage these "wonderful and leading" technologies that they develop, within the Android OS platform.

    I agree with DED on this, and it doesn't take away anything from Google's R&D efforts. At the same time, I find it humorous that Google's main adversary in AI, today anyway, looks to be Amazon. Still, your post doesn't seem to allow for the fact that Apple's large stockpile of cash can do wonders for catching up with Google's AI efforts, not to mention all of those products in the pipeline that Apple has that we don't know about. 

    I'm speculating that Android OS OEM's aren't ever going to really compete with Apple in the high end market, albeit they are going to ship a lot of product. As for Siri, I'll wait for WWDC to see how Apple is planning to improve it.
    edited May 2018
    watto_cobra
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  • Reply 62 of 72
    Where’s GatorGuy?  


    IIRC, he said he's going to avoid "deliberate baiting" that DED does. I don't think he's going to get into a discussion/ argument on a DED thread.

    I could be wrong.

    I don't think GatorGuy said that he will avoid ALL DED articles. He mentioned it in a specific article, which was mostly "spin"/"alternate facts". Coming to the specific questions from @raderthekat, the biggest mistake both of you are making is an assumption - An assumption that GatorGuy will DEFEND Google at any cost. Far from it. Whenever he has a different point of view (mostly about lies against Google which are presented by MANY people as facts in this forum time and again), he will present his views by sharing additional information which we are NOT aware of. I won't be surprised if GatorGuy accepts most of the Google's failings called out by @Raderthekat. And share additional information about points (if any) which he disagrees with.
    What makes you believe I have such an assumption?  I merely saw an opportunity to invite him to shed light on a bunch of things Google has dine over the years.  That doesn’t imply an assumption of his defending google at all costs.  It implies an assumption that he’s conversant in many things Google.  And as a point of fact, i didn’t call out those projects as failures, DED did; I pulled the list directly from a read of the article.  I invited GatorGuy to give an update on them, indicate if they are failures or not and if so, give his take on what happened.  
    Well, looks like I made a wrong assumption (ironically, talking about others in the meantime). The highlighted point is the "deliberate baiting" part which GG mentioned in the other thread, so we will have to wait and see if GG bothers to respond or not.
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  • Reply 63 of 72
    nhtnht Posts: 4,522member

    cropr said:
    By far the worst article DED wrote in the last couple years.  He completely misses the ball

    Google I/O and AI is about software not about hardware.  If DED wants to make article about that, that's fine, but here he only talks about hardware.  It only proves that DED has no clue whatsoever about AI and the strategy of Google.

    Apple has a clear strategy: putting premium hardware on the market. Apple is very successful in its hardware business and Apple tries to maximize its revenues by adding complementary SW and services to that excellent hardware.  And Apple is succeeding here as well, as the last quarterly figures show.  But the main focus of Apple remains always on the hardware.  The Homepod is the best illustration of it.   Excellent speaker quality but Airplay2 is lacking and Siri is facing an uphill battle to compete.

    Google has also a clear strategy, but a different one.  Googles main focus is services (Selling ads, Google Cloud Platform, ...).  Google is very successful with its services offering (like Apple with its hardware). On top of that Google tries to expand its services with some hardware (Pixel, wifi routers, ...)., but here Google is not that successful (you can't win them all).

    DED considers that the last point is the important issue in the strategy of Google, but it isn't.  Googles main focus remains on services, like Apples main focus is on hardware.

    And that's why in terms of AI Google has overtaken Apple in the voice assistant business, because the voice assistant of Google is crucial in its services portfolio, while for Apple Siri would become strategically important only if its poor performance would lead to loss of hardware sales.  I hope Siri will get a serious upgrade in WWDC, but I don't see Siri competing in the next 5 years with any AI driven service of Google.  Just because the strategic focus is not the same

    Let's hope that DED eventually understands that AI is about software, so he can start writing a more decent article about it.
    I am not a DED fan but he points out:

    "Yet at its annual Google IO developer conference, the company failed to show developers how this edge would do much for them, given that most Android devices aren't updated and that Google's own updated, premium-priced Android devices aren't selling. Instead, Google IO focused attention on making Android a platform for knockoffs of Apple's iPhone X."

