Google Goes Googley in Paris Over AI … Again
February 10, 2025
Google does some interesting things in Paris. The City of Light was the scene of a Googler’s demonstration of its AI complete with hallucinations about two years ago. On Monday, February 10, 2025, Google’s “leadership” Sundar Pichai alleged leaked his speech or shared some memorable comments with journalists. These were reported in AAWSAT.com, an online information service in the story “AI Is ‘Biggest Shift of Our Lifetimes’, Says Google Boss.”
I like the shift; it reminds me of the word “shifty.”
One of the passages catching my attention was this one, although I am not sure of the accuracy of the version in the cited article. The gist seems on point with Google’s posture during Code Red and its subsequent reorganization of the firm’s smart software unit. The context, however, does not seem to include the impact of Deepseek’s bargain basement approach to AI. Google is into big money for big AI. One wins big in a horse race bet by plopping big bucks on a favorite nag. AI is doing the big bet on AI, about $75 billion in capital expenditures in the next 10 months.
Here’s the quote:
Artificial intelligence (AI) is a "fundamental rewiring of technology" that will act as an "accelerant of human ingenuity." We’re still in the early days of the AI platform shift, and yet we know it will be the biggest of our lifetimes… With AI, we have the chance to democratize access (to a new technology) from the start, and to ensure that the digital divide doesn’t become an AI divide….
The statement exudes confidence. With billions riding on Mr. Pichai gambler’s instinct, stakeholders and employees not terminated for cost savings hope he is correct. Those already terminated may be rooting for a different horse.
Google’s head of smart software (sorry, Jeff Dean) allegedly offered this sentiment:
“Material science, mathematics, fusion, there is almost no area of science that won’t benefit from these AI tools," the Nobel chemistry laureate said.
Are categorical statements part of the mental equipment that makes a Nobel prize winner. He did include an “almost,” but I think the hope is that many technical disciplines will reap the fruits of smart software. Some smart software may just reap fruits from users of smart software’s inputs.
A statement which I found more remarkable was:
Every generation worries that the new technology will change the lives of the next generation for the worse — and yet it’s almost always the opposite.
Another hedged categorical affirmative: “Almost always”. The only issue is that as Jacques Ellul asserted in The Technological Bluff, technology creates problems which invoke more technology to address old problems while simultaneously creating a new technology. I think Father Ellul was on the beam.
How about this for a concluding statement:
We must not let our own bias for the present get in the way of the future. We have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to improve lives at the scale of AI.
Scale. Isn’t that what Deepseek demonstrated may be a less logical approach to smart software? Paris has quite an impact on Google thought processes in my opinion. Did Google miss the Deepseek China foray? Did the company fail to interpret it in the context of wide adoption of AI? On the other hand, maybe if one does not talk about something, one can pretend that something does not exist. Like the Super Bowl ad with misinformation about cheese. Yes, cheese, again.
Stephen E Arnold, February 10, 2025
Google and Job Security? What a Hoot
February 4, 2025
We have smart software, but the dinobaby continues to do what 80 year olds do: Write the old-fashioned human way. We did give up clay tablets for a quill pen. Works okay.
Yesterday (January 30, 2025), one of the group mentioned that Google employees were circulating a YAP. I was not familiar with the word “yap”, so I asked, “What’s a yap?” The answer: It is yet another petition.
Here’s what I learned and then verified by a source no less pristine than NBC news. About a 1,000 employees want Google to assure the workers that they have “job security.” Yo, Googlers, when lawyers at the Department of Justice and other Federal workers lose their jobs between sips of their really lousy DoJ coffee, there is not much job security. Imagine professionals with sinecures now forced to offer some version of reality on LinkedIn. Get real.
The “real” news outfit reported:
Google employees have begun a petition for “job security” as they expect more layoffs by the company. The petition calls on Google CEO Sundar Pichai to offer buyouts before conducting layoffs and to guarantee severance to employees that do get laid off. The petition comes after new CFO Anat Ashkenazi said one of her top priorities would be to drive more cost cutting as Google expands its spending on artificial intelligence infrastructure in 2025.
