I think the 3.8 Flash release shows they are doing just fine at AI. Unlike OpenAI and Anthropomorphic, Google doesn’t have to release new models to capture VC sentiment every three months. They have the hardware, data and money. And when they release a model it’s very good.

Now their product strategy however…

>Google is doing everything possible to juice their revenue right now, in ways they've never seen before

My experience confirms this: many years ago I had a website banned from serving Google Ads. They said my pages didn't have enough content.

Then a competitor started showing ads on the exact same type of pages where I had previously been able to serve them. So I tried getting my website approved again and -- surprise -- now I can serve ads again.

I don't think it's related to AI, at least not originally. To me this is about the slow death of display advertising. The arms race of ad blockers and ad blocker blockers and such has created a world where people hate display ads, especially because they require so much creepy data to even work in the first place.

AI probably would help their display ad business overall -- they finally just launched a "have Gemini create your ad!" feature, and I imagine having to hire a designer was a common blocker for SMBs.

everyone (on all sides!) is losing at AI and we'll see increasingly frantic attempts from all players to paper over the cracks as this extreme resource misallocation bites.

[dead]