I guess the parent is talking about Google X, and perhaps the self driving car stuff. Not sure, I don’t think Google is particularly good at innovation, as most of their successes other than search came through acquisitions (YouTube, Google Maps).
They’re definitely not at the forefront of AI anymore, which honestly is super surprising given the reputation that had.
Perhaps user-facing apps/innovations, yes - but what about all of the other things they've contributed to the world? Kubernetes, Golang, V8, Chromium, and so much more. All of which are entirely free, as in beer kind of free. That's amazing.
These tools have been used to create amazing things that normal people have come to depend on every day.
But that’s hardly on par with the level of innovation that happened at Bell Labs. Would you see them getting 10 Nobel prizes and 5 Turing awards?
I’m not disagreeing that Google is adding value, but it just seems more like incremental improvements rather than innovation. Yes they make free things, but so do Facebook, Netflix, Apple, etc.
> Would you see them getting 10 Nobel prizes and 5 Turing awards?
Meh, we give Nobel prizes to anyone these days - they're more symbolic of certain politics than anything else sadly.
Turing Awards? Yes, many things Google has contributed to the world are probably worthy of such an award. Http/2/quic/3 were driven by Google if I'm not mistaken, and there is no other browser core like Chromium today that facilitates so much of the world's internet access (a significant amount of which does not use Chrome itself). Tensorflow and early "AI Revolution" tech came largely out of Google as well.
The problem we have today is tech is very complicated and requires many organizations working together to really advance groundbreaking technology. When the day finally comes that FSD Vehicles are possible, would we say the first company to market "invented" the technology or would it be the compound experiences of dozens of companies? Gone are the days 5 people can get into a room and 3 months later turn out world-changing technology...
They’re definitely not at the forefront of AI anymore, which honestly is super surprising given the reputation that had.