Yes, Google is profitable now. Tremendously so. But they're at risk of losing revenue and ceasing to be profitable as people cease using Google search and switch to asking questions of their AIs. So to retain their position as the place people go first for information, they have to stay ahead of the AI race. Well, they could also just sit back and wait to see if their competitors are overwhelmed by the query volume, but that risks losing traffic and then having to win it back. It's much better to keep it. And Google is better-positioned to win this race than its competitors both because of its existing infrastructure and expertise and because it already has the eyeballs.

In addition, you seem to be assuming that doubling serving capacity means doubling cost. Clearly Google is not planning to increase their annual operating expenses by 1000X. As the summary actually says in the third paragraph, Google is also going to have to improve efficiency to achieve the growth rate, with better models and better hardware. This is what the AI chief is challenging the employees to do; he's not challenging them to write bigger OPEX checks, that's his job.

Because at this rate, by my math, the number of AI cores Google requires will exceed the number of atoms in the visible universe within about 120 years.

If AI has never eaten a grilled cheese sandwich, how would you expect it to know what a protein shake is?

I have the issue where not every mouse click is recognized. On anything. Web page, form, MS Office software, third-party software, Windows itself, text field, you name it. I'll click somewhere, the mouse directly on what needs selected, and nothing happens. I have to click again to do what I want.

I first noticed it in W10 and it has continued to W11.

Quite true. Unfortunately, MS crap is also a really good example for a market failure.

Indeed. Windows and MS Office are a disgrace to the whole human race. No product on that level should ever have long-term economic success.

NT existed when IBM brought out at least two major versions of OS/2 without such features while NT had them, so... No.

Yep. As if denial would make their predicament any less bad.

The always have been. Unfortunately, most of their customers are too. It just has gotten more concrete with LLMs now.

I get the driver behind this. Also trade-secrets, etc.

But is this really a local model and is no data transferred? There is some fuzzy language in "use an on-device AI model to power some of its features". What bout other features? What about if it "powers" the features, bit the data is still sent home? The whole thing looks like a lie by misdirection to me.

Difficult to say. I have no idea how much power an "NPU" draws.

So the only thing that requires actual on-target rational thought? That does not sound good at all.

The "pandemic" showed that the kids could do the schoolwork in 3 hours, so what were they doing the rest of the day?

Learning social skills by having to talk (how horrible!) to other people face-to-face. Interacting with people from different households (the travesty!). Hearing people with opposing points of view (madness!). Getting off their fat ass and walking from class to class (will this never end!). Not looking at their screens (this is the last straw!).

THAT is your criticism? Seems pretty invalid to me, because Windows did not really do any better back when.

Sad but true.