I created the AI suggestion chip at Google, which combined with an internal project called Jane, became the Google Assistant. At the time Sundar was desperate for a narrative to counter Alexa in front of investors and wanted a HUGE I/O announcement, so off we sprinted.
But I went to the executives at the time in charge and said look, this really isn't going to be an assistant if it doesn't have the APIs into services that users need to accomplish actual tasks. Sharing some information and changing the music isn't what a butler does, a butler anticipates your needs and executes on them -- and we can't do that until we have the APIs to anticipate and execute.
I was, of course, ignored, because in my naiveness at the time and I didn't realize it didn't matter what the assistant DID, it mattered what the narrative to investors was about its potential. So 2017 I/O Sundar announces the assistant and it looks great inside Allo, and it's a great demo -- mission accomplished.
Now 6 years+ later, it's a stagnant, overspent team across the space -- because why? Because it can't do anything for users. All these years and billions later it still can't do anything important -- it has no user journey.
And it took me equally as long to realize, that still doesn't matter. FAANG has gotten so large that the stock bump that comes from narrative outpaces actual revenue from working products. It makes for a crazy world... because ironically Google ALSO invented the truly disruptive transformer technology behind the LLM and when we tried to launch that with MINA, Sundar blocked it! Too disruptive, no narrative, too scary...
I don't know the lesson to be learned here, but wow, it just makes me want to give up...