The government comes for Google
Google breakup? Grok goes wild. Waymo leads the way.
A US judge ruled that Google had a monopoly in online search, and used it’s position to crush the competition. Google will appeal, of course, but if it’s upheld it could lead to Google being broken up. The government would have to figure out what parts of the empire to split up - the obvious targets are sites like Youtube that are significant revenue generators (over $8Bn in Q2) and could therefore stand as independent businesses. Less extreme outcomes include Google being forced to share it’s data, or to stop demanding exclusivity in contracts. In 2022, Google paid Apple $22bn to be the default search engine for Safari.
This will be a slow burner - if the regulators press ahead, there will be a long legal battle. The last time a US regulator successfully broke up a big co was AT&T in 1984 and it took a decade.
Don't sell your Google shares just yet.
Elon released Grok 2, it's second iteration of a ChatGPT competitor. Some people were upset that it didn't have enough restrictions and you could generate mean, a bit racist, or just out of control images. I particularly enjoyed George Washington flying a spaceship, and Baroque Obama. The idea that we need guardrails for AI image generators is interesting. I understand people are worried about child porn or racist images being created, but we don't have guardrails on Photoshop? Do we really need guardrails on AI image generators?
Anyway, this is not just a side project for Elon, as xAI raised a fresh $6bn of Series B funding back in May. Grok is supposed to be “maximum truth seeking” in contrast to the “woke” Chatgpt.
Waymo is now doing over 100,000 rides a week across SF, LA and Phoenix. If you are in one of those cities you should try it if you haven't already - you can download the app today and go for a ride. There are still people even in SF who will look surprised to see you pull up in a driverless car. And yes, it is a surreal experience to start with, sitting in the front next to an empty chair, the wheel turning all by itself. But it's also amazing how fast you adjust. Like after my 5th ride or so, it felt as normal as taking an Uber. "What of course the car drives itself, how else would it work?". And it is a 10x better experience. One stat, there were 3000 sexual assaults in Ubers between 2017 and 2018 in the US alone. Statistically, the chance of you being sexually assaulted by a Waymo car is 0%.
Waymo could be a $1tn company in future, but it’s currently owned by Google. So to bring this edition full circle, despite the looming antitrust, Google may have yet another massive win on it's hands.