I remember when Googlers talked about the rigorous screening process required to get a job. This was the unicorn like Google Labs Aptitude Test or GLAT. At one point, years ago, someone in the know gave me before a meeting the “test.” Here’s the first page of the document. (I think I received this from a Googler in 2004 or 2005 five:
If you can’t read this, here’s question 6:
One your first day at Google, you discover that your cubicle mate wrote the textbook you used as a primary resource in your first year of graduate school. Do you:
a) Fawn obsequiously and ask if you can have an aut0ograph
b) Sit perfectly still and use only soft keystrokes to avoid disturbing her concentration
c) Leave her daily offerings of granola and English toffee from the food bins
d) Quote your favorite formula from the text book and explain how it’s now your mantra
e) Show her how example 17b could have been solved with 34 fewer lines of code?
I have the full GLAT if you want to see it. Just write benkent2020 at yahoo dot com and we will find a way to provide the allegedly real document to you.
The good old days of Googley fun and self confidence are, it seems, gone. As a proxy for the old Google one has employees we have words like this:
“We, the undersigned Google workers from offices across the US and Canada, are concerned about instability at Google that impacts our ability to do high quality, impactful work,” the petition says. “Ongoing rounds of layoffs make us feel insecure about our jobs. The company is clearly in a strong financial position, making the loss of so many valuable colleagues without explanation hurt even more.”
I would suggest that the petition won’t change Google’s RIF. The company faces several challenges. One of the major ones is the near impossibility of paying for [a] indexing and updating the wonderful Google index, [b] spending money in order to beat the pants off the outfits which used Google’s transformer tricks, and [c] buy, hire, or coerce the really big time AI wizards to join the online advertising company instead of starting an outfit to create a wrapper for Deepseek and getting money from whoever will offer it.
Sorry, petitions are unlikely to move a former McKinsey big time blue chip consultant. Get real, Googler. By the way, you will soon be a proud Xoogler. Enjoy that distinction.
Stephen E Arnold, February 4, 2025
Google AI Product Names: Worse Than the Cheese Fixation
February 4, 2025
This blog post is the work of a real-live dinobaby. No smart software involved.
If you are Googley, you intuitively and instantly know what these products are:
Gemini Advanced 2.0 Flash
Gemini Advanced 2.0 Flash Thinking Experimental
2.0 Flash Thinking Experimental with apps
2.0 Pro Experimental
1.5 Pro
1.5 Flash
If you don’t get it, you write articles like this one: “You Only Need to See This Screenshot Once to Realize Why Gemini Needs to Follow ChatGPT in Making Its AI Products Less Confusing.” Follow ChatGPT, from the outfit OpenAI which is an open source and a non profit with a Chief Wizard who was fired and rehired more quickly than I can locate hallucinations in ChatGPT whatever. (With Google hallucinations, particularly in the cheese department, I know it is just a Sundar & Prabhakar joke.) With OpenAI, I am not quite sure of anything other than a successful (so far) end run around the masterful leader of X.com.
The write up says:
What we want is AI that just works, with simple naming conventions. If you look at the way Apple brands its products, it normally has up to three versions of a product with a simple name indicating the differences. It has two versions of its MacBook – the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro – and its latest iPhone – iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Pro – that’s nice and simple.
Yeah, sure, Apple is the touchstone with indistinguishable iPhones, the M1, M2, M3, and M4 which are exactly understood as different by what percentage of the black turtleneck crowd?
Here’s a tip: These outfits are into marketing. Whether it is Apple designers influencing engineers or Google engineers influencing art history majors, neither company wants to do what courses in branding suggest; for example, consistency in naming and messaging and community engagement. I suppose confusion in social media and bafflement when trying to figure out what each black box large language model delivers other than acceptable high school essays and made up information is no big deal.
Word prediction is okay. Just a tip: Use the free services and read authoritative sources. Do some critical thinking. You may not be Googley, but you will be recognized as an individual who makes an honest effort to formulate useful outputs. Oh, you can label them experimental and flash to add some mystery to your old fashioned work, not “flash” work which is inconsistent, confusing, and sort of dumb in my opinion.
Stephen E Arnold, March 4, 2025
Happy New Year the Google Way
January 31, 2025
We don’t expect Alphabet Inc. to release anything but positive news these days. Business Standard reports another revealing headline, especially for Googlers in the story: "Google Layoffs: Sundar Pichai Announced 10% Job Cuts In Managerial Roles.” After a huge push in the wake of wokeness to hire under represented groups aka DEI hires, Google has slowly been getting rid of its deadweight employees. That is what Alphabet Inc. probably calls them.
DEI hires were the first to go, now in the last vestiges of Googles 2024 push for efficiency, 10% of its managerial positions are going bye-bye. Among those positions are directors and vice presidents. CEO Sundar Pichai says the push for downsizing also comes from bigger competition from AI companies, such as OpenAI. These companies are challenging Google’s dominance in the tech industry.
