Bring Back Bell Labs…Wait, Google Did…
November 12, 2024
Bell Labs was once a magical, inventing wonderland and it established the foundation for modern communication, including the Internet. Everything was great at Bell Labs until projects got deadlines and creativity was stifled. Hackaday examines the history of the mythical place and discusses if there could ever be a new Bell Labs in, “What Would It Take To Recreate Bell Labs?”
Bell Labs employees were allowed to tinker on their projects for years as long as they focused on something to benefit the larger company. These fields ranges from metallurgy, optics, semiconductors, and more. Bell Labs worked with Western Electric and AT&T. These partnerships resulted in transistor, laser, photovoltaic cell, charge-coupled cell (CCD), Unix operating system, and more.
What made Bell Labs special was that inventors were allowed to let their creativity marinate and explore their ideas. This came to screeching halt in 1982 when the US courts ordered AT&T to breakup. Western Electric became Lucent Technologies and took Bell Labs with it. The creativity and gift of time disappeared too. Could Bell Labs exist today? No, not as it was. It would need to be updated:
The short answer to the original question of whether Bell Labs could be recreated today is thus a likely ‘no’, while the long answer would be ‘No, but we can create a Bell Labs suitable for today’s technology landscape’. Ultimately the idea of giving researchers leeway to tinker is one that is not only likely to get big returns, but passionate researchers will go out of their way to circumvent the system to work on this one thing that they are interested in.”
Google did have a new incarnation of Bell Labs. Did Google invent the Google Glass and billions in revenue from actions explained in the novel 1984?
Whitney Grace, November 12, 2024
Google: The Intellectual Oakland Because There Is No There There, Just Ads
November 7, 2024
The post is the work of a humanoid who happens to be a dinobaby. GenX, Y, and Z, read at your own risk. If art is included, smart software produces these banal images.
I read a clever essay titled “I Attended Google’s Creator Conversation Event, And It Turned Into A Funeral.” Be aware that the text can disappear as a big gray box covers the essay. Just read quickly.
The report explains that a small group of problematic content creators found their sites or other content effectively made invisible in Google search results. Boom. Videos disappear. Boom. Key words no longer retrieve a Web site. So Google did the politically correct thing and got a former conference organizer to round up some of the disaffected and come to a meeting to discuss content getting disappeared. No real reasons are given by Google, but the essay recounts the experience on one intrepid optimist who thought, “This time Google will be different.”
A very professional Googler evades a question. A person in the small group meeting asks it again. She is not happy with Google’s evasiveness. Well, too bad. Thanks, Midjourney. MSFT Copilot is still dead.
Nope.
The write up does a good job of capturing the nothingness of a Google office. If you have not been to one, try to set up a meeting. Good luck.
I want to focus on a couple of points in the essay and then offer a handful of observations.
I noted this statement:
During this small group discussion, I and others tried to get our Googlers to address the biggest problem facing our industry: Google giving big brands special treatment. Each time a site owner brought up the topic, we were quickly steered in another direction.
Google wants or assumes that it is control of everything most of the time. Losing control means one is not a true Googler. The people at this Google event learned that non-Googlers and their questions are simply not relevant. Google goes through certain theatrical events to check off a task.
Also, I circled this comment:
…we then asked the only question that mattered: Why has Google shadow banned our sites? Google’s Chief Search Scientist answered this question using a strategy based around gaslighting and said they hadn’t. Google doesn’t ever derank an entire site, only individual pages, he said. There is no site-wide classifier. He insisted it is only done at the page level.
This statement is accurate. A politically correct answer is one that does not reveal Google’s intent for anything. Individuals in charge of a project or program usually do not know what is going on with that program. Information is shared via the in house communications systems, email or text messages which are viewed as potential problems if released to those outside the Google, and meetings which are often ad hoc or without an agenda. The company sells advertising and reacts to what appear to be threats, legal actions, or ways to make money.
