Labs.Google

https://labs.google/

by agnosticmantis • 3 years ago

130 105 3 years ago

labs.google

totetsu• 3 years ago

Neat design. How can I copy it?

mkoryak• 3 years ago

File -> save as webpage

sleey2• 3 years ago

Ah as usual, only available in the U.S

vongomben• 3 years ago

I can access it from Italy

sleey2• 3 years ago

I mean the tools like notebookLM and MusicFX

tasoeur• 3 years ago

I got an invite to their discord but then it got denied from discord itself ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

throwaway4good3• 3 years ago

Great graphical design and funky understated css - google has come a long way.

throwaway4good3• 3 years ago

I am curious about what sort of web frameworks and other technologies they are using?

curious_9• 3 years ago

Most probably Angular

bboygravity2• 3 years ago

/s ??

TheEdonian• 3 years ago

I’ve seen google launch this same idea a few times now, probably will end the same way as the previous tries.

firecall• 3 years ago

So it looks cool...

But I almost have no idea what it is.

I say almost, because I guess it's something to do with AI.

I'm at that life stage where I do not want to discuss on Discord how AI can become a creative thought partner.

Honestly Google, just get over yourself already! ;-)

gniv• 3 years ago

Yeah, the design is a bit too cutesy. An earlier version is clearer: https://web.archive.org/web/20230727005101/https://labs.goog...

jfoster• 3 years ago

I think they have repurposed the URL, though.

Best I can tell, it's now meant to be a page where people can go to see AI projects (not necessarily by Google) that are being hosted using Google's infrastructure.

bezier-curve• 3 years ago

It almost strikes me as the design equivalent of the "how do you do fellow kids?" meme. Like, it's in your face trying to engage with craft-like design but fails to make a point because google is pretentious and drinking their own Kool aid.

visarga5• 3 years ago

I'm at that life stage where I do not want to discuss on Discord how AI can become a creative thought partner.

But where else would you discuss it, on Twitter or H.N.? Clearly not in the elevator.

happytiger5• 3 years ago

The website fails to explain what it is and why users should care. It’s not a very good home page in that respect, as the point of a home page for a business is to engage in seconds by answering those two questions.

It’s similarity and lack of structural UX makes it so that besides loudly being AI, AI, AI!!! it is confusingly similar to https://x.company/

Google needs to establish a leadership position in the AI market and make it clear that they are deeply focused and executing better than competitors. This isn’t helping.

dleeftink• 3 years ago

needs to establish a leadership position

Why is this needed?

Fuzzwah2• 3 years ago

Share prices, of course.

happytiger5• 3 years ago

Let’s see. OpenAI acquired 100 million users and was the fasted growth in history, partners with Google’s biggest competitor Microsoft. They have since integrated ChatGPT into Bing and announced a raft of new products. Amazon has launched their competitors as well. Tons of other companies are throwing their hats in the ring too, but their big cloud competitors (the platform of platforms) are already launched and looking competitive.

Google, on the other hand, was late to introduce a product competitive to ChatGPT and mostly fumbled the announcement when it did.

Google is coming from behind in their execution after being outmaneuvered by OpenAI and a very weak early showing with Bard.

Google didn’t deliver a chat-powered generative A.I. product despite working on one for years. They just didn’t have the risk taking culture where releasing it into the wild imperfectly was something Google was willing to do. This was a profound misstep, and dethroned them. At one point they had the largest and most talented assembly of AI researchers in the world and virtually unlimited research budgets, but they didn’t ship.

This puts them in a position where they have something to prove. To investors. To developers. To cloud customers. And to themselves.

Their entire business is about being a trusted place for people to find information, and they didn’t feel they were ready, and then they missed the boat.

It's the reason, when it finally rushed a product out the door, *they called it Bard.* They didn't call it Google AI.

They talked AI up to the point of ridiculousness at I/O. Two words they drove home in every talk: responsible and helpful.

This is why they need to establish a position of leadership and avoid weak delivery like this labs launch (maybe it’s not a launch, maybe it just needs to be relaunched — I’m making an assumption). Because it’s not super on point in delivering their brand promise for AI or even explaining what it is in a clear way.

People can’t even tell what it is, not a gigantic corporate delivering early stage experiments at the cutting edge of helpful and responsible AI.

I’m open to being wrong about any of this, but this is how I generally see it.

pverghese• 3 years ago

This has been their website for experiments for years. Its for people to try out and not for the entire world to use as yet. It has had a lot of fun stuff over the years

happytiger5• 3 years ago

Ok. Well Google can't just pretend that generative A.I. isn't having a massive moment, and the company has a lot more riding on the future of this particular technology than just an "experiment." They’ve had a weak sauce launch, and while it’s nice there’s a website to launch experiments I don’t think it’s helpful with audience perception of the company.

Maybe it’s time to up their game.

tdeck3• 3 years ago

Is that true? I distinctly remember Google Labs being shut down during Larry's Google+ disaster years, and this article seems to bear it out: https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/google-shuts-down-google-la...