Pichai started the efficiency push in 2022 when people were starting to push back against the ineffectiveness of DEI hires, especially when their budgets were shrunk from inflation. In January 2023, 12,000 employees were laid off. Picker is also changing the meaning of “Googleyness”:
“At the same meeting, Pichai introduced a refined vision for ‘Googleyness’, a term that once broadly defined the traits of an ideal Google employee but had grown too ambiguous. Pichai reimagined it with a sharper focus on mission-driven work, innovation, and teamwork. He emphasized the importance of creating helpful products, taking bold risks, fostering a scrappy attitude, and collaborating effectively. “Updating modern Google,” as Pichai described it, is now central to the company’s ethos.”
The new spin on being Googley. Enervating. A month into the bright new year, let me ask a non Googley question: “How are those job searches, bills, and self esteem coming along?
Whitney Grace, January 31, 2025
AI Defined in an Arts and Crafts Setting No Less
January 13, 2025
Prepared by a still-alive dinobaby.
I was surprised to learn that a design online service (what I call arts and crafts) tackled a to most online publications skip. The article “What Does AI Really Mean?” tries to define AI or smart software. I remember a somewhat confused and erratic college professor trying to define happiness. Wow, that was a wild and crazy lecture. (I think the person’s name was Dr. Chapman. I tip my ball cap with the SS8 logo on it to him.) The author of this essay is a Googler, so it must be outstanding, furthering the notion of quantum supremacy at Google.
What is AI? The write up says:
I hope this helped you better understand what those terms mean and the processes which encompass the term “AI”.
Okay, “helped you understand better.” What does the essay do to help me understand better. Hang on to your SS8 ball cap. The author briefly defines these buzzwords:
- Data as coordinates
- Querying per approximation
- Language models both large and small
- Fine “Tunning” (Isn’t that supposed to be tuning?)
- Enhancing context with information, including grounded generation
- Embedding.
For me, a list of buzzwords is not a definition. (At least the hapless Dr. Chapman tried to provide concrete examples and references to his own experience with happiness, which as I recall eluded him.)
The “definition” jumps to a section called “Let’s build.” The author concludes the essay with:
I hope this helped you better understand what those terms mean and the processes which encompass the term “AI”. This merely scratches the surface of complexity, though. We still need to talk about AI Agents and how all these approaches intertwine to create richer experiences. Perhaps we can do that in a later article — let me know in the comments if you’d like that!
That’s it. The Google has, from his point of view, defined AI. As Holden Caufield in The Catcher in the Rye said:
“I can’t explain what I mean. And even if I could, I’m not sure I’d feel like it.”
Bingo.
Stephen E Arnold, January 13, 2025
Google, the Modern Samurai, Becomes a Ronin. Banzai!
January 2, 2025
Written by a dinobaby, not an over-achieving, unexplainable AI system.
I read “Google to Fight Japan’s Claims That It Harms Rivals in Search.” This paywalled Bloomberg story explains that Google is going to fight Japan’s allegations about hampering its competitors. Would Google do that?
A brave online advertising samurai reduces arguments to tiny flakes of paper. Arguments don’t stand a chance when a modern samurai fights injustice. Thanks, ChatGPT. Good enough.
The write up reports:
Alphabet Inc. is preparing to counter Japanese government allegations that it engages in anticompetitive practices such as forcing smartphone makers to give priority to Google Search in default screen placement.
Google’s position is a blend of smarm and lawyer lingo. As reported by Bloomberg:
“We have continued to work closely with the Japanese government to demonstrate how we are supporting the Android ecosystem and expanding user choice in Japan,” Google said in a statement without providing details of the allegations. “We will present our arguments in the hearing process,” it said, adding it was “disappointed” and the FTC didn’t give enough consideration of the company’s proposed solution. The company didn’t elaborate.
With Google explaining how the US government should respond to the shocking decision that Google was a monopoly, the company seems to bounce from one legal matter to the next.
What’s interesting is that Bloomberg characterized Google’s approach as a “fight.” I don’t know too much about Japanese culture. I have watched a Akira Kurosawa film and I recall John Belushi’s interpretation of a modern samurai warrior. Google definitely can send throngs of legal warriors into court. For PR purposes, I think adopting Mr. Kurosawa’s use of color for different groups of brave fighters would contribute some high impact imagery to YouTube videos.
