Corporate suicide

When a new company introduces a novel and unique capability successfully to the market, it can often appear that they will end up with a natural monopoly and that there will be no conceivable way for an unregulated free market to break that natural monopoly.  

Such was the view of Google in its early days.  It quickly crowded out competitors, and locked in enormous revenue streams.  It has spent two decades investing in refinements and in strategic investments to find the next big deal.

There have been some occasional alternate search platform competitors in the intervening years but largely at the fringe.

The fear of a natural monopoly has a natural basis but reality is that most of what appear to be natural monopolies merely entail patience.  The monopoly turns out not to be natural.  Patents expire.  Demand changes.  Competitors come up with better alternatives.  The market works, just not always on the timeline that people might want for their own reasons.

And sometimes, companies just commit suicide (ex.  Bud Light).  This appears to be the chosen route of Google.  A monolithic search monopoly with an unassailable market position.  Particularly in the past five years there have been increasing complaints about the efficacy and accuracy of its search engine but there has been no compelling alternative.

Then they decided to commit corporate suicide.  

The release of its Gemini (Google AI) has been a troubled launch on its own but it also raises further concerns about the base search engine business.  There is a feeling that Gemini is making obvious what was only suspected about the increasing bias and inaccuracy of Google Search.  

Three examples I have seen in the past day or so:

Here's @GoogleAI stating it cannot create an image of Tiananmen Square because of complicated nuance.

Thankfully we have the actual image. Do you guys understand how important this AI issue is yet? pic.twitter.com/kHH9cdPQFO

— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) February 21, 2024

Strike 1 - catering to the sensibilities of a totalitarian regime which is a major economic and military threat to the nation.  

Insane. Just a step away from Holocaust denial.

What a disastrous product launch. https://t.co/z7rlGXgtdV

— AG (@AGHamilton29) February 22, 2024

Strike 2 - catering to antisemites everywhere. 

This is absurd. Hiding data isn’t going to lead to better conclusions. A search tool that filters results to ensure specific takeaways and narratives is completely useless in real discussions. https://t.co/ErmJlzVCkW

— AG (@AGHamilton29) February 21, 2024

Strike 3 - a rejection of Age of Enlightenment empiricism, scientific method, and epistemic curiosity and openness.  

Perhaps this is not a death blow.  Perhaps they have only shot themselves in the foot and not the heart.  But at best, they clearly are not practicing basic gun safety.