https://aws.amazon.com/machine-learning/trainium/
https://aws.amazon.com/machine-learning/inferentia/
I really don't think this would be a limiting factor regardless, even if Amazon didn't already have multiple generations of these products. It's not as if an Amazon or Microsoft sized company is incapable of developing custom silicon to meet an objective, once an objective is identified. TPUs also aren't really that complicated to design, at least compared to GPUs.
I'm slightly surprised Microsoft hasn't bothered to release any custom ML chips for Azure yet, but I guess they've run the numbers and decided to focus on other priorities for now.
Google/Alphabet used 6514 terawatt hours in 2016 according to data collected from yearly reports at https://www.statista.com/statistics/788540/energy-consumptio...
If my math is right, dividing that by 8760 hours in a year, you get 743MW.
Of course, that also includes office space, etc. (did the AWS number, too?) but it should be clear that, cross checking with data center builds, optic fiber and energy purchases as well, for years Google+YT+Apps+GCP were larger than Amazon and all other AWS customers combined. I didn't even factor in efficiency, something that Amazon started focusing on quite a bit later.
Someone might be able to extrapolate both numbers to today based on infrastructure, other metrics or other spend in quarterly financial statements (or power procurement, which will be complicated by the non trivial Amazon vs AWS distinction).
All of the above to say that Amazon probably has more compute now, but it's a stretch to talk about "paling".
I also doubt computing power is the real bottleneck. Anyone of these companies (and most other companies too) can build enough large servers sites and they have the money. The costly and difficult part is the engineering resources, doing the right thing technically (AI wise) and business wise, not lose time, not bet on the wrong horse etc.
They can deliver unsuccessful stuff on the web at scale, they can deliver successful stuff that turns out to be inconsequential for their bottom line on the web in the long-term (AJAX came from MS), but it's just not in their DNA to take over the web. They had lots of chances to do it during the last 20 years or so, they had all the silver bullets at their disposal, they just couldn't deliver what it took.
Not sure what decade you're stuck in here with comments about ajax
I explicitly mentioned the "web", as in, what we're doing right now on this website. Leaving aside the fact that Azure is mostly used big corporate/government entities, there's no web-startup that will potentially dominate the web and that would go into Azure just as.
It's this type of confidence that you come back to HN over and over for.
Let's ignore Azure, Office 365, and Microsoft's other online properties. In just video games: Microsoft owns and operates the Xbox network with over 100 million active monthly users[1]. That runs on the internet with all the features of a social network and more. I think they can deliver successful stuff at web scale OK, whatever their other shortcomings.
1 - https://hothardware.com/news/xbox-live-surpasses-100-million...
I explicitly mentioned the web, Office365 is not a successful web story. It is a successful enterprise story (afaik it is still wildly profitable for MS the company), but it is not a successful web story. Ditto for Xbox.
Is the web a consumer product that runs on the internet?
What's niche about websites?
Leaving aside the snarky tone, I'll give you an example of how MS has continuously botched their web work for 20 years.
If I go on Bing Maps (which I'm actually using on one of my pet projects on account of their permissive licensing) and I type in my Bucharest street address the auto-completion thing works fine, which is a plus (Apple's is much worst at that), but then again their map web project ends up pointing me about 200-300 meters from where I actually live. Google Maps does it pitch-perfect, has done it pitch-perfect for years (I think there have been around 10 years since they've added exact address searches for Bucharest). Many other such cases.
Later edit: Forgot to mention, two of the closest POIs shown on Bing Maps have been closed for two years with other places having taking their place in the meantime. Again, GMaps has been almost instantaneous on putting that on their maps, MS seems to be a lot slower at that. That's what the web is all about, data that counts and that is of interest.
Office 365 is web based. So does that count or is it conveniently a website also used by companies (and consumers) so we discount it?
What's unique about web sites that you think is harder than what they've done elsewhere? What makes web sites harder to scale?
Their inability to do mapping well has nothing to do with websites. So please, kindly stick to a definition and stop moving the goal post.
These two products alone are used by maybe 70% of developers, and don't forget about copilot and all the integrations between github/vscode.
go for their paid offering if latency is bothering you
Of course, even if search revenue falls, it won’t happen overnight.
But I honestly don’t see how laying all that fibre or owning those data centres is a moat around Google. These things are hugely capital intensive, to be sure, but theres a big market for both.
This feels like "thinking inside the box" to me. None of these things are necessary requirements for being a "Google killer".
https://openconnect.netflix.com/
Some people who’ve worked on it post around here and they’ve funded things like FreeBSD development which is interesting for seeing the kind of problems you have at that kind of traffic volume.