However, with some EU losses and the twist of Googzilla’s tail by the US legal system, the innocent-until-proven-guilty company is likely to become a Saturday Night Live skit. Maybe Joe Koy will slip the Belushi-type of samurai into a set about how Google helps everyone, 24×7, and embodies the quaint motto “Do no evil.”
Stephen E Arnold, January 2, 2024
Google: Making a Buck Is the Name of the Game
December 30, 2024
This blog post was crafted by a still-living dinobaby.
This is a screenshot of YouTube with an interesting advertisement. Take a look:
Here’s a larger version of the ad:
Now here’s the landing page for the teaser which looks like a link to a video:
The site advertising on YouTube.com is Badgeandwallet.com. The company offers a number of law enforcement related products. Here’s a sample of the badges available to a person exploring the site:
How many law enforcement officers are purchasing badges from an ad on YouTube? At some US government facilities, shops will provide hats and jackets with agency identification on them. However, to make a purchase, a visitor to the store must present current credentials.
YouTube.com and its parent are under scrutiny for a number of the firm’s business tactics. I reacted negatively to the inclusion of this advertisement in search results related to real estate in Beverly Hills, California.
Is Google the brilliant smart software company it says it is, or is the company just looking to make a buck with ads likely to be viewed by individuals who have little or nothing to do with law enforcement or government agencies?
I hope that 2025 will allow Google to demonstrate that it wants to be viewed as a company operating with a functioning moral compass. My hunch is that I will be disappointed as I have been with quantum supremacy and Googley AI.
Stephen E Arnold, December 30, 2025
Modern Management Revealed and It Is Jaundiced with a Sickly Yellowish Cast
December 26, 2024
This blog post is the work of an authentic dinobaby. No smart software was used.
I was zipping through the YCombinator list of “important” items and spotted this one: “Time for a Code-Yellow?: A Blunt Instrument That Works.” I associated Code Yellow with the Google knee jerk in early 2023 when Microsoft rolled out its smart software deal with OpenAI. Immediately Google was on the backfoot. Word filtered across the blogs and “real” news sources that the world’s biggest online ad outfit and most easily sued company was reeling. The company declared a “Code Yellow,” a “Code Red,” and probably a Code 300 Terahertz to really goose the Googlers.
Grok does a code yellow. Good enough.
I found the reaction, the fumbling, and the management imperative as wonky as McKinsey getting ensnared in its logical opioid consulting work. What will those MBAs come up with next?
The “Time for a Code Yellow” is interesting. Read it. I want to focus on a handful of supplemental observations which appeared in the comments to the citation for the article. These, I believe, make clear the “problem” that is causing many societal problems including the egregious actions of big companies, some government agencies, and those do-good non-governmental organizations.
Here we go and the italics are my observation on the individual insights:
Tubojet1321 says: “If everything is an emergency, nothing is an emergency.” Excellent observation.
nine_zeros says: “Eventually everyone learns inaction.” Yep, meetings are more important than doing.The fix is to have another meeting.
magical hippo says: “My dad used to flippantly say he had three piles of papers on his desk: “urgent”, “very urgent” and “no longer urgent”. The modern organization creates bureaucratic friction at a much faster pace.
x0x0 says: “I’m utter sh*t at management, [I] refuse to prioritize until it’s a company-threatening crisis, and I’m happy to make my team suffer for my incompetence.” Outstanding self critique.
Lammy says: “The etymology is not green/yellow/red. It’s just not-Yellow or yes-Yellow. See Stephen Levy’s In The Plex (2011) pg186: ‘A Code Yellow is named after a tank top of that color owned by engineering director Wayne Rosing. During Code Yellow a leader is given the shirt and can tap anyone at Google and force him or her to drop a current project to help out. Often, the Code Yellow leader escalates the emergency into a war room situation and pulls people out of their offices and into a conference room for a more extended struggle.’ Really? I thought the popularization of “yellow” as a caution or warning became a shared understanding in the US with the advent of trains long before T shirts and Google. Note: Train professionals used a signaling system before Messrs. Brin and Page “discovered” Jon Kleinberg’s CLEVER patent.
lizzas says: “24/7 oncall to … be yanked onto something the boss fancies. No thanks. What about… planning?” Planning. Let’s call a meeting, talk about a plan, then have a meeting to discuss options, and finally have a meeting to do planning. Sounds like a plan.
