Can’t speak for anyone else, but I hope for the entire companies demise, as I do for any ad tech surveillance operation.

Agreed. And if I spot a way to kick it on its way down, I will.

i don't understand the hate towards ad tech that learns about you. the alternative is ads that are completely irrelevant to you, ads that treat you like some anonymous user in which case you'll get endlessly irrelevant ads for mainstream stuff like ICE cars, plastic garbage, big screen tvs, fast food, etc.

Surely you can think of some more alternatives.

If the alternatives had broader appeal, they would be more popular. However at this juncture, they don't. Ads mean free stuff. Ad blockers mean better free stuff. Academic arguments about externalities will be brushed away because "free stuff".

What you're looking for is a regulatory solution. E.g. people will not individually choose a lower carbon lifestyle in sufficient numbers to reverse/slow climate change. You need to actively discourage it by policy.

I find the mainstream ads far more offensive than the ones that are accurately targeted towards me.

Hint: the alternatives don't involve ads.

YouTube has a paid option and even here on HN, the mecca of anti-ad sentiment, people openly admit to using ad blockers there instead even though that means the creators they're watching do not get paid.

Hint: People are cheap. They want free stuff, not paid alternatives.

I agree it's challenging, but that doesn't stop me wishing for a world where stalking everybody on the planet, publishing outrage-bait, and spreading conspiracy theories is not a massively profitable business.

The alternative sounds great. It's not like all advertising is targeted now, anyway.

I'd rather have the irrelevant ads. Believe it or not, I just ignore them anyway.

> the alternative is ads that are completely irrelevant to you, ads that treat you like some anonymous user in which case you'll get endlessly irrelevant ads for mainstream stuff like ICE cars, plastic garbage, big screen tvs, fast food, etc

Genuinely curious: Do you feel that adverts you recieve are well tailored towards things you want to buy? Literally all of things you listed are regularly advertised to me by google on youtube & adwords, including car parts and tyres (I dont have a car), things for babies and young children (I dont have children), even fast food services that are not available in my country. Google also consistently and regularly serves me content in languages it knows I do not speak, and then google chrome helpfully offers to translate them

That happens to me all the time. The vast majority 99%+ of the stuff that is advertised to me misses the mark completely. It's stuff I don't want or need. they give me ads for newbie programming after I've been a SE for 20+ years -> that's especially ridiculous since i use gmail all the time. I can only imagine that none of information they have on me can be used in any way shape or form.

I just figured if they knew me better perhaps and were able to use that information, just maybe they could offer me something I might actually be interested in.

I just hope my Google account doesn't get banned for violating the AI's safety guidelines.

Nah, it’s just low expectations. It generally feels like they have been asleep when it comes to productising AI. Or maybe they want to pull a Kodak… who knows.

Basically I don’t expect them to actually release anything exciting, and if they do then I expect it to be neglected and shut down shortly afterwards.

I think people are tired of Google and want something else.

I don't hope that it fails. I just don't trust them with new services because they have a bad history of killing everything that's not generating billions. So probably I won't even bother using it, unless it blows ChatGPT out of the water.

I, too, am very skeptical investing into Google's new products these days for the same reasons.

That being said: I'd use Bard if it was cheaper or better than ChatGPT for one simple reason: These "Chat AI" services are transient. Meaning I ask a question, I get an immediate answer, and there is no long term saved state. So if I used Bard, then Bard got KilledByGoogle, I'm not "out" any built up capital (time, training, cost, etc).

But from everything I've read Google is panicking and embarrassing themselves. Half-baked press conferences, half-baked blog posts, half-baked product launches. Nobody who has got into Bard is saying it is a ChatGPT competitor, and even Google's own launch blog they admit it has limits on two-way conversation depth (unlike ChatGPT).

Google's problem is not the technology, it's the business model. If they integrate something like ChatGPT in search it could kill their entire AdWords business. How many ads can you stuff in an answer? And how do you decide which ad goes to a subjective question? Until they figure out how to monetize an embedded AI in a big way there's no chance they'll produce something useful.

Who doesn't enjoy a bit of schadenfreude when it comes to lazy, bloated, arrogant multibillion dollar corporations like Google?

Relative to what? Other corporations that are comparably successful? Some ideal notion of what a corporation can be?

Yes, there are massive problems with most large corporations: being more powerful than most countries, having legal "personhood" in the United States at least, a generally unchecked tendency to acquire competitors, poor unionization, outsized influence via lobbying, poor privacy protections, tax avoidance, gaming local and even national jurisdictions for tax benefits, profiting off long-term national R&D without meaningfully giving back to educational or equity initiatives.

I'm not "blaming" them to be clear. These are systemic problems. The world will have to change a lot of fundamental rules and incentives if we want to see significant change. I'm not holding my breath.

It isn't all bad. I just keep telling myself that.

Feels like a reddit thread, small minded and bitter.