TLDR: Google is finding its sweet spot for the AI era
By stratechery
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“ It seemed at [launch] that Google planned to use the Google Assistant as a differentiator to drive Pixel sales; a few months later, the company … admitted to what was the better course of action: making Assistant a part of Android.
#ubiquity #exclusivity
“ [Sundar Pichai, Google/CEO:] We’re excited by the shift from a mobile-first to an AI-first world … We’ve been working on software and hardware together because that’s the best way to drive the shifts in computing forward. But we think we’re in the unique moment in time where we think we can bring the unique combination of AI, and software, and hardware … because we’re at the forefront of driving the shifts to AI.
“ artificial intelligence, at least its machine learning manifestation, fits perfectly in Google’s wheelhouse of acting on massive amounts of data. Simply being good at something, though, is not enough: you need the market and value chain fit as well.
“ this is why startups often beat incumbents: incumbents have resource advantages, but everything about their company is focused on a solved problem — the one that propelled them from startup to incumbent in the first place. Startups, on the other hand, have the luxury of conforming every aspect of their company around the problem to be solved, perfectly serving the market and capturing the point of integration/differentiation in the value chain.
“ The idea is straight from Apple’s playbook: monetize software by selling integrated hardware at a healthy margin (products competing directly with Amazon excepted).
“ The breadth is also necessary: for Assistant to reach its potential it is necessary that it be available everywhere, and everywhere happens to hit on both Apple and Amazon’s achilles heel — Apple, the devotion to the phone as the center of everything, and Amazon’s lack of a phone platform of its own.
“ the success of AI as a differentiator, though, depends on whether or not there is a market for it. That remain to be seen.
“ I wouldn’t be surprised if Google announced dedicated retail stores sooner rather than later.
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