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Notes -
Posturing about DEI was maybe 1% of the issue. The much more significant one is that the internal culture is something between a university department and a retirement home. To the extent DEI and failing to execute on product are related, it's because of that shared cause.
This is indeed a problem Google has, but it was by no means a cause of them being scooped in this case. The Bard thing they announced has been in the making since before ChatGPT was released, and from what I can say, while it felt somewhat worse than ChatGPT, it would have still blown everyone’s minds, had their launched what they had in December 2023.
The real problem is what the OP said: they were loathe to release it, for couple of independent reasons. They didn’t feel it is good enough, for one thing, AI “””safety””” was definitely a major consideration, and finally they were afraid of it canibalizing their main business.
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