AI Innovation: Writing Checks Is the Google Solution

January 30, 2025

A blog post from an authentic dinobaby. He’s old; he’s in the sticks; and he is deeply skeptical.

Wow. First, Jeff Dean gets the lateral arabesque. Then the Google shifts its smart software to the “I am a star” outfit Deep Mind in the UK. Now, the cuddly Google has, according to Analytics India, pulled a fast one on the wizards laboring at spelling advertising another surprise. “Google Invests $1 Bn in Anthropic” reports:

This new investment is separate from the company’s earlier reported funding round of nearly $2 billion earlier this month, led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, to bump the company’s valuation to about $60 billion. In 2023, Google had invested $300 million in Anthropic, acquiring a 10% stake in the company. In November last, Amazon led Anthropic’s $4 billion fundraising effort, raising its overall funding to $8 billion for the company.

I thought Google was quantumly supreme. I thought Google reinvented protein stuff. I thought Google could do podcasts and fix up a person’s Gmail. I obviously was wildly off the mark. Perhaps Google’s “leadership” has taken time from writing scripts for the Sundar & Prabhakar Comedy Tour and had an epiphany. Did the sketch go like this:

Prabhakar: Did you see the slide deck for my last talk about artificial intelligence?

Sundar: Yes, I thought it was so so. Your final slide was a hoot. Did you think it up?

Prabhakar: No, I think little. I asked Anthropic Claude for a snappy joke. It worked.

Sundar: Did Jeff Dean help? Did Dennis Hassabis contribute?

Prabhakar: No, just Claude Sonnet. He likes me, Sundar.

Sundar: The secret of life is honesty, fair dealing, and Code Yellow!

Prabhakar: I think Google intelligence may be a contradiction in terms. May I requisition another billion for Anthropic?

Sundar: Yes, we need to care about posterity. Otherwise, our posterity will be defined by a YouTube ad.

Prabhakar: We don’t want to take it in the posterity, do we?

Sundar: Well….

Anthropic allegedly will release a “virtual collaborator.” Google wants that, right Jeff and Dennis? Are there anti-trust concerns? Are there potential conflicts of interest? Are there fears about revenues?

Of course not.

Will someone turn off those darned flashing red and yellow lights! Innovation is tough with the sirens, the lights, the quantumly supremeness of Googleness.

Stephen E Arnold, January 30, 2025

Written by Stephen E. Arnold · Filed Under AI, Business strategy, Innovation, News

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Stephen E. Arnold monitors search, content processing, text mining and related topics from his high-tech nerve center in rural Kentucky. He tries to winnow the goose feathers from the giblets. He works with colleagues worldwide to make this Web log useful to those who want to go "beyond search". Contact him at sa [at] arnoldit.com. His Web site with additional information about search is arnoldit.com.