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Steven Liss's avatar

That "$20B to replicate Google" estimate doesn't hold up in the current LLM regime. OpenAI, Perplexity, (and to a lesser extent, Exa) have shown you can reach or even exceed parity in user experience for many searches. Limit the operational focus to US users (~20% of world internet traffic, but the majority of search advertising value) and you cut your opex massively. If something brings down Google I suspect it won't be government action or AI competition, but rather the cultural rot that's set in after decades of dominance due to monopoly power, not competitive excellence.

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Dave Friedman's avatar

It’s also worth considering that a Trump DoJ may be less interested in pursuing remedies instigated under the Biden admin. There are a lot of unknowns about the ultimate impact of this decision at present.

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