Enshittification in Microsoft and Google

[dada_dave]

Microsoft's redesign of the Windows 11's Weather app shoves in yet more ads

How bad it's gotten and what you can do about it.

www.tomshardware.com

While Google was always ad-based, we've all seen them get progressively worse as well over the past decade and accelerating in the last few years.

For all the (sometimes quite legitimate) griping about Apple and their business practices ... at least they don't do this? This is just so tawdry ... Of course there may come a time when Apple too will start doing things like this and as I alluded to Apple has its own brand of anti-social behavior, but, for now, it almost feels like MS and Google are Apple's greatest source of advertisement. And while it will always be the "year of the Linux desktop", it really does seem like MS and Google do shit like this because they feel untouchable. And maybe they are, for now.

 

[Yoused]

... at least they don't do this?

They kinda do, though, with their iAd stuff and high rent for the App store that forces devs to ad up or get out.

 

[dada_dave]

They kinda do, though, with their iAd stuff and high rent for the App store that forces devs to ad up or get out.

Nah not even remotely the same. iAD is for apps that are ad-based and you can download those for any platform under the sun and always have been able to and I don't think the second part tracks. Apple has the same "rent" in comparison to most App stores and there's nothing that forces ads as a source of revenue. While it's been awhile since I've looked, my memory is that most app developers in fact shy away from ads on Apple stores if possible as one of the least efficient way to make money on the platform (and iADs in particular were not very good, though my memory of that was from a very long time ago). Micro-transactions can be their own bag of shit, but the equivalent to the stuff in the links would be Apple doing micro-transactions or ads in the operating system itself or obfuscating ads with what you actually want in the operating system - note in the original post I distinguished between Google search with ads originally and Google search with ads now and I'd add that the Microsoft store vs Microsoft baking the ads into the operating system are similarly different.

That's a very important distinction. Again, Apple has its problems and I'm not saying that they're paragons of virtue, even in this space they ain't, and one day they may get this bad too. But while I have the option to buy or download ad-supported apps regardless of OS - the OS itself should not be serving me ads in the Start Menu or builtin Microsoft Weather app, especially if like for MS I'm paying (or the OEM did) rather a lot of money for the license ... or in the case of Apple paying a lot for the device the OS runs on.

 

[Yoused]

I have this weird notion in my head that somebody is going to turn the computer inside out and put the ML/LLM part in the kernel. Not part of the kernel, the kernel. Then the idea of OS will become very different. The intelligent part will control the machine and run jobs on the CPU cores as needed, and the entire software industry will collapse because everyone will be able to teach their machine about what they want to do and it will construct the tools using its libraries and compilers and design patterns.

The open source version will work as well as any commercial product and easily adjust to each user. Chips will be designed that embed most of the primary ML functions in logic, so it will be energy efficient. And because the code is composed internally according to strict standards, page-mapped memory protection will not be needed, so the CPU-bounds processes will be somewhat faster and more efficient.

Or, the whole computer industry will collapse of its own weight before we can get there.

 

[casperes1996]

I have this weird notion in my head that somebody is going to turn the computer inside out and put the ML/LLM part in the kernel. Not part of the kernel, the kernel. Then the idea of OS will become very different. The intelligent part will control the machine and run jobs on the CPU cores as needed, and the entire software industry will collapse because everyone will be able to teach their machine about what they want to do and it will construct the tools using its libraries and compilers and design patterns.

The open source version will work as well as any commercial product and easily adjust to each user. Chips will be designed that embed most of the primary ML functions in logic, so it will be energy efficient. And because the code is composed internally according to strict standards, page-mapped memory protection will not be needed, so the CPU-bounds processes will be somewhat faster and more efficient.

Or, the whole computer industry will collapse of its own weight before we can get there.

I’ll buy you a drink if that happens within the next fifty years

*with any level of success

 

[Nycturne]

The open source version will work as well as any commercial product and easily adjust to each user. Chips will be designed that embed most of the primary ML functions in logic, so it will be energy efficient. And because the code is composed internally according to strict standards, page-mapped memory protection will not be needed, so the CPU-bounds processes will be somewhat faster and more efficient.

Ah yes, the notoriously strict standards of the tech industry, mixed with the notorious precision of an LLM. I may as well retire right now.

I'd argue that recent events are demonstrating that removing things that help act as a security boundary would be a horrible place to go, and that LLM code generation is making the security situation worse rather than better at the moment. As someone who is trying to oversee security for my little neck of the woods, I'm already feeling like I'm talking to brick walls on this front.

Or, the whole computer industry will collapse of its own weight before we can get there.

I'll be honest, I think the industry is "too big to fail". It's part of everything now, so a collapse would be catastrophic compared to what I think is actually on the 10-year horizon.

I think I've stated that the AI gold rush will end one of two ways: The tech succeeds and it starts displacing numerous jobs, leading to a possible economic recession due to the ripple effects. The tech is revealed to be an investment bubble, it bursts, leading to massive layoffs and a possible economic recession due to the ripple effects.

 

[dada_dave]

I'll be honest, I think the industry is "too big to fail". It's part of everything now, so a collapse would be catastrophic compared to what I think is actually on the 10-year horizon.

I think I've stated that the AI gold rush will end one of two ways: The tech succeeds and it starts displacing numerous jobs, leading to a possible economic recession due to the ripple effects. The tech is revealed to be an investment bubble, it bursts, leading to massive layoffs and a possible economic recession due to the ripple effects.

Both? It’s not an either/or really. For instance, it can be a bubble where investment is far outstripping the value of AI right now and when the bubble bursts we get a mini-recession but there is also real growth and value being generated that will also have economic impact and cause another mini-recession, coupled with/tempered by eventual growth as AI increases productivity. This would be similar to the dot com bubble.

Also while this discussion is starting to do a hard veer into the AI thread's territory rather than the original conceit of this thread, I would add that a lot of the AI investment is also in chip companies, again many of them may fail or be overvalued (especially those that target specific models and guess wrong), but it's generally better to invest in shovel-makers than in gold diggers. So maybe the bubble will be less bad? Not sure.