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.
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.
> 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.
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.
That's true but to be honest I didn't really use those features anyway, my chats are just one long stream of replies and responses. If I need to switch to a new topic I make a new chat.
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.
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.
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.
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.
>How do I even know this is a real Google product? Okay I’ll trust the domain
it is not even the expected opal.google.com it is opal.google, you need to be 100% sure beforehand that google has the sole rights to the .google tld (which an average person wouldn't know)
The behavior also seems sketchy with it asking for permission but then rejecting any usage if all of the permissions are not approved (why even ask then, you are google)
after re-finding the link through a confirmed subdomain.google.com site I tried to sign in and got this error
```
An unexpected signin error occured.Error checking geo access
```
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
Google may deliver us the AI future Altman promised. The PM who thinks animated PNGs pass for anything real is not on that path.
That is a bit unexpected to see. Start Up vibes, haha.
Looks like another insane leap forward this.
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?
Why does it need that?
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.
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?
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.
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.
it is not even the expected opal.google.com it is opal.google, you need to be 100% sure beforehand that google has the sole rights to the .google tld (which an average person wouldn't know)
The behavior also seems sketchy with it asking for permission but then rejecting any usage if all of the permissions are not approved (why even ask then, you are google)
after re-finding the link through a confirmed subdomain.google.com site I tried to sign in and got this error
``` An unexpected signin error occured.Error checking geo access ```
so I gave up
- "See and download all your Google Drive files."
I’m surprised to see Google directing people to Discord, do they do that for other products?
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.
I suppose for any in europe waking up like me that I can save you one click and some time.
Google usually kills projects. What's the point in using this?
Do this make an actual production Flutter app or something?