I noted this statement:
someone bluntly asked, since nothing is wrong with our sites, how do we recover? Google’s elderly Chief Search Scientist answered, without an ounce of pity or concern, that there would be updates but he didn’t know when they’d happen or what they’d do. Further questions on the subject were met with indifference as if he didn’t understand why we cared. He’d gotten the information he wanted. The conference was over. I don’t think he even said thanks.
This is accurate. Why should a member of leadership care about a “user”? Clicks produce data. The data and attendant content are processed to make more money. That’s why customer service is limited to big budget advertisers who spend real money on Google advertising.
Several observations:
- Google is big (150,000 or more employees). Google is chaotic. Individuals, groups, and entire divisions are not sure what is going on. How many messaging apps did Google have at one time? Lots. Why? No one knows or knew. The people coming to the meeting about finding themselves invisible in the Google finding systems assumed that a big company was not chaotic. Now the attendees know.
- People who create content have replaced people who used to get paid to create content. Now the “creators” work for the hope of Google advertising money. What’s the percentage paid to a “creator”? Try to find those data, gentle reader. Google does what it does: Individual Googlers or a couple of Googlers set up a system and go to play Foosball. That means 149,998 colleagues have zero idea what’s happening. Content “creators” expect someone to be responsible and to know how systems work. The author of the essay now knows only a couple of people may know the answer to the question. If those people quit, one will never know.
- The people who use Google to find relevant information are irrelevant as individuals. The person who wants to find a pizza in Cleveland may find only the pizza a person working on Google Local for Cleveland may like. If that pizza joint spends a couple of thousand per month on Google ads, that pizza may be findable. Most people do not understand the linkages between search engine optimization, Google advertising sales, and the Google mostly automated Google ad auctioning system. One search engineer working from home can have quite an impact on people who make content and assume that Google will make it findable. The author of the article knows this assumption about Google is a fairy tale.
Google has be labeled a monopoly. Google is suggesting that if the company is held accountable for its behaviors, the US will lose its foothold in artificial intelligence. Brilliant argument. Google has employees who have won a Nobel Prize. People not held accountable often lose sight of many things.
That’s why the big meeting was dumped into the task list of a person who ran search engine optimization conferences. One does not pray for that individual; one does not go to meetings managed by such a professional.
Stephen E Arnold, November 7, 2024
Twenty Five Percent of How Much, Google?
November 6, 2024
The post is the work of a humanoid who happens to be a dinobaby. GenX, Y, and Z, read at your own risk. If art is included, smart software produces these banal images.
I read the encomia to Google’s quarterly report. In a nutshell, everything is coming up roses even the hyperbole. One news hook which has snagged some “real” news professionals is that “more than a quarter of new code at Google is generated by AI.” The exclamation point is implicit. Google’s AI PR is different from some other firms; for example, Samsung blames its financial performance disappointments on some AI. Winners and losers in a game in which some think the oligopolies are automatic winners.
An AI believer sees the future which is arriving “soon, real soon.” Thanks, You.com. Good enough because I don’t have the energy to work around your guard rails.
The question is, “How much code and technical debt does Google have after a quarter century of its court-described monopolistic behavior? Oh, that number is unknown. How many current Google engineers fool around with that legacy code? Oh, that number is unknown and probably for very good reasons. The old crowd of wizards has been hit with retirement, cashing in and cashing out, and “leadership” nervous about fiddling with some processes that are “good enough.” But 25 years. No worries.
The big news is that 25 percent of “new” code is written by smart software and then checked by the current and wizardly professionals. How much “new” code is written each year for the last three years? What percentage of the total Google code base is “new” in the years between 2021 and 2024? My hunch is that “new” is relative. I also surmise that smart software doing 25 percent of the work is one of those PR and Wall Street targeted assertions specifically designed to make the Google stock go up. And it worked.
