Microsoft vs. Google: The Endgame | Hacker News Reader

Microsoft vs. Google: The Endgame

shrimalmadhur.substack.com

24 pointsshrimalmadhur32 comments

Imo people (including the author of TFA) overestimate browser stickiness. Back in 2001 it looked like Microsoft’s dual monopolies over web serving with IIS and browsing with IE were severely entrenched but within a matter of a couple of years they were completely eclipsed in both arenas. If 80-90% of web users can transition from IE to chrome they can transition from chrome to the next big thing whatever that ends up being. There just needs to be a compelling reason to do that.

I think browser stickiness is even less now because the experience is so lacking in differentiation. Back then if (as I did) you used Mozilla or another minority browser there were huge swathes of the web that simply didn’t work at all because they depended on IE-only plugins or worked extremely poorly due to compatibility bugs etc. Now while chrome is definitely the best-supported browser among devs, due to the importance of mobile, sites have been forced to support webkit etc and that generally means that cross-compatibility is ok. I don’t often come across sites that are straight-up broken on Firefox for instance, just sometimes some features or layout are a bit wonky.

For that reason I don’t think chrome’s dominance of the browser landscape represents a advantage for Google that will persist.

Addition: also I’m pretty sure no-one in Google senior leadership can be that surprised by the JWST snafu with Bard. If they were super-confident in Bard they would have just released it for public beta and put it straight into people’s hands like chatGPT. Instead they’ve done a puff tour to get press coverage about how great it is and say that it will be in people’s hands soon.

Google has had issues executing on AI in the past, the classic example being their AI classifying black people as gorillas[0]. I can understand why they might want to be cautious given all the scrutiny they'll be under.

[0] https://www.theverge.com/2018/1/12/16882408/google-racist-go...

I feel like if Bard were any good they'd've used him (er the technology) to make a decent inbox policy for gmail. Or maybe that sort of work is beneath him, or would be inhumane? Or just too inefficient to be cost effective I suppose burning your creator's money in a furnace could induce something like suffering for a sentient AI.

No? Getting ChatGPT to lie is not exactly hard. In fact, it's so easy you do that by accident and constantly need to watch out for it happening. There's just a massive difference in reaction by external people. Clearly, people don't care about Microsoft/ChatGPT lying, don't care about plenty of websites and Youtube videos lying, but think it's the end of the world if Google gets it wrong.

I mean the only SNAFU Google leadership made was not realizing Bard was lying to them (or, I guess, not realizing what the reaction was going to be).

Funny test: I just asked ChatGPT about the exact same thing. Look at it's response:

> Did JWST discover the first exoplanet?

> No, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has not discovered the first exoplanet. The discovery of exoplanets, or planets outside of our solar system, has been ongoing for several decades and numerous exoplanets have been discovered through various methods, such as radial velocity and transit observations. JWST is expected to contribute to the discovery and characterization of exoplanets, but it has not yet made any significant discoveries in this field as it was just launched in 2021.

Great start! Clearly it got updated since the Google presentation ... and then it directly dives into wrong information (JWST was designed to, and has made a great deal of significant exoplanet discoveries. Including a number of exoplanets, discovery of ongoing chemistry in exoplanet atmospheres, discovery of ongoing PHOTOchemistry in another exoplanet's atmosphere, ...)

LLMs lie. That's what they're designed to do! They don't care about truth, in fact I seriously doubt they even know what it is.

I agree that asking LLMs about facts doesn’t make sense. On the other hand, LLMs don’t lie precisely because they don’t have a concept of truth. They are predictive text on steroids.

The point this comparison misses is that ChatGPT wasn’t made by Microsoft, it was OpenAI and although openAI had an investment from Microsoft at the time the big investment and bing announcement came afterwards. So people definitely don’t hold openAI to the same standards as they hold google to, nor should they. ChatGPT is a disruptive new force whereas Bard is google’s desperate attempt to cling to relevance. Totally different.

Bard needs to be much better than ChatGPT for it to have the impact ChatGPT had, because it’s following on and because it comes from a massive tech leviathan that people already have very high expectations of vs a scrappy upstart that had limited public profile beforehand (even though of course everyone in tech knew about dall-E and other stuff openAI had been doing).

Exactly. Last year I switched from Mac to Windows. I was in a hurry to set up something else for work so I didn't download Chrome right away. And when I finally went to install Chrome, I realized that I had used Edge for a while and everything worked fine. So I just stopped using Chrome.

to me killer feature from google is password manager shared between chrome and android.

Don't think transition would be easy..

On iOS, you can autofill passwords from 3rd party browsers (Edge in my case). Is there something similar for Android?