    You can argue that Google IO wasn't all about Android P (and notches) and that Google did do a good job of showing how their edge would help developers but NOT that DED doesn't understand that AI is software.  Google has been promising for years that updates would come faster but 10% of the userbase is still on API 19 KitKat.  What's appearing in API 28 is almost a "so what" for a couple years.  Over half the install base is API 23 (Marshmallow) or lower.

    In any case, Google main focus isn't on services but advertising where they derive the majority of their revenue.
    tmaywatto_cobra
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  • Reply 64 of 72
    cgWerkscgwerks Posts: 2,952member
    pascal007 said:
    It’s apparently not too bad in the US, but go outside of the US, and discover the appalling quality of Siri, of Maps, and the many Apple services ...
    It gets better if I/when go back to the US? Maybe I should buy more data for my next trip and experience the wonder. :)

    rogifan_new said:
    So you’re like a Trump supporter where all that matters is bashingn the media.
    ...
    The current leadership at Apple is good at giving us the what and how by the why is often lacking. The why was never lacking when Steve Jobs was on stage.
    The MSM deserves to be bashed, bashed again and again, and then bashed some more if anything is left. It's truly awful. (And, you don't have to be a Trump supporter to recognize that!)

    re: Apple - Hmm, I wonder if they just aren't good at telling us the 'why' or if they don't even know what the 'why' is anymore.

    cropr said:
    Apple has a clear strategy: putting premium hardware on the market. Apple is very successful in its hardware business and Apple tries to maximize its revenues by adding complementary SW and services to that excellent hardware.  And Apple is succeeding here as well, as the last quarterly figures show.  But the main focus of Apple remains always on the hardware.  The Homepod is the best illustration of it.   Excellent speaker quality but Airplay2 is lacking and Siri is facing an uphill battle to compete.
    I disagree here, at least historically. Apple *WAS* a software company that also cared about packaging it up in well-built hardware. Their services mostly suck, and the software quality has degraded to the point where the hardware is the only thing left shining (a bit).

    And, eventually... putting out nice shiny hardware with crap software and services are going to impact those profits, too. Instead of telling everyone they should be on Apple because they are the best, and talking about productivity gains, UX, etc... I'm now saying, 'well it isn't quite as bad as Windows, yet.'
    muthuk_vanalingam
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  • Reply 65 of 72
    StrangeDaysstrangedays Posts: 13,218member
    KITA said:
    KITA said:
    sfolax said:
    I used to enjoy DED articles, but to be honest this constant bickering and "everyone else is wrong" is starting to get boring and monotonous.

    At least the other writers here bring some variety in their articles.
    I feel like I just stumble across The Onion. 

    If DED (and those who defend his editorials) were really confident about Apple’s place in the tech landscape he wouldn’t need to write these overly defensive and/or rah rah Apple’s the best (and everyone else is just copying them) articles all the time. 
    Sorry but that’s worthless bullshit. Apple is routinely pounded by nearly all news sources and portrayed as being a dying gasp away from utter failure. We’ve all seen these pieces, week after week. DED and PED are two of the few dissenting voices, and they’ve both made a niche in that space. It doesn’t mean they’re lacking confidence and really even saying such a thing only shows an incredibly naive and poor understanding of how publishing works. Don’t quit your day job. 

    Love how DED gets the usuals predictably butthurt. 

    Dracarys said:
    It's come to the point where if DED writes something you know the competition is doing something right. Everything is just twisting the truth into lies to show that the competition is failing and Apple is winning.
    You are seriously delusional. The Macalope has built a career around debunking all the nonsense DOOM narratives pushed about Apple. Their claims of Apple failure are legion. And yet, always wrong. Voices like the hoofed one an DED’s are a refreshing brief of fresh air and sanity. 

    https://www.macworld.com/author/The-Macalope
    Why are you calling other users "delusional" and "butthurt"?
    I said the usual (anti-DEDers) are getting butthurt, because they are.

    I said Dracarys was delusional based on his idiotic claim that DED “is just twisting the truth into lies”.

    ...which part are you having trouble with?
    The part where you called other users "butthurt" and "delusional".
    If one posts a delusional, garbage opinion (eg “DED is twisting truth into lies!”), it’s a fair criticism to call that a delusional position. Sorry that butthurts. 
    kcammie7magman1979radarthekatwatto_cobra
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  • Reply 66 of 72
    cgWerkscgwerks Posts: 2,952member
    tmay said:
    Still, your post doesn't seem to allow for the fact that Apple's large stockpile of cash can do wonders for catching up with Google's AI efforts, not to mention all of those products in the pipeline that Apple has that we don't know about. 
    If they have no vision other than making profit, the large stockpile of cash isn't going to help all that much.

