Category Archives: Google

artificial intelligence, Google, Machine Learning, Travel

[VIC – 136] I don’t want to think like you! 🙅

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Business & Money

I’ve been thinking a lot about risk and decision making.
Here’s a question: how much money (or something else you value) would you have to be offered to play Russian roulette? Would you take on a 16% chance of blowing your brains out for $50,000? $50 million? $5 billion?
Me personally, I would never play. For the simple reason that I might blow my brains out. There’s no coming back from that. So it would be a terrible decision with far too much risk.
What I’m trying to get at is that there is no reversing course with certain decisions. For example, if you decide to take on significant venture capital dollars, there’s no going back from that (in most cases). You are making a decision to be one type of company vs another.
One decision that is perhaps somewhat less extreme has to do with portfolio allocation. How much money should be held in cash vs short-term liquid investments (stocks, treasuries) vs longer-term illiquid assets (real estate, private company stock options)?
Or you could even zoom in on just stocks and try to decide, of your positions, what percentage should be value vs growth vs income?
Based on conversations I have, I think my appetite for risk is a good bit above the average. But given where we are in the current cycle, I’ve been dialing things back a bit.

Human Progress

Have any of you noticed the new predictive typing feature in Gmail? While you’re typing, Google will try to complete your phrases and sometimes even complete sentences. It’s yet another example of how AI and machine learning are deeply woven into everything Google is and does.
But I wonder what data is being used to train these predictive typing algorithms. Are they looking at just MY email history and all the messages I have sent to build a profile of what I might be about to write? Or, are they looking at messages that everyone has sent to make the best guess at what I might type next?
It’s a nuanced difference but I think an important one.
If they’re just using my data, I’m perfectly ok with that as it will likely help me write messages more quickly and be more productive.
But in the second scenario, they would be pushing everyone toward the mean. So not helping me complete my own thoughts, but more so helping me to think like you. To me, that would be downright frightening!
Machine learning will continue to seep into every crevasse of our lives and I have no doubt that we’ll have a tough time navigating these waters.

Philosophy

I wanted to share a couple observations from the week.
It’s faster to delete an email than to unsubscribe. But unsubscribing is looking out for your future self. 8 extra seconds now so I don’t have to delete a similar message in the future.
Throwing away boxes is faster when you don’t break them down. But breaking them down saves space in the trash room, and also makes it far easier for the building staff and employees of waste disposal companies. And those guys work hard for meager pay.
Doing the right thing at any given moment is sometimes inconvenient. But it remains the right thing. Plus, you get a little dopamine hit along the way from your awareness of doing it.

My Latest Discovery

I was traveling last week when I realized that my Priority Pass (gives you access to airport lounges) card was expired. Luckily, a few google searches revealed that there’s a priority pass mobile app. So as long as you know your membership number, you can download the app, log in, and simply scan the mobile barcode to gain access. Also, it has search functionality built in so that you can find out which lounges are available in which airports. Nice!
Antitrust, Food, Google

[VIC – 127] 🔎 🧠 ⚖️ 🍣

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Business & Money

Google was recently fined $5B by the European Commission for antitrust violations. I find this ruling interesting for a number of reasons, but let’s start by listing out specifically what they were found guilty of:

  1. Illegally bundling Google Search, Chrome, and the Google Play Store. To get the Play Store, and a full suite of Google apps by extension, Android OEMs (original equipment manufacturers aka phone makers) were forced to preinstall Google Search and Chrome, and also make them available within one screen of the home screen.
  2. Illegally paying OEMs for search exclusivity – they had to preinstall Google Search (and no competing search apps) on every Android they made.
  3. Illegally barring OEMs from selling Android devices that ran Android forks (basically negating the open source nature of the operating system).

Does this ruling remind you of anything? For me, it harkens back to the days when Microsoft was facing its own antitrust allegations. Similar to Google, Microsoft was under fire for bundling Internet Explorer to the Windows operating system, effectively killing off competition from other browsers, namely Netscape and Opera. In the days when application downloads were slow and users often had to buy software in retails stores, it was an insurmountable advantage that Microsoft could bundle its browser with the operating system that was preinstalled by PC OEMs.

But the interesting thing here is that Microsoft basically got a slap on the wrist. They settled the case with the DOJ without having to unbundle anything or change their go to market strategy.

By contrast, Google has to:

  1. Pay $5B in fines,
  2. Unbundle Google Play from Search and Chrome,
  3. Stop paying OEMs for Search exclusivity, and
  4. Stop barring Android OEMs from running Android forks.

That’s a massive difference in outcomes. I think that difference partially stems from the business model. Microsoft charged a per-device license fee to OEMs that wanted to pre-install Windows. Android is free to smartphone OEMs. Actually, it’s less than free. OEMs were paid for Search exclusivity and Google also shares a portion of search revenues. One could easily make an argument that that describes predatory pricing.

Perhaps most interesting, though, will be what happens next. Will this result be enough to shake Google’s competitive edge? I’m not so sure. And how will this affect Google investors? AT&T is up over 500% since it was broken up in the early 80s. Microsoft is up over 300% since it’s tussle with Uncle Sam in the early 2000s. In other words, I don’t think there’s much to worry about for long-term investors. Regulation isn’t what usually unseats dominant players. More often it is a new paradigm (e.g. mainframes > PCs > web > cloud > mobile).

Human Progress

Modern humans have been around for a couple hundred thousand years. Interestingly enough, our structure and physiology haven’t changed much during that time. However, our way of life has changed drastically. We’ve been hunter-gatherers, agriculturalist, and industrialists. We’ve covered all corners of the globe and subscribe to many different cultures and ideologies.

I don’t write this to kick off some long-winded history lesson, but rather because I find neuroplasticity to be fascinating. We are all basically the same, but each of our brains has the ability to undergo rapid changes based on our environment.

I remember reading a while back about how a taxi driver in London will exhibit an enlarged hippocampus after many years on the job.

Then you have the Moken, a seafaring people off the coast of Myanmar and Thailand who exhibit incredible underwater vision due to the amount of time they spend diving for shellfish and other food items.

I find myself thinking about this do to the moment we currently occupy. At a crucial juncture in our lives (our teens), my generation (dare I say “millennials”) experienced a shift to a world dominated by algorithms. Much of the news and information that many people consume is algorithmically curated to serve up things that confirm preexisting beliefs (or stoke anger and mistrust toward the “other”).

So I wonder how long someone needs to be exposed to this type of information before the brain rewires itself so that this is the new normal? And when that happens, how much harder will it be to reverse course?

Philosophy

What’s more, there’s a paradox at play here.

Many of the platforms that rely on algorithmically curated information are based around the premise of networks. In fact, it might be said that our ability to collectively organize is one of our greatest assets. Quotes abound about the value of working together and standing on the shoulders of giants.

However, when we organize, we are also at our most vulnerable. Collective biases, social pressure, and groupthink are nefarious forces. From these you get mob mentality and pluralistic ignorance. You get small transgressions that snowball into fascism.

Personally, I’m not sure how to reconcile the two.

My Latest Discovery

Last week I had an incredible omakase sushi dinner at Sushi by Bou at the Jue Lan Club. But neither the venue nor the food is the discovery, though both were incredible. Instead, the bartender was curating the evening with the “Sushi Flow 🐠🍣🦐” playlist on Spotify. It’s a must listen!!