Does it seem, I'm not sure, ironic maybe? That the main example here is "An app that writes blog posts" - "Researches a topic and writes a blog post about it" - that the company who helped champion the network effects of the internet and surface truly useful search results is now helping to destroy that very same thing they built their entire business on?
Different teams. This AI team at Google cares not for the health of the web. They barely remember that Google has a search engine, except of course for the groudbreaking AI search results which are responsible for many large numbers for use in annual reviews. This team's goal is to sell their AI solution, and if that means demonstrating its ability to generate tools that create crap content that harms the search engine results, well, I'm sure another AI solution can probably combat that later.
Arguably the ad business is to blame. It created a perverse incentive. They maximized pay-to-play. The losers were authors that previously published on a passion budget (and would/could never pay for ads). AI is just the last nail in the coffin.
> that the company who helped champion the network effects of the internet and surface truly useful search results...
The amount of data on the web crossed the threshold of organic discoverability some time before the AI boom started. AI makes it go from really bad to really, really bad (99% to 99.99%). As far as I am concerned it doesn't change anything.
The same mechanisms to find good content would work today as well - following humans and networks.
I dont think so. They also triggered SEO race where businesses pump out same bland blogposts to optimize ranking. Content made by humans for those companies was the only viable way at that time, and now new synthetic method emerges - whatever generates revenue will win. AI reels and tiktoks get views, so why bother with human generated content after the training on models have been done? Sad but true.
That's a good point, we had sort of the precursor to this already and yea likely driven by google themselves. It seems that every time incentives are aligned purely for profit we end up with situations like this where they inevitably run a good thing straight into the ground.
If they store both the generated content and the eventual indexed location, they could now filter search results more comprehensively based on content hashes.
They can't even monopolize the ai effort in their own org. There's a dozen google ai products that all compete with each other (ai studio, firebase studio, opal, Gemini etc).
They have all the potential but have lost direction years ago.
I think they will stay relevant but not dominant, much like the case of Google meet.
I doubt that, I hear on the internet that Gemini pro is great but every time I have used it has been beyond disappointing. I’m starting to believe that the Gemini pro is great is some paid PR push and not based on reality. The Gemma models are also probably the least useful/interesting local models I’ve used.
What are you using them for? Gemini (the app, not just the Google search overview) has replaced ChatGPT entirely for me these days, not the least of which is because I find Gemini simply be able to handle web searches better (after all, that is what Google is known for). Add to that, it can integrate well with other Google products like YouTube or Maps where it can make me a nice map if I ask it what the best pizza places are in a certain area. I don't even need to use pro mode, just fast mode, because it's free.
Claude is still used but only in IDEs for coding, I don't ask it general questions anymore.
I use Gemma as a developer for basic on-device LLM tasks such as structured JSON output.
I didn't get far with this because it wants access to my entire Google Drive, which I declined. Credit to Google for even offering the chance to say "no", I suppose.
How do I even know this is a real Google product? Okay I’ll trust the domain (hopefully it’s not goofing.com). How do I know it has no vulnerabilities? Google is a massive company. There’s a big difference between trusting an established team vs. whoever this team is.
Expecting permissions to my entire Google Drive is ridiculous. Yes, I tried not granting that permission (and only granting permission to an app-specific path) and it specifically told me I have to grant full permission . I closed the tab.
So you trust Google with the data in your google drive, but you don't trust Google (Opal Team) with the data in your drive?
Yes.
More specifically, I trust Google not to use my files to train its AI if I haven't given permission, but I don't trust Google not to use Opal as a way to get me to give them permission without realising.
I think the concern is that this might somehow enable a privacy policy they weren't aware of that permits training over the entire Drive. However, I think the primary reason for this is that these products generally would like to store data on the user's Google Drive but Google Drive doesn't have super granular permission structure to be able to set up a partitioned directory for the app alone. I actually think that might be a good thing to work on next?
That was my concern too. However, the provided links to both the ToS and privacy policy were the standard Google ones (https://policies.google.com/terms), so it seems not to be giving Opal special privileges to read/train on Drive data.
