Google is *spending* a lot on AI, but what's not clear is how Google will *make* a lot from AI. Or, you know, even break even. Given, you know, that businesses are seeing *zero* return from AI:
https://www.theregister.com/2026/01/20/pwc_ai_ceo_survey/
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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/21/cod-marxism/#wannamaker-slain
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@pluralistic Surely the Metaverse-connected quantum computing powered self-driving leet-coding AGI humanoid robot will fix this?
Google accepts money from #PrinceBonesaw to end any democracy acting on climate.
Ditto Koch Network.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-05-13/google-backs-saudi-ai-fund-as-trump-mbs-tout-new-investments
Petrostate despots & oil oligarchs are throwing billions at this AI white elephant for non-monetary reasons.
https://www.desmog.com/2025/12/11/the-koch-network-is-pushing-trump-to-accelerate-ai-documents-show/
Election meddling, wage suppression, frauds & scams, and world wars are the main purposes.
@pluralistic
Thump is a degrowth event if you believe PwC: “PwC warns that companies avoiding major investments due to geopolitical uncertainty underperform peers by two percentage points in growth and three points in profit margins. ®” 🙂
@pluralistic given that Google is now a state-acknowledged, legal monopoly, they're basically AT&T in 1975. Their whacky tech projects don't need to make money, they can compensate for any unprofitable expenditure by just raising prices with their monopoly.
@pluralistic this is enraging...
I remember the 1980s
Businesses saw zero return from infotech in offices...
...at the time, it was explained by the Red Queen dilemma.
Man, I hope you have a chance to read Edward Zitron’s article on the topic of the giant black hole AI represents.
But everything is such a blur. You probably even mentioned it.
@pluralistic well, apple intends to use Gemini for Apple Intelligence. so google might earn a buck or two out of it, i guess.
@pluralistic Short term benefit is not the goal here. AI is the FUTURE.
Long term game
@pluralistic Yet another reason to de-googlify. There must be a word... de-google-shite maybe...
I wonder if you've heard if Mamdani has a plan for tackling the Realpage type of problem in NYC?
@pluralistic it's exit optimization.
@pluralistic "From each according to their desperation; to each according to their vulnerability."
That's brilliant.😭
@pluralistic This one is somewhat rational. When you practically own the online ad marketplace for search, you MUST bet heavily on anything that has a plausible road to replacing web search and the attendant ad revenues.
Reis and Trout described the overall strategy for the leader as "Play Defence," and one odf the three ways to defend your turf is to "cover every bet." It's what leaders always do.
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@pluralistic If Google could use it to maintain their status quo position on top of the ad business, it almost doesn't matter what it costs them, because of their gross margins. It's a little bit like Diapers.com all over again.
@pluralistic This one is somewhat rational. When you practically own the online ad marketplace for search, you MUST bet heavily on anything that has a plausible road to replacing web search and the attendant ad revenues.
Reis and Trout described the overall strategy for the leader as "Play Defence," and one odf the three ways to defend your turf is to "cover every bet." It's what leaders always do.
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But maybe they've figured it out. In a recent edition of his BIG newsletter, Matt Stoller pulls on several of the strings that Google's top execs have dangled recently:
https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/will-google-organize-the-worlds-prices
The first string: Google's going to spy on you a *lot* more, for the same reason Microsoft is spying on all of *its* users: because they want to supply their AI "agents" with your personal data:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ANECpNdt-4
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Google's announced that it's going to feed its AI your Gmail messages, as well as the whole deep surveillance dossier the company has assembled based on your use of all the company's products: Youtube, Maps, Photos, and, of course, Search:
https://twitter.com/Google/status/2011473059547390106
The second piece of news is that Apple has partnered with Google to supply Gemini to all iPhone users:
https://twitter.com/NewsFromGoogle/status/2010760810751017017
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Apple already charges Google more than $20b/year not to enter the search market; now they're going to be charging Google billions not to stay out of the AI market, too. Meanwhile, Google will get to spy on Apple customers, just like they spy on their own users. Anyone who says that Apple is ideologically committed to your privacy because they're *real* capitalists is a sucker (or a cultist):
https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/12/youre-holding-it-wrong/#if-dishwashers-were-iphones
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@pluralistic
"now they're going to be charging Google billions not(?) to stay out of the AI market, too."
But the big revelation is how Google is going to make money with AI: they're going to sell AI-based "personalized pricing" to "partners," including "Walmart, Visa, Mastercard, Shopify, Gap, Kroger, Macy’s, Stripe, Home Depot, Lowe's, American Express, etc":
https://blog.google/products/ads-commerce/agentic-commerce-ai-tools-protocol-retailers-platforms/
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@pluralistic It seems like that's something easily done without AI (basic consumer info and statistics is all that's needed). What they're really selling is a black box that can't be easily pointed to for using discriminatory or unethical practices, because 'nobody can know what's going on inside'
Like PAC's, DAF's, and private equity hedge funds, obscuring the identity of who is effing you over is a critical component of "plausible deniability" for anti-democracy billionaires.
Funding a corporate fascist movement becomes "I just fund candidates I like" disingenuousness.
They have developed technology that has a digital dossier on nearly every human being on the planet, yet voters are not permitted to know their identity in turn.
@TechSupport Yup, an accountability sink.
Personalized pricing, of course, is the polite euphemism for *surveillance* pricing, which is when a company spies on you in order to figure out how much they can get away with charging you (or how little they can get away with paying you):
https://pluralistic.net/2025/06/24/price-discrimination/#
It's a weird form of cod-Marxism, whose tenet is "From each according to their desperation; to each according to their vulnerability."
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Surveillance pricing advocates say that this is "efficient" because they can use surveillance data to offer you *discounts*, too - like, say you rock up to an airline ticket counter 45 minutes before takeoff and they can use surveillance data to know that you won't take their last empty seat for $200, but you would fly in it for $100, you could get that seat for cheap.
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