Kent Fitch

GenAI poses a much deeper pickle for Google than I initially assumed... The last few weeks completely echo the time I was at Google in the early 2000's when we were up against Microsoft - except this time Google is on the receiving end. Looking back, we beat Microsoft not because we had better tech, but because we forced them to play on our terms AND at our "clockspeed." Many (myself included) were viewing Google's LLM problem as one of catching up with the technology - specifically OpenAI. It stands to reason that with all its incredible talent, infrastructure, users and data, Google can and will catch up to OpenAI and likely be able to build better technology. But I'm realizing that's likely to be wrong. The debacle last week (and even more, Google's response) puts a point on the real and somewhat unsolvable problem Google faces now. Google isn't going to lose to OpenAI tomorrow - it lost to it over the last ten years. The problem that Google faces today relative to the likes of OpenAI and Perplexity is very similar to what we did to Microsoft 20 years ago. What ChatGPT in particular has made us realize is that many of the tasks that we have so far labeled "search" and where we click on blue links are really tasks of research, analysis and decision-making. We viewed Google as the way to complete these tasks because 20 years ago, Google solved the most important challenge in that workflow, which was to bring all the world's information to within one click in the form of a search engine. Over these 20 years, Google built and has been harvesting one of the most profitable business models in history (remember that we used to talk with similar admiration of the operating system + desktop productivity biz model). The problem now, is that ChatGPT, Perplexity and others have shown us that A LOT of the tasks we used to think of as search engine-based workflows are even better served through an exchange with this new piece of technological magic (similarly to how PageRank made Google Search feel magical 25 years ago). The real problem for Google is one of clockspeed. Google all of a sudden has its ass on fire and is trying to innovate into the future. But, that innovation now has to happen at the heart of its business. OpenAI doesn't care about messing up an ads business model - they can just iterate with a product/quality purity that is impossible for Google to get. Google isn't going to lose to OpenAI in the coming few years. It has lost over the past decade, when it could have evolved/iterated AI into its model at its success-encumbered clockspeed. Now that the game is on, but on a startup clockspeed, there is no chance for Google to catch up and even less win this next cycle. This problem compounds over time, because every single day that goes by, we are all feeding OpenAI our usage patterns, feedback, custom GPTs, integrations, etc... At this stage, there is no way for Google to shift its clockspeed unless it is willing to give the middle finger to the market and its customers for a while and say sorry, the future beckons - feel free to opt out and invest your money elsewhere. The sad part is that Google actually has the wherewithal to do that, but few incumbents are ever able to pull it off. Meta/Zuck have done this several times (mobile transition, VR bet and now AI), so we know it's possible, but it is exceedingly unlikely for that to happen. People often think that's only possible because Mark is the founder, but I think it's because of his posture between risk and opportunity. I'll close this with the phrase that I think captures this posture: Our missed opportunities will cost us more than our mistakes