I have a headache from the flashing yellow lights. Amazing about Google’s originality, isn’t it? Oh, over the holiday downtime, check out Dr. Jon Kleinberg and what he was doing at IBM’s Almaden Research Laboratory in US6112202, filed in 1997. Are those yellow lights still flashing?
Stephen E Arnold, December 26, 2024
Does Apple Thinks Google Is Inept?
December 25, 2024
At a pre-holiday get together, I heard Wilson say, “Don’t ever think you’re completely useless. You can always be used as a bad example.”
I read the trust outfit’s write up “Apple Seeks to Defend Google’s Billion Dollar Payments in Search Case.” I found the story cutting two ways.
Apple, a big outfit, believes that it can explain in a compelling way why Google should be paying Apple to make Google search the default search engine on Apple devices. Do you remember the Walt Disney film The Hunchback of Notre Dame? I love an argument with a twisted back story. Apple seems to be saying to Google: “Stupidity is far more dangerous than evil. Evil takes a break from time to time. Stupidity does not.”
The Thomson Reuters article offers:
Apple has asked to participate in Google’s upcoming U.S. antitrust trial over online search, saying it cannot rely on Google to defend revenue-sharing agreements that send the iPhone maker billions of dollars each year for making Google the default search engine on its Safari browser.
Apple wants that $20 billion a year and certainly seems to be sending a signal that Google will screw up the deal with a Googley argument. At the same holiday party, Wilson’s significant other observed, ““My people skills are just fine. It’s my tolerance to idiots that needs work.” I wonder if that person was talking about Apple?
Apple may be fearful that Google will lurch into Code Yellow, tell the jury that gluing cheese on pizza is logical, and explain that it is not a monopoly. Apple does not want to be in the court cafeteria and hear, “I heard Google ask the waiter, “How do you prepare chicken?” The waiter replied, “Nothing special. The cook just says, “You are going to die.”
The Thomson Reuters’ article offers this:
Apple wants to call witnesses to testify at an April trial. Prosecutors will seek to show Google must take several measures, including selling its Chrome web browser and potentially its Android operating system, to restore competition in online search. “Google can no longer adequately represent Apple’s interests: Google must now defend against a broad effort to break up its business units,” Apple said.
I had a professor from Oklahoma who told our class:
“If Stupidity got us into this mess, then why can’t it get us out?”
Apple and Google arguing in court. Google has a lousy track record in court. Apple is confident it can convince a court that taking Google’s money is okay.
Albert Eistein allegedly observed:
The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.
Yep, Apple and Google, quite a pair.
Stephen E Arnold, December 25, 2024
Google AI Videos: Grab Your Popcorn and Kick Back
December 20, 2024
This blog post is the work of an authentic dinobaby. No smart software was used.
Google has an artificial intelligence inferiority complex. In January 2023, it found itself like a frail bathing suit clad 13 year old in the shower room filled with Los Angeles Rams. Yikes. What could the inhibited Google do? The answer has taken about two years to wend its way into Big Time PR. Nothing is an upgrade. Google is interacting with parallel universes. It is redefining quantum supremacy into supremest computer. It is trying hard not to recommend that its “users” use glue to keep cheese on its pizza.
Score one for the Grok. Good enough, but I had to try the free X.com image generator. Do you see a shivering high school student locked out of the gym on a cold and snowy day? Neither do I. Isn’t AI fabulous?
Amidst the PR bombast, Google has gathered 11 videos together under the banner of “Gemini 2.0: Our New AI Model for the Agentic Era. What is an “era”? As I recall, it is a distinct period of history with a particular feature like online advertising charging everyone someway or another. Eras, according to some long-term thinkers, are millions of years long; for example, the Mesozoic Era consists of the Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous periods. Google is definitely thinking in terms of a long, long time.
Here’s the link to the playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLqYmG7hTraZD8qyQmEfXrJMpGsQKk-LCY. If video is not your bag, you can listen to Google AI podcasts at this link: https://deepmind.google/discover/the-podcast/.
Has Google neutralized the blast and fall out damage from Microsoft’s 2023 OpenAI deal announcement? I think it depends on whom one asks. The feeling of being behind the AI curve must be intense. Google invented the transformer technology. Even Microsoft’s Big Dog said that Google should have been the winner. Watch for more Google PR about Google and parallel universes and numbers too big for non Googlers to comprehend.
Somebody give that kid a towel. He’s shivering.
Stephen E Arnold, December 20, 2024
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