Do any of the example apps work for anyone? I tap “try now” on one, and it just opens a page with its logo/name/description. There’s a sidebar menu that just has its name, and a restart app button that does nothing. I can’t see how to make the app do anything.
They had an invite only one in the bard days before it was rebranded to gemini. You didn't just need to get the invite link but actually link your discord to your google so I didn't bother.
Just goes to show that google's attempts at chat have been a big flop and even though google chat exists they don't use it.
Does it seem, I'm not sure, ironic maybe? That the main example here is "An app that writes blog posts" - "Researches a topic and writes a blog post about it" - that the company who helped champion the network effects of the internet and surface truly useful search results is now helping to destroy that very same thing they built their entire business on?
Different teams. This AI team at Google cares not for the health of the web. They barely remember that Google has a search engine, except of course for the groudbreaking AI search results which are responsible for many large numbers for use in annual reviews. This team's goal is to sell their AI solution, and if that means demonstrating its ability to generate tools that create crap content that harms the search engine results, well, I'm sure another AI solution can probably combat that later.
Arguably the ad business is to blame. It created a perverse incentive. They maximized pay-to-play. The losers were authors that previously published on a passion budget (and would/could never pay for ads). AI is just the last nail in the coffin.
Google has already been single-handedly destroying the internet for over a decade by turning into an ad-ridden mess
We've had 25 years to regulate them or break them up. It's our own fault for under-regulation.
> that the company who helped champion the network effects of the internet and surface truly useful search results...
The amount of data on the web crossed the threshold of organic discoverability some time before the AI boom started. AI makes it go from really bad to really, really bad (99% to 99.99%). As far as I am concerned it doesn't change anything.
The same mechanisms to find good content would work today as well - following humans and networks.
I dont think so. They also triggered SEO race where businesses pump out same bland blogposts to optimize ranking. Content made by humans for those companies was the only viable way at that time, and now new synthetic method emerges - whatever generates revenue will win. AI reels and tiktoks get views, so why bother with human generated content after the training on models have been done? Sad but true.
That's a good point, we had sort of the precursor to this already and yea likely driven by google themselves. It seems that every time incentives are aligned purely for profit we end up with situations like this where they inevitably run a good thing straight into the ground.
If they store both the generated content and the eventual indexed location, they could now filter search results more comprehensively based on content hashes.
Yeah, helping to produce AI-generated garbage.
I think Google is going to do with consumer AI as they have done with search engine. Full monopolization. They own the lumberyard and the forest.
They'll just see whats popular and then clone, launch and instantly own verticals.
It's over for the little SaaS guys.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BxFQYw_MmAA
They can't even monopolize the ai effort in their own org. There's a dozen google ai products that all compete with each other (ai studio, firebase studio, opal, Gemini etc).
They have all the potential but have lost direction years ago.
I think they will stay relevant but not dominant, much like the case of Google meet.
I doubt that, I hear on the internet that Gemini pro is great but every time I have used it has been beyond disappointing. I’m starting to believe that the Gemini pro is great is some paid PR push and not based on reality. The Gemma models are also probably the least useful/interesting local models I’ve used.
What are you using them for? Gemini (the app, not just the Google search overview) has replaced ChatGPT entirely for me these days, not the least of which is because I find Gemini simply be able to handle web searches better (after all, that is what Google is known for). Add to that, it can integrate well with other Google products like YouTube or Maps where it can make me a nice map if I ask it what the best pizza places are in a certain area. I don't even need to use pro mode, just fast mode, because it's free.
Claude is still used but only in IDEs for coding, I don't ask it general questions anymore.
I use Gemma as a developer for basic on-device LLM tasks such as structured JSON output.
Gemini just has many basic things missing like the ability to edit a message more than one message in the past and see branches of that conversation.
The local Gemma models are pretty good for tasks involving multilingual inputs (translation, summarization, etc.). They have their niche.