(This is also my personal nomination for the oft-asked "when did Google stop being unique and cool?").

hashtag-til3• 3 years ago

What is going on with this page? the design is unnecessarily overwhelming.

Why don't they just to an old style university website, pure-HTML with a clear list of their published work, etc.

Why does everything from Google these days need to be a childish design, crazy stuff moving around and unclear objective?

I kept it open for a minute or so, and that's it for me.

beretguy• 3 years ago

Reminded me of this:

https://yewtu.be/watch?v=pq7NLMwynYg

rpdillon• 3 years ago

Completely agree. Miss when serious folks had plain pages focused on substance, like DJB's or Fabrice Bellard's pages.

https://cr.yp.to/djb.html

https://www.bellard.org/

visarga5• 3 years ago

When OpenAI or other companies demo a model they put more effort into it. Google doesn't care about getting people to admire their work.

xyzzy_plugh• 3 years ago

Is that a fucking Discord link on a Google property? Wild times.

Looks like we're starting to see the fruits of Google's labor since turning the dial to eleven after OpenAI stole the show. I have no horse in this race but I'm guessing within a year Google has market share (mind share?) parity with OpenAI.

nefitty2• 3 years ago

There's an official active Discord server for Bard that some users get invited to in waves.

Fuzzwah2• 3 years ago

Gosh I hope that your use of "waves" here is on purpose. Chef's kiss.

js4ever• 3 years ago

On my side I expect a shutdown announcement in 12-18 months. It's not ever a meme at this point but reality.

nefitty2• 3 years ago

re: discord

"Invites are currently paused for this server. Please try again later."

DeathArrow• 3 years ago

Google is having the same degree of success in AI, they had developing chat apps.

The only successful product developed internally at Google is the search engine.

dilyevsky2• 3 years ago

Chrome, gmail and android notwithstanding

aphroz• 3 years ago

Android was an acquisition

rfoo• 3 years ago

Good one.

- Why is Bard failing? - It's a chat app from Google.

bboygravity2• 3 years ago

I wonder when Google Chat is going to be axed in favor of something even worse yet again.

inferiorhuman• 3 years ago

I wonder what's going to get happen when they get bored with RCS.

tech234a• 3 years ago

Fun Design. Reminds me of Google Gravity: https://mrdoob.com/projects/chromeexperiments/google-gravity...

tribby• 3 years ago

the site needs a big novelty cursor to complete the look

GoatOfAplomb• 3 years ago

My first thought was a blink tag but I think we're on the same page.

jbverschoor• 3 years ago

Application error: a client-side exception has occurred (see the browser console for more information).

iPhone, lockdown mode

captn3m0• 3 years ago

Same here

gammalost• 3 years ago

What happened with clearly explaining something in text. I immediately feel overwhelmed with all the links, a video playing, some song in the corner (?) a discord server and an "I'm feeling lucky button".

OvbiousError• 3 years ago

We head to wait a long time but web technology is now finally able to recreate the flash websites of yore without using flash.

mlry• 3 years ago

Yes, exactly. My immediate reaction was coming back here to see some filters applied whether it's worth the effort.

IceHegel• 3 years ago

The design is so over the top and busy I'm not even sure what I'm looking at. Why can't google just release something like a normal company? If it's great they won't need graphic design bloat on the landing site.

romanovcode• 3 years ago

"Say what you see". What is this? Is this some kind of reverse-image generation to basically train google be better in the future at recognizing images? What the hell is this suppose to be?

quickthrower2• 3 years ago

These look like weekend OpenAI wrapper projects.

j-a-a-p• 3 years ago

Exactly my thought. If this is a peek to the innovative power of Google.

aubanel• 3 years ago

This "Journalist X LLMs" video gives the same corporate, polished vibe as the Gemini announcement... Google's AI communication really feels like any "snake oil consulting group" at this point. I really hope they get their stuff together and start putting engineers & researchers in charge again.

echelon• 3 years ago

I hope they become as irrelevant as IBM. The business world should be subject to regular wildfires. Old, calcified overgrowth cleared. New companies and innovators to arise from the ashes.

I hope it happens to them all. Companies shouldn't last forever.

nerbert• 3 years ago

What you’re seeing is exactly that, engineers and researchers in charge, trying to communicate by emulating stuff they don’t understand. Product people need to be involved to find a market fit for all this great tech.

tiku• 3 years ago

Can't seem to join some of the tools from across the pond. What is this sadness.

tauntz• 3 years ago

This tool isn’t available in your country yet

Sigh, Google, you never fail to disappoint :(

jimmyed• 3 years ago

Choose your favorite URL scheme and stick with it Google! Just from this website:

- textfx.withgoogle.com

- notebooklm.google

- artsandculture.google.com/experiment/poem-postcards

sebastianconcpt• 3 years ago

I was curious on the subject but when I clicked I got thrown back all that brutalist design in my face that I've immediately closed that browser tab.