However, I noted this Washington Post article: “Meet the Super Users Who Tap AI to Get Ahead at Work.” Buried in that write up which ran the mostly rah rah AI “real” news article coincident with Google’s AI spinning quarterly reports one interesting comment:
Adoption of AI at work is still relatively nascent. About 67 percent of workers say they never use AI for their jobs compared to 4 percent who say they use it daily, according to a recent survey by Gallup.
One can interpret this as saying, “Imagine the growth that is coming from reduced costs. Get rid of most coders and just use Google’s and other firms’ smart programming tools.
Another interpretation is, “The actual use is much less robust than the AI hyperbole machine suggests.”
Which is it?
Several observations:
- Many people want AI to pump some life into the economic fuel tank. By golly, AI is going to be the next big thing. I agree, but I think the Gallup data indicates that the go go view is like looking at a field of corn from a crop duster zipping along at 1,000 feet. The perspective from the airplane is different from the person walking amidst the stalks.
- The lack of data behind Google-type assertions about how much machine code is in the Google mix sounds good, but where are the data? Google, aren’t you data driven? So, where’s the back up data for the 25 percent assertion.
- Smart software seems to be something that is expensive, requires dreams of small nuclear reactors next to a data center adjacent a hospital. Yeah, maybe once the impact statements, the nuclear waste, and the skilled worker issues have been addressed. Soon as measured in environmental impact statement time which is different from quarterly report time.
Net net: Google desperately wants to be the winner in smart software. The company is suggesting that if it were broken apart by crazed government officials, smart software would die. Insert the exclamation mark. Maybe two or three. That’s unlikely. The blurring of “as is” with “to be” is interesting and misleading.
Stephen E Arnold, November 6, 2024
Google Goes Nuclear For Data Centers
October 31, 2024
From the The Future-Is-Just-Around-the-Corner Department:
Pollution is blamed on consumers who are told to cut their dependency on plastic and drive less, while mega corporations and tech companies are the biggest polluters in the world. Some of the biggest users of energy are data centers and Google decided to go nuclear to help power them says Engadget: “Google Strikes A Deal With A Nuclear Startup To Power Its AI Data Centers.”
Google is teaming up with Kairos Power to build seven small nuclear reactors in the United States. The reactors will power Google’s AI Drive and add 500 megawatts. The first reactor is expected to be built in 2030 with the plan to finish the rest by 2035. The reactors are called small modular reactors or SMRs for short.
Google’s deal with Kairos Power would be the first corporate deal to buy nuclear power from SMRs. The small reactors are build inside a factory, instead of on site so their construction is lower than a full power plant.
“Kairos will need the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission to approve design and construction permits for the plans. The startup has already received approval for a demonstration reactor in Tennessee, with an online date targeted for 2027. The company already builds test units (without nuclear-fuel components) at a development facility in Albuquerque, NM, where it assesses components, systems and its supply chain.
The companies didn’t announce the financial details of the arrangement. Google says the deal’s structure will help to keep costs down and get the energy online sooner.”
These tech companies say they’re green but now they are contributing more to global warming with their AI data centers and potential nuclear waste. At least nuclear energy is more powerful and doesn’t contribute as much as coal or natural gas to pollution, except when the reactors melt down. Amazon is doing one too.
Has Google made the engineering shift from moon shots to environmental impact statements, nuclear waste disposal, document management, assorted personnel challenges? Sure, of course. Oh, and one trivial question: Is there a commercially available and certified miniature nuclear power plant? Russia may be short on cash. Perhaps someone in that country will sell a propulsion unit from those super reliable nuclear submarines? Google can just repurpose it in a suitable data center. Maybe one in Ashburn, Virginia?
Whitney Grace, October 31, 2024
The DoJ Wants to Break Up Google and Maybe Destroy the Future of AI
October 25, 2024
Contrary to popular belief, the United States is an economically frisky operation. The country runs on a fluid system that mixes aspects regulation, the Wild West, monopolies, oligopolies, and stuff operating off the reservation. The government steps in when something needs regulation. The ageing Sherman Anti-Trust Act forbids monopolies. Yahoo Finance says that “Google Is About To Learn How DOJ Wants To Remake Its Empire.”
