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Does Google Have the Sony Betamax of Smart Software?

January 30, 2023

Does Google have the Sony Betamax of smart software? If you cannot answer this question as well as ChatGPT, you can take a look at “VHS or Beta? A Look Back at Betamax, and How Sony Lost the VCR Format War to VHS Recorders.” Boiling down the problem Sony faced, let me suggest better did not win. Maybe adult content outfits tipped the scales? Maybe not? The best technology does not automatically dominate the market.

googzilla betamax fixed

Flash forward from the anguish of Sony in the 1970s and the even more excruciating early 1980s to today. Facebook dismisses ChatGPT as not too sophisticated. I heard one of the big wizards at the Zuckbook say this to a Sillycon Alley journalist on a podcast called Big Technology. The name says it all. Big technology, just not great technology. That’s what the Zuckbooker suggested everyone’s favorite social media company has.

The Google has emitted a number of marketing statements about more than a dozen amazing smart software apps. These, please, note, will be forthcoming. The most recent application of the Google’s advanced, protein folding, Go winning system is explained in words—presumably output by a real journalist—in “Google AI Can Create Music in Any Genre from a Text Description.” One can visualize the three exclamation points that a human wanted to insert in this headline. Amazing, right. That too is forthcoming. The article quickly asserts something that could have been crafted by one of Googzilla’s non-terminated executives believes:

MusicLM is surprisingly talented.

The GOOG has talent for sure.

What the Google does not have is the momentum of consumer craziness. Whether it the buzz among some high school and college students that ChatGPT can write or help write term papers or the in-touch outfit Buzzfeed which will use ChatGPT to create listicles — the indomitable Alphabet is not in the information flow.

But the Google technology is better.  That sounds like a statement I heard from a former wizard at RCA who was interviewing for a job at the blue chip consulting firm for which I worked when I was a wee lad. That fellow invented some type of disc storage system, maybe a laser-centric system. I don’t know. His statement still resonates with me today:

The Sony technology was better.

The flaw is that the better technology can win. The inventors of the better technology or the cobblers who glue together other innovations to create a “better” technology never give up their convictions. How can a low resolution, cheaper recording solution win? The champions of Sony’s technology complained about fairness a superior resolution for the recorded information.

I jotted down this morning (January28, 2023), why Googzilla may be facing, like the Zuckbook, a Sony Betamax moment:

  1. The demonstrations of the excellence of the Google smart capabilities are esoteric and mean essentially zero outside of the Ivory Tower worlds of specialists. Yes, I am including the fans of Go and whatever other game DeepMind can win. Fan frenzy is not broad consumer uptake and excitement.
  2. Applications which ordinary Google search users can examine are essentially vaporware. The Dall-E and ChatGPT apps are coming fast and furious. I saw a database of AI apps based on these here-and-now systems, and I had no idea so many clever people were embracing the meh-approach of OpenAI. “Meh,” obviously may not square with what consumers perceive or experience. Remember those baffled professors or the Luddite lawyers who find smart software a bit of a threat.
  3. OpenAI has hit a marketing home run. Forget the Sillycon Alley journalists. Think about the buzz among the artists about their potential customers typing into a search box and getting an okay image. Take a look at Googzilla trying to comprehend the Betamax device.

Toss in the fact that Google’s ad business is going to have some opportunities to explain why owning the bar, the stuff on the shelves, the real estate, and the payment system is a net gain for humanity. Yeah, that will be a slam dunk, won’t it?

Perhaps more significantly, in the post-Covid crazy world in which those who use computers reside, the ChatGPT and OpenAI have caught a big wave. That wave can swamp some very sophisticated, cutting edge boats in a short time.

Here’s a question for you (the last one in this essay I promise): Can the Google swim?

Stephen E Arnold, January 30, 2023

Written by Stephen E. Arnold · Filed Under AI, Business strategy, Facebook, Google, Marketing 

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