This article doesn't mention TPUs anywhere. I don't think it's obvious for people outside of google's ecosystem just how extraordinarily good the JAX + TPU ecosystem is. Google several structural advantages over other major players, but the largest one is that they roll their own compute solution which is actually very mature and competitive. TPUs are extremely good at both training and inference[1] especially at scale. Google's ability to tailor their mature hardware to exactly what they need gives them a massive leg up on competition. AI companies fundamentally have to answer the question "what can you do that no one else can?". Google's hardware advantage provides an actual answer to that question which can't be erased the next time someone drops a new model onto huggingface.
[1]https://blog.google/products/google-cloud/ironwood-tpu-age-o...
Assuming that DeepSeek continues to open-source, then we can assume that in the future there won't be any "secret sauce" in model architecture. Only data and training/serving infrastructure, and Google is in a good position with regard to both.
Google is also in a great position wrt distribution - to get users at scale, and attach to pre-existing revenue streams. Via Android, Gmail, Docs, Search - they have a lot of reach. YouTube as well, though fit there is maybe less obvious.
Combined with the two factors you mention, and the size of their warchest - they are really excellently positioned.
YouTube is very well positioned - all these video generating models etc. I am sure they'll be loads of AI editors too
Good, maybe Youtube will finally recommend something to me I actually want to watch.
Personally, I've never actually heard this problem. Do you watch industry-specific videos in a non-anonymized browser session enough? Once you watch, like, 5 videos on topics you care about, the algorithm has no shortage of astute suggestions.