There have been rumblings about breaking up Big Tech companies like Google for a while. District of Columbia Judge Amit Mehta ruled that Google abused its power and that its search and ad businesses violated antitrust law. Nothing is clear about what will happen to Google, but a penalty may emerge in 2025. Judge Mehta could potentially end Google’s business agreements that make it the default search engine of devices and force search data to be available to competition. Google’s products: AdWords, Chrome browser, and the Android OS could be broken up and no longer send users to the search engine.
Judge Mehta must consider how breaking up Google will affect third parties, especially those who rely on Google and associated products to (basically) run society. Mehta has a lot to think about: Judge Mehta, however, may have to consider how remedies to restore competition in the traditional search engine market may impact competition in the emerging market for AI-assisted search.
One concern, legal experts said, is that Google’s search dominance could unfairly entrench its position in the market for next-generation search.
At the same time, these fresh threats may work to Google’s advantage in the remedies trial, allowing it to argue that its overall search dominance is already under threat.”
Nothing is going to happen quickly. The 2024 presidential election results will influence Mehta’s decision. Politicians will definitely have their say and the US government needs to evaluate how they use Google.
What’s Google’s answer to these charges? The company is suggesting that fiddling with Google could end the future of AI. Promise or threat?
Whitney Grace, October 25, 2024
Google Meet: Going in Circles Is Either Brilliant or Evidence of a Management Blind Spot
October 24, 2024
No smart software but we may use image generators to add some modern spice to the dinobaby’s output.
I read an article which seems to be a rhetorical semantic floor routine. “Google Meet (Original) Is Finally, Properly Dead” explains that once there was Google Meet. Actually there was something called Hangouts, which as I recall was not exactly stable on my steam powered system in rural Kentucky. Hangouts morphed into Hangouts Meet. Then Hangouts Meet forked itself (maybe Google forked its users?) and there was Hangouts Meet and Hangouts Chat. Hangouts Chat then became Google Chat.
The write up focuses on Hangouts Meet, which is now dead. But the write up says:
In April 2020, Google rebranded Hangouts Meet to just “Meet.” A couple of years later, in 2022, the company merged Google Duo into Google Meet due to Duo’s larger user base, aiming to streamline its video chat services. However, to avoid confusion between the two Meet apps, Google labeled the former Hangouts Meet as “Meet (Original)” and changed its icon to green. However, having two Google Meet apps didn’t make sense and the company began notifying users of the “Meet (Original)” app to uninstall it and switch to the Duo-rebranded Meet. Now, nearly 18 months later, Google is officially discontinuing the Meet (Original) app, consolidating everything and leaving just one version of Meet on the Play Store.
Got that? The article explains:
Phasing out the original Meet app is a logical move for Google as it continues to focus on developing and enhancing the newer, more widely used version of Meet. The Duo-rebranded Google Meet has over 5 billion downloads on the Play Store and is where Google has been adding new features. Redirecting users to this app aligns with Google’s goal of consolidating its video services into a single, feature-rich platform.
Let’s step back. What does this Meet tell us about Google’s efficiency? Here are my views:
- Without its monopoly money, Google could not afford the type of inefficiency evidenced by the tale of the Meets
- The product management process appears to operate without much, if any, senior management oversight
- Google allows internal developers to whack away, release services, and then flounder until a person decides, “Let’s try again, just with different Googlers.”
So how has that worked out for Google? First, I think Microsoft Teams is a deeply weird product. The Softies want Teams to have more functions than the elephantine Microsoft Word. But lots of companies use Word and they now use Teams. And there is Zoom. Poor Zoom has lost its focus on allowing quick and easy online video conferences. Now I have to hunt for options between a truly peculiar Zoom app and the even more clumsy Zoom Web site.