That seems like more of a misfeature of android than an advantage of chrome. On iOS you can autofill things from the builtin password manager to any app (including safari or chrome) and you can seamlessly share the password manager stuff to other apple devices if that’s what you want to do. And if you want to use a 3rd party password manager instead (1password and lastpass at least definitely work this way) you can still share between the built in “fill in any password in any app” thing in the mobile os and your browser extension in your browser of choice on desktop.

ie that killer feature doesn’t even exist in the apple ecosystem because it’s built into the os and works everywhere. I’m not saying that to ignite the apple vs android os war but just to reinforce the point that I don’t think this is a sustainable competitive advantage.

Edge has that too between Edge Windows and Edge Android... I know it because I use it.

Using a third-party password manager like Bitwarden makes it easy to use any number of browsers and still sync to Android with autofill.

If you're not aware, Edge is based on Chrome.

If you're not aware, Chrome != Chromium.

what's so very different between chrome and chromium to make you to use one or another ?

For normal users, no. But for Microsoft, Chromium is under BSD license, which means if Edge vs Chrome war becomes serious, they could just fork Chromium without worry google pulling the rug.

> Back in 2001 it looked like Microsoft’s dual monopolies over web serving with IIS and browsing with IE

Microsoft didn't have search monopoly, mail monopoly, video hosting monopoly and an army of loyal devs who just love every non-standard feature thrown over the wall.

Youtube alone helped kill IE 6: https://www.androidpolice.com/2019/05/02/the-story-of-how-a-...

Microsoft did in fact have massive dominance over mail with exchange and they absolutely had an army of loyal devs developing active server pages, com object embeddings and a bunch of other non-standard features.

Your point is taken and google is of course a monopoly. I’m saying I don’t think browser stickiness will be that persistent. I could of course be wrong.

But all of the google services you mention work jsut fine in competitor browsers for the reason I mentioned (they have to, in order to work correctly on mobile devices etc).

> But all of the google services you mention work jsut fine in competitor browsers for the reason I mentioned

They don't, not really. See this thread by former Mozilla exec on how Google sabotaged Firefox: https://twitter.com/johnath/status/1116871238922776576

Don't forget that even here on HN devs will bemoan the lack of Chrome-only non-standards in other browsers and say those browsers "hold the web back".

The article is a bit lightweight, and the title should be changed to just "Microft vs Google".

But anyhow, a good opportunity to discuss the super interesting situation around the new AI wars. IMHO the most interesting situation in tech since the dotcom area.

Are there any authors out ther (preferable in podcast or other audio form) who discuss the situation in depth?

What I currently wonder is where Apple stands. Every device (heck, every software!) will need a state of the art LLM to interact with its users. Will Apple develop their own, or will they be at the mercy of finding a supplier like Microsoft, OpenAI or Google who lets them use their LLM?

Apple should be able to defer integrating directly with an LLM by treating it like an any other application layer feature until they can develop their own. It should be within their reach to develop one in house or through acquisition.

Exactly. Back when voice assistants were the must-have feature they got Siri through acquisition. They could do a similar thing here (and then a Siri interface to it would be an obvious addition).

You think they will let Bing become the default mode of user interaction with their phones?

Wouldn't that commoditize their product? If you have the same experience (talking to Bing) on any phone, why would people pay for the Apple brand?

It's not like they can buy and integrate another LLM any day just like that. There is nothing yet that has proven to be on par with ChatGPT. Google has something in the pipeline, but nobody has really compared it to ChatGPT yet.

If ChatGPT and (maybe) the new Google thing are the only players in town.. if I would be Apple, I would be worried.

Especially if one of them turns out to be clearly better than the other. Then Apple would depend on licensing that one.

I like where you're going with this.

If Apple stays true-to-form, it seems they will be last-to-market; preferring to take a bird's eye view of the market before they swoop in with a well-designed solution that fits into people's lifestyles more seamlessly.

It might be too early in the AI-generation for this situation to have matured to this point. It's my understanding that Apple is having a private all-hands meeting on AI next week.

https://www.macrumors.com/2023/02/07/apple-ai-summit-in-pers...

Exciting times.

This Google vs MS situation is simply going to heat up the war for the search market share, but Apple and many other companies are fine and will roll out their own LLMs, as they're getting easier to build and train. Enhancing Siri seems like a natural first step.

>Every device (heck, every software!) will need a state of the art LLM to interact with its users.

Hm, didn't they also say that about AR/VR?

Benedict Evans has been doing a great job thinking this through recently. He has a newsletter but the podcast is great too.

https://another-podcast.simplecast.com/

Let’s see who will get default search for iOS, I mean who is wanting it more. Apple is eagerly waiting for that day

Id love to see a privacy-focused search engine from Apple

> [...] people are tweeting that they have installed Bing app or opened Bing.com for the first time...

And many others doing a revisit after X years and surprised with the search results... Anyone else having this impression?

It feels more like Google should be (or was in the early days).

Satya talking about "making them dance" reminds me a little too much of Taika Waititi in Free Guy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zyRtfDzdWM

I have trouble taking him seriously.

I installed the Bing app on my phone today because I want that ChatGPT. I also used Bing.com today since never. Bing gives me more relevant information without even scrolling. Google wastes more space to the right.

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