alt Hacker News“Interestingly, what’s making Muse a success also explains why Google has mostly failed to capture the zeitgeist so far. They have the compute and the ad money to fund something like Muse. But they have no product chops to build something simple and understandable in consumer AI.”
Umm what? Having billions of hourly active users across YouTube, Google, Google Maps, and Chrome still doesn’t mean they have the product chops to build another consumer facing app/service? I think it’s inevitable that Muse will get crushed.
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> YouTube, Google, Google Maps
Just yesterday I tried out Gemini again after a while, and it was not able to open Google Maps in navigation mode to the destination i wanted.
For the purposes of writing this comment, i asked it to put on some Jazz in Youtube (i have youtube music with a premium account on the same device and same google account) and it started a Spotify Jazz playlist.
Google might still have the popular products from 20 years of history, but after years of them trying there's no indication whatsoever that they have the ability to shape it into a coherent product.
> YouTube, Google, Google Maps, and Chrome
You listed products that have been around for ~20 years. Keeping up already entrenched products running doesn't correlate with being able to launch new products.
Those are all quite mature products which they have maintained and grew super well. They haven’t had a good track record in consumer AI, there’s no coherent product strategy or offering. They had some localized hits like NotebookLM and nano banana but it hasn’t translated into organic growth and usage for Gemini
Google Search and Google Maps are utilities, not consumer apps that vie for leisure time, so I don't think they are really comparable. The next frontier for AI apps like Muse and Dots is competing with the social media giants.
We should look to see how Shorts vs IG Reels have adapted to the short form video landscape for product chops in this area. IMO IG has adapted far better to the new era, and I very often get people sending me Reels (they used to send TikToks). I very rarely see anyone send Shorts but it still happens. I expect this trend to continue and IG to extend their lead here. And Muse certainly has first mover advantage in personalized AI apps, who knows when Google will finally release one.
Google has huge amounts of training data but very little of it is relevant to creating an AI personal assistant with good UX for common tasks. Like Gemini might be really good at answering specific questions or generating synthetic content but that doesn't mean it can securely, reliably carry out workflows in a way that feels natural to regular users. At least for now, that part still requires some human vision and product management.
Youtube and google maps are used because of content they have. As software they are awful.
The difference between Google and Meta is that people already trust Google a lot with their data, passwords, browser history, phone operating system.
They have a lot more to lose in introducing something as ridiculous as Muse - changing the pre-established security boundaries like not decrypting your cloud-synced passwords.
Meta on the other hand has nothing to lose in the consumer privacy/trust space. They don't have enterprise users of Muse to worry about. Anybody putting their data into their apps has clearly no regard for the at data, so they're the only one who the risk/reward might be in their favour.