Then there is Google Meet Duo whatever. Amazing. The services are an example of a very confused dog chasing its tail. Round and round she goes until some adult steps in and says, “Down, girl, before you die.”
PS. Who Google Chats from email?
Stephen E Arnold, October 24, 2024
Google Is AI, Folks
October 24, 2024
Google’s legal team is certainly creative. In the face of the Justice Department’s push to break up the monopoly, reports Yahoo Finance, “Google’s New Antitrust Defense is AI.” Wait, what? Reporter Hamza Shaban points to a blog post by Google VP Lee-Anne Mulholland, writing:
“In Google’s view, the government’s heavy-handed approach to transforming the search market ignores the nascent developments in AI, the fresh competition in the space, and new modes of seeking information online, like AI-powered answer engines. The energy around AI and the potential disruption of how users interact with search is, competitively speaking, a negative for Google, said Wedbush analyst Dan Ives. But in another way, as a defense against antitrust charges, it’s a positive. ‘That’s an argument against monopoly that bodes well for Google,’ he said.”
Really? Some believe quite the opposite. We learn:
“‘The DOJ has specifically noted that this evolution in technology is precisely why they are intervening at this point in time,’ said Gil Luria, an analyst at DA Davidson. ‘They want to make sure that Google is not able to convert the monopoly it currently has in Search into a monopoly in AI Enhanced Search.’”
Exactly. Google is clearly a monopoly. We think their assertion means, "treat us special because we are special." This church-lady thinking may or may not work. We live in an interesting judicial moment.
Cynthia Murrell, October 24, 2024
Can Prabhakar Do the Black Widow Thing to Technology at Google?
October 21, 2024
No smart software but we may use image generators to add some modern spice to the dinobaby’s output.
The reliable (mostly?) Wall Street Journal ran a story titled“Google Executive Overseeing Search and Advertising Leaves Role.” The executive in question is Prabhakar Raghavan, the other half of the Sundar and Prabhakar Comedy Team. The wizardly Prabhakar is the person Edward Zitron described as “The Man Who Killed Google Search.” I recommend reading that essay because it has more zip than the Murdoch approach to poohbah analysis.
I want to raise a question because I assume that Mr. Zitron is largely correct about the demise of Google Search. The sleek Prabhakar accelerated the decline. He was the agent of the McKinsey think infused in his comedy partner Sundar. The two still get laughs at their high school reunions amidst chums and more when classmates gather to explain their success to one another.
The Google approach: Who needs relevance? Thanks, MSFT Copilot. Not quite excellent.
What is the question? Here it is:
Will Prabhakar do to Google’s technology what he did to search?
My view is that Google’s technology has demonstrated corporate ossification. The company “invented”, according to Google lore, the transformer. Then Google — because it was concerned about its invention — released some of it as open source and then watched as Microsoft marketed AI as the next big thing for the Softies. And what was the outfit making Microsoft’s marketing coup possible? It was Sam AI-Man.
Microsoft, however, has not been a technology leader for how many years?
Suddenly the Google announced a crisis and put everyone on making Google the leader in AI. I assume the McKinsey think did not give much thought to the idea that MSFT’s transformer would be used to make Google look darned silly. In fact, it was Prabhakar who stole the attention of the pundits with a laughable AI demonstration in Paris.
Flash forward from early 2023 to late 2024 what’s Google doing with technology? My perception is that Google is trying to create AI winners, capture the corporate market from Microsoft, and convince as many people as possible that if Google is broken apart, AI in America will flop.
Yes, the fate of the nation hangs on Google’s remaining a monopoly. That sounds like a punch line to a skit in the Sundar and Prabhakar Comedy Show.
Here’s my hypothesis: The death of search (the Edward Zitron view) is a job well done. The curtains fall on Act I of the Google drama. Act II is about the Google technology. The idea is that the technology of the online advertising monopoly defines the future of America.
Stay tuned because the story will be streamed on YouTube with advertising, lots of advertising, of course.
