I just given you the deep learning and transformer benefits.
There's a reason why the darling of AI Renaissance namely transformer was not invented at MIT, Stanford or Berkeley.
PageRank
Gmail
Maps
MapReduce
Chrome
Protocol Buffers
Go
MapReduce would be invented anyway (I implemented it from scratch before learning of it’s existence).
Chrome is just a slightly upgraded Firefox (and novadays Safari is just as good if not better with ai)
PageRank was what gave Google monopoly, it’s not a result of monopoly.
Go - I can give you that. ProtoBuf - not my field, but isn’t it just a format that someone else would develop to fill a niche? (unlike say mp3 that had new compression algorithms baked in)
Maps - I can give you that. Some people might argue that it was an acquisition, but without Google’s muscle, Street View would not be feasible.
Wat. It's like saying that an apple is a slightly upgraded orange. I would understand if you mentioned KHTML and Safari as relatives, but "slightly upgraded" does not fit anyway.
> PageRank was what gave Google monopoly
I don't think so. PageRank has been successfully implemented elsewhere, and outmatched. What helped Google build a monopoly was the first mover advantage, the network effects, and the incessant streams of money from AdWords (invented by Google), DoubleClick (acquired) and a bunch of other advertisement tools.
> Maps - I can give you that.
Don't :) Google Maps is an acquisition from 20 years ago. (As is Android, AdSense, and many other core flagship products of the Google brand.)
If you want a relatively recent, successful Google service for general public, it's Google Photos.
I seem to recall that followed the acquisition of Picasa.
This is comical. When Google acquired Android, it was nothing more than a 3000 line JavaScript demo. The Android OS was created entirely at Google.
Not sure about your experience, but I used to subscribe to a lot of mailing lists just so that I can search for mailing list content using gmail, because the search function implemented by those mailing lists were generally worse.
Technically, but it's morphed so much that it doesn't even resemble its former self. I remember when Google Maps first came out and showed AJAX technology, so obviously superior to the competitors at the time like MapQuest. However, these days Google Maps is really more of a business directory with navigation, and it wasn't like that in the early days: you needed an address to navigate to.
Typical HN comment writing off significant thoughtfulness as "not an innovation" lol
- AlphaFold (just won a Nobel prize)
- Transformers (the "T" in GPT)
- Waymo (autonomous vehicles)
- Sycamore (quantum computing)
These are just a few off the top of my head.
If your idea of innovation is a better RSS reader, then sure, I agree with you. But in terms of things that push the forefront of technology, I have a hard time thinking of another company with greater impact in recent years.
You really have to think about exactly how our modern markets work and why buyouts are such dominant strategy. It's only sometimes about taking what you buy then using it, it's mostly about taking what you buy to stifle competition these days.
Look at twitter and Vine, twitter bought then shut down vine as part of a standard operating procedure just to stifle competition, and they had so little interest in capitalizing on what they bought that it left a market gap so wide TikTok filled it instead. But usually these practices do not leave such big market gaps, usually they simply shut down competition successfully and the buyer wins. Then in many cases if the company owners refuse to be bought out, extreme anti-competitive practices begin to destroy their business, which will not be punished until long after the victims get shut down. So owners need to choose between a huge pay out, or their company getting destroyed. Owners tend to choose the former.