> They did not have to launch something like ChatGPT at full scale.
I think this is really a misunderstanding of the constraints Google has to operate under. They have released plenty of things that "show where "potentially" Google could have taken the technology in time". Not least among them, the original transformer paper that this is all based on... But also, there are features in Docs and elsewhere that are backed by this kind of AI. Have you seen the "complete the sentence" thing in Gmail? How do you think that works?
What they didn't release is a generically useful product that everyone could use. Because if they had, everybody would have used it! Which, as you stipulate, would have been untenable.
But that doesn't mean it wasn't a strategic mistake! But it also wasn't a strategic success... The insightful and maddening thing about "the innovator's dilemma" is that incumbents can make the right decisions and still be disrupted. An incumbent just doesn't have the same options as a new entrant. This is an excellent demonstration of the effect!
I think this is really a misunderstanding of the constraints Google has to operate under. They have released plenty of things that "show where "potentially" Google could have taken the technology in time". Not least among them, the original transformer paper that this is all based on... But also, there are features in Docs and elsewhere that are backed by this kind of AI. Have you seen the "complete the sentence" thing in Gmail? How do you think that works?
What they didn't release is a generically useful product that everyone could use. Because if they had, everybody would have used it! Which, as you stipulate, would have been untenable.
But that doesn't mean it wasn't a strategic mistake! But it also wasn't a strategic success... The insightful and maddening thing about "the innovator's dilemma" is that incumbents can make the right decisions and still be disrupted. An incumbent just doesn't have the same options as a new entrant. This is an excellent demonstration of the effect!