    Google, at least seems to have vision (I might think much of it is silly, misguided, or even evil). Where they fall apart is UI/UX. They don't know how to turn their ideas into usable stuff.

    And, while it's a bit separate... I don't know how Apple is going to dazzle us with AI when they can't even get basic search down.
    muthuk_vanalingam
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  • Reply 67 of 72
    nht said:
    tmay said:
    tmay said:
    Meanwhile, in the real world, Google is setting the standard for autonomous cars, has the best assistant on the market, and keeps making advances in photos. It's still early days for all AI but to suggest they've squandered their lead is plain silly.
    I think that the point of the article is that it isn't innovation if you aren't making money at it, and almost without fail, Apple, with a small share of the smartphone market is grabbing most of the revenue and profits comparative to Android OEM'a and developers.

    Google itself is doing fine, excepting the scrutiny given it's near monopoly in search, and privacy issues, and it's persistent inability to generate much revenue off of consumer hardware. Google has noticeable leads in services and technologies that the OEM's and developers have, for the most part, been unable to leverage to enhance revenue and profit, and Google I/O doesn't appear to have accelerated that.
    If that is the point of the article then I disagree with it. Google makes its money in advertising - much of it on mobile - and uses the profits to fund innovative technologies that won't be profitable in the R&D stage. 
    How are the OEM's doing? Which "innovative technologies" has Google released that have generated any income other than from search or advertising?
    The comment about search or advertising being Google's main source of income, well, yeah, that's its core business. It's like saying Apple only makes money from hardware. Its advertising business has evolved - it was previously all desktop search, now it's mobile and it's not just search - it's YouTube, Maps, Gmail. Imagine if it hadn't poured money into those three areas before the iPhone launched, it'd be stuck on a dwindling income from desktop search. Not to mention that it's third in the market for cloud, which makes >$1B/quarter and growing. It doesn't operate like Apple where it launches only a few products and wants them to be perfect on day one. Google tries its hand at plenty of things, knowing that if 7 things fail and 3 take off, it will be successful. And it's users are, or many of them are, happy to try things that are just beta releases. And yes, they are doing the world a service by helping to get technology to people at a low/no cost. 
    google derives 87% of revenue based on advertising.

    apple derives 79% of revenue based on hardware.

    Google's cloud is a very distant 7th in cloud revenue and the $1B includes revenue from SaaS revenue from the G suite...gmail, docs, and PaaS revenue from Google App Engine.

    The top three for 2017 are:

    MS $18.6B
    Amazon $17.5B
    IBM $17B

    https://www.forbes.com/sites/bobevans1/2018/02/05/why-microsoft-is-ruling-the-cloud-ibm-is-matching-amazon-and-google-is-15-billion-behind/#2f28927d1dc1

    Google may be a distant third for IaaS but that's not where the money is and frankly, for an internet centric company, Google is really disappointing from a cloud revenue perspective.
    Ok, I should have specified IaaS. But those Forbes numbers are a little dodgy anyway - what IBM calls cloud is not cloud by anyone else's definition.

    And I'm not sure what you are getting at with the 87%/79% bit - that was kinda my point - Apple is mostly hardware and Google is mostly advertising - that is their core business.
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  • Reply 68 of 72
    nhtnht Posts: 4,522member
    cgWerks said:
    pascal007 said:
    It’s apparently not too bad in the US, but go outside of the US, and discover the appalling quality of Siri, of Maps, and the many Apple services ...
    It gets better if I/when go back to the US? Maybe I should buy more data for my next trip and experience the wonder. :)

    rogifan_new said:
    So you’re like a Trump supporter where all that matters is bashingn the media.
    ...
    The current leadership at Apple is good at giving us the what and how by the why is often lacking. The why was never lacking when Steve Jobs was on stage.
    The MSM deserves to be bashed, bashed again and again, and then bashed some more if anything is left. It's truly awful. (And, you don't have to be a Trump supporter to recognize that!)