Did that happen to anyone else here?

svdr• 3 years ago

I'm using Chrome on a fast mac but the animations still had hickups.

paganel• 3 years ago

Probably because I'm not in their target (I'm a male approaching the mid-40s) but what's with this type of design?

Meaning stuff that floats, epilepsy-inducing strong color contrasts, "brutalist" fonts, big photos of people's faces instead of text that should explain what the "labs" part is all about. I closed the tab after a quick scroll-down, hoping that at some point some fixed and detailed text section would show up, it didn't.

politelemon• 3 years ago

I feel many of you are missing the purpose and intent of this site, so I will explain.

It's to showcase the various ways in which you can reliably be informed that an experiment or feature is not available in your country.

hashtag-til3• 3 years ago

I'm pretty sure there is a team of 50 at Google taking care of this critical service 24/7. /s

stranded22• 3 years ago

Just use Mullvad vpn into USA and gain access.

wslh2• 3 years ago

I feel it was unnecesary to create this because https://research.google/ and https://ai.google/ already exist? It just seems like they want to take another URL with a "pure" domain name instead of psubdirectories, etc parts.

Most probably is pure SEO ;-)

drumhead3• 3 years ago

Well it is Google after all, remember how many versions of their chat app they had going simultaneously.

whywhywhywhy2• 3 years ago

I believe it's a similar phenomenon to Shipping the Org Chart.

The "Experiments" and "Labs" stuff at Google always feels like it exists because the bigger org can't be convinced to do something fast, but in getting it out this way they also cause it to never be integrated into the main money making piplines of google either thus dooming whatever tech they wanted to get out there.

wslh2• 3 years ago

And what research is for? I mean, it can be something long term but research could also be short term. I don't know if it was Bellman or Knuth that said: "If you can solve it, it is an exercise; otherwise it's a research problem.". I understand that labs could have a problem in mind that could be solved technically but NOT solved businesslike but also include problems that are short-term research and could be feasible or not.

LightBug1• 3 years ago

Way too polished and 'large' for a labs site.

It's as if Google are trying to work out what worked well with their Beta programme (which I used to enjoy and get excited about) and replicating it as a finished product in the 2020's with 'modern' design.

The way they communicated beta projects a decade ago was 100 times better. Just raw, simple, unfinished, and clearly things to play with.

This site just looks like marketing garbage. Sorry. Just annoyed at it.

visarga5• 3 years ago

I tried the first demo, not available in EU. I might return next year to their demos, or never. Next year the demos might also not be available in EU.

max_• 3 years ago

"Not available in your country"

Why would they perform geo-locking on their products?

lionkor2• 3 years ago

I assume because they are doing stuff that isn't OK with EU laws, for example, and they didnt bother changing that for EU users yet

_dain_• 3 years ago

the animations are overwhelming. i don't want to see so much shit moving around on screen. they also don't respect the user's "prefers-reduced-motion" setting.

whywhywhywhy2• 3 years ago

For the love of god just ship actual tools, not PR papers, not faked demos, not "experiments" that will get dusty and dropped after a few months.

Like we saw you doing Magenta 5 years ago and early image gen almost a decade ago, culturally Google needs to get away from this academic brainworm that the research is the work and the citations the payoff not the actual productization and the users+revenue. Because every company making big moves in this space and eating their lunch certainly has, and in a 2-3 years the biggest movers wont even have come from academia at all.

bufio• 3 years ago

Grim.

xnx• 3 years ago

This is a sort of replacement for https://experiments.withgoogle.com/ (cue stale shutdown joke)

rollcat2• 3 years ago

Shut down the shutdowns? How meta

lionkor2• 3 years ago

Not meta, google (sigh)

polotics• 3 years ago

"Unfortunately ... is not available in your country." Without even a why, how, when...

noman-land• 3 years ago

Is Google just for children now? Who is the target audience?

Narciss• 3 years ago

Man, people hating hard on here. Google’s just out there trying their best.

We should encourage any and all endeavors to build new useful tools. I agree that Google hasn’t been on par with other big players out there, but at least they’re trying. It’s so “trendy” to hate on Google, meanwhile everyone’s using at least one of their products every single day

justusthane• 3 years ago

I’m not sure we need to be sympathetic to an $800b company who’s just out there “trying their best”. Poor Google.

8n4vidtmkvmk• 3 years ago

Did they fall under 1T? How sad.

frabbit• 3 years ago

As usual no love for Canada from Google. Apparently we can't even have music: Unfortunately instrument playground is not available in your country. Click close to return to the homepage.

Racing0461• 3 years ago

no love for Canada from Google

Does canada (or any other GDPR adjacent country) love google?

pajko• 3 years ago

The words "Google" and "Labs" does not sound good together... they just killed everything what was good. Does anybody remember "Sets" ?

Labs.Google

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