Stephen E Arnold, October 21, 2024
AI Podcasters Are Reviewing Books Now
October 10, 2024
I read an article about how students are using AI to cheat on homework and receive book summaries. Students especially favor AI voices reading to them. I wasn’t surprised by that, because this generation is more visual and audial than others. What astounded me, however, was that AI is doing more than I expected such as reading and reviewing books according to ArsTechnica: “Fake AI “Podcasters” Are Reviewing My Book And It’s Freaking Me Out.”
Kyle Orland has followed generative AI for a while. He also recently wrote a book about Minesweeper. He was as astounded as me when we heard to AI generated podcasters discussing his book into a 12.5 minute distilled show. The chatbots were “engaging and endearing.” They were automated by Google’s new NotebookLM, a virtual research assistant that can summarize, explain complex ideas, and brainstorm from selected sources. Google recently added the Audio Overview feature to turn documents into audio discussions.
Orland fed his 30,000 word Minesweeper book into NotebookLM and he was amazed that it spat out a podcast similar to NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour. It did get include errors but as long as it wasn’t being used for serious research, Orland was cool with it:
“Small, overzealous errors like these—and a few key bits of the book left out of the podcast entirely—would give me pause if I were trying to use a NotebookLM summary as the basis for a scholarly article or piece of journalism. But I could see using a summary like this to get some quick Cliff’s Notes-style grounding on a thick tome I didn’t have the time or inclination to read fully. And, unlike poring through Cliff’s Notes, the pithy, podcast-style format would actually make for enjoyable background noise while out on a walk or running errands.”
Orland thinks generative AI chatbot podcasts will be an enjoyable and viable entertainment option in the future. They probably will. There’s actually a lot of creative ways creators could use AI chatbots to generate content from their own imaginations. It’s worrisome but also gets the creative juices flowing.
Whitney Grace October 10, 2024
Why Present Bad Sites?
October 7, 2024
This blog post did not require the use of smart software, just a dumb humanoid.I read “Google Search Is Testing Blue Checkmark Feature That Helps Users Spot Genuine Websites.” I know this is a test, but I have a question: What’s genuine mean to Google and its smart software? I know that Google cannot answer this question without resorting to consulting nonsensicalness, but “genuine” is a word. I just don’t know what’s genuine to Google. Is a Web site that uses SEO trickery to appear in a results list? Is it a blog post written by a duplicitous PR person working at a large Google-type firm? Is it a PDF appearing on a “genuine” government’s Web site?
A programmer thinking about blue check marks. The obvious conclusion is to provide a free blue check mark. Then later one can charge for that sign of goodness. Thanks, Microsoft. Good enough. Just like that big Windows update. Good enough.
The write up reports:
Blue checkmarks have appeared next to certain websites on Google Search for some users. According to a report from The Verge, this is because Google is experimenting with a verification feature to let users know that sites aren’t fraudulent or scams.
Okay, what’s “fraudulent” and what’s a “scam”?
What does Google say? According to the write up:
A Google spokesperson confirmed the experiment, telling Mashable, “We regularly experiment with features that help shoppers identify trustworthy businesses online, and we are currently running a small experiment showing checkmarks next to certain businesses on Google.”
A couple of observations:
- Why not allow the user to NOT out these sites? Better yet, give the user a choice of seeing de-junked or fully junked sites? Wow, that’s too hard. Imagine. A Boolean operator.
- Why does Google bother to index these sites? Why not change the block list for the crawl? Wow, that’s too much work. Imagine a Googler editing a “do not crawl” list manually.
- Is Google admitting that it can identify problematic sites like those which push fake medications or the stolen software videos on YouTube? That’s pretty useful information for an attorney taking legal action against Google, isn’t it?
Net net: Google is unregulated and spouts baloney. Google needs to jack up its revenue. It has fines to pay and AI wizards to pay. Tough work.
Stephen E Arnold, October 7, 2024
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