    re: Apple - Hmm, I wonder if they just aren't good at telling us the 'why' or if they don't even know what the 'why' is anymore.

    cropr said:
    Apple has a clear strategy: putting premium hardware on the market. Apple is very successful in its hardware business and Apple tries to maximize its revenues by adding complementary SW and services to that excellent hardware.  And Apple is succeeding here as well, as the last quarterly figures show.  But the main focus of Apple remains always on the hardware.  The Homepod is the best illustration of it.   Excellent speaker quality but Airplay2 is lacking and Siri is facing an uphill battle to compete.
    I disagree here, at least historically. Apple *WAS* a software company that also cared about packaging it up in well-built hardware. Their services mostly suck, and the software quality has degraded to the point where the hardware is the only thing left shining (a bit).

    And, eventually... putting out nice shiny hardware with crap software and services are going to impact those profits, too. Instead of telling everyone they should be on Apple because they are the best, and talking about productivity gains, UX, etc... I'm now saying, 'well it isn't quite as bad as Windows, yet.'
    Apple was never a software company.  Apple has always been a hardware centric company with good software and UI.

    Microsoft was a software company.  
    radarthekatwatto_cobra
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  • Reply 69 of 72
    cgWerkscgwerks Posts: 2,952member
    nht said:
    Apple was never a software company.  Apple has always been a hardware centric company with good software and UI.
    Microsoft was a software company.  
    In terms of where it appeared the money was coming from, but not necessarily in what was driving people to use their products. Yes, it was a combination... but the UI and productivity aspects are what drove people to them.

    I'm a great example. I've been building PCs since the early 90s, and I can make a much better PC than Apple can sell me. But, the OS is the sticking point that keeps me in their eco-system. Sure, I ***also*** love the well made and sometimes well-designed hardware, but it's the OS that brought me and keeps me.
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  • Reply 70 of 72
    rogifan_newrogifan_new Posts: 4,297member
    cgWerks said:
    rogifan_new said:
    So you’re like a Trump supporter where all that matters is bashingn the media.
    ...
    The current leadership at Apple is good at giving us the what and how by the why is often lacking. The why was never lacking when Steve Jobs was on stage.
    The MSM deserves to be bashed, bashed again and again, and then bashed some more if anything is left. It's truly awful. (And, you don't have to be a Trump supporter to recognize that!)

    re: Apple - Hmm, I wonder if they just aren't good at telling us the 'why' or if they don't even know what the 'why' is anymore.

    Obviously Steve had a gift most people don’t have. But current leadership is pretty bad at giving compelling reasons for why things should exist (at least when they first launch a new product). Often times it seems products exist (or hang around) for pricing reasons more than anything else. 
    cgWerks
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  • Reply 71 of 72
    rogifan_newrogifan_new Posts: 4,297member

    cgWerks said:
    tmay said:
    Still, your post doesn't seem to allow for the fact that Apple's large stockpile of cash can do wonders for catching up with Google's AI efforts, not to mention all of those products in the pipeline that Apple has that we don't know about. 
    If they have no vision other than making profit, the large stockpile of cash isn't going to help all that much.

    Google, at least seems to have vision (I might think much of it is silly, misguided, or even evil). Where they fall apart is UI/UX. They don't know how to turn their ideas into usable stuff.

    And, while it's a bit separate... I don't know how Apple is going to dazzle us with AI when they can't even get basic search down.
    Back to the vision thing....that’s what’s missing without Steve Jobs. Watch WWDC and other than maybe updates on numbers there’s very little in the way of vision from Tim Cook or anyone else on stage. They just jump right in and show stuff off and it’s up to others after the event to try and piece together what it all means. 
    edited May 2018
    cgWerks
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  • Reply 72 of 72
    cgWerkscgwerks Posts: 2,952member
    rogifan_new said:
    Back to the vision thing....that’s what’s missing without Steve Jobs. Watch WWDC and other than maybe updates on numbers there’s very little in the way of vision from Tim Cook or anyone else on stage. They just jump right in and show stuff off and it’s up to others after the event to try and piece together what it all means. 
    Yea, the only real vision has been their stands on data privacy and fitting the FBI, etc.
    Aside from that, most of the vision has been pop marketing fluff or virtue signaling stuff, not real product-line vision. The Watch and health stuff might be the closest thing to vision I've seen since Jobs.
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