Discussion when launched 5 months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44681786
“Join our Discord…”
That is a bit unexpected to see. Start Up vibes, haha.
Looks like another insane leap forward this.
In my estimation, that’s memetics and signaling to an in-group about who they want their audience to think their audience is.
That’s why I did it. Oh, and it’s nice to be able to chat with potential users. By why not Slack or Teams?
The unresponsive search bar centred on the viewport is all I need to know about this product.
Google may deliver us the AI future Altman promised. The PM who thinks animated PNGs pass for anything real is not on that path.
Anyone have comments actually about Opal? Curious if anyone tried it.
I didn't get far with this because it wants access to my entire Google Drive, which I declined. Credit to Google for even offering the chance to say "no", I suppose.
Why does it need that?
Opal isn’t just peeking at Drive, it’s using it as its backend. Outputs get saved as Drive files so they persist, can be shared, and open in Docs, etc
The gotcha is the permission scope can be pretty broad (read/write or metadata across Drive), so it’s worth checking what you actually granted.
So you trust Google with the data in your google drive, but you don't trust Google (Opal Team) with the data in your drive?
They need a place to store data, Google Drive is a place for that. Have you used NotebookLM or such which do the same sort of thing?
How do I even know this is a real Google product? Okay I’ll trust the domain (hopefully it’s not goofing.com). How do I know it has no vulnerabilities? Google is a massive company. There’s a big difference between trusting an established team vs. whoever this team is.
Expecting permissions to my entire Google Drive is ridiculous. Yes, I tried not granting that permission (and only granting permission to an app-specific path) and it specifically told me I have to grant full permission . I closed the tab.
So you trust Google with the data in your google drive, but you don't trust Google (Opal Team) with the data in your drive?
Yes.
More specifically, I trust Google not to use my files to train its AI if I haven't given permission, but I don't trust Google not to use Opal as a way to get me to give them permission without realising.
Select what Opal can access
- "See and download all your Google Drive files."
I tried de-selecting that, and it told me to re-login and enable that setting.
The Google drive is also hosted by Google on Google's servers. They already have access to everything in there.
I think the concern is that this might somehow enable a privacy policy they weren't aware of that permits training over the entire Drive. However, I think the primary reason for this is that these products generally would like to store data on the user's Google Drive but Google Drive doesn't have super granular permission structure to be able to set up a partitioned directory for the app alone. I actually think that might be a good thing to work on next?
That was my concern too. However, the provided links to both the ToS and privacy policy were the standard Google ones (https://policies.google.com/terms), so it seems not to be giving Opal special privileges to read/train on Drive data.
It wants to add it to the training set ... (guess)
Do any of the example apps work for anyone? I tap “try now” on one, and it just opens a page with its logo/name/description. There’s a sidebar menu that just has its name, and a restart app button that does nothing. I can’t see how to make the app do anything.
What is the usual life expectancy of a Google product?
Google usually kills projects. What's the point in using this?
First thing I thought was “oh, neat, another google product they will kill”.
"Platform roulette" was my first thought. Then I realised the chance of winning on this gamble is approximately nil.
not available in your country...
I suppose for any in europe waking up like me that I can save you one click and some time.
> Join our Discord for support and sharing feedback
I’m surprised to see Google directing people to Discord, do they do that for other products?
They had an invite only one in the bard days before it was rebranded to gemini. You didn't just need to get the invite link but actually link your discord to your google so I didn't bother.
Just goes to show that google's attempts at chat have been a big flop and even though google chat exists they don't use it.
They used to have a lot of IRC channels on freenode for Android.
They did for the new copilot agent builder products, thats where I get most early invites.
I recall them taking about one for NotebookLM.
Jules, their cloud AI agent.
What is this AI mini app?
Do this make an actual production Flutter app or something?
One more Google product destined to die!
"The horror, the horror..."
Problem I see with this being "codeless" is now Google owns everything. They can just hold your app hostage at any price point.
Cute . I think we're all fine with anything that remotely threatens Vercel.