The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 297 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 7 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Friedberg: Depreciating Google's chips over 3 years reduces net profit 10-12%
“In Google's case, their total net profit would come down by roughly 10 to 12%.”
Martinis: Google's 53-qubit experiment successfully demonstrated quantum supremacy
“We published this quantum supremacy experiment with 53 qubits, where we made a lot of qubits, and we made them really good, and, you know, fast and whatever, so that we could run some algorithm, mathematical algorithm, that what, we produced some output that w…”
Palihapitiya predicts Google's undervalued assets will force business unit spin-offs
“But now you're going to get to this thing where the intrinsic value of everything they have will far exceed the actual value that it trades at. And so there'll always be these fissures of pressure. And then if one of these things requires a lot of money, there…”
Friedberg claims users abandoned Google Gemini over historically inaccurate, biased outputs
“When Gemini put out saying George Washington was black, people stopped using it. They're like, this thing's a joke.”
Palihapitiya warns failing to IPO Waymo sets bad precedent for investors
“Now it's up to Google to live up to their part of the bargain, because if it doesn't get liquid, it sets a very bad precedent for everybody that committed capital into that company.”
Calacanis: China will try to beat the US using commercial capitalism
“They're going to try to beat us on capitalism and then use brands like we've used brands like Apple and Google to defeat us.”
Friedberg: A state patchwork of AI regulations makes national service practically impossible
“Having a patchwork of regulations on, for example, model development or telling software companies what software they can deploy would make it practically impossible for internet service providers like a Google or an OpenAI to service Customers across state bo…”
Friedberg: Google develops graph-based AI models no competitors are close to
“There's a pretty sizable family of models, including a lot of these graph based models that are being used in really novel applications that no one else is even close to. No one's spending time on.”
Friedberg ranks Google #1 among Mag 7 tech stocks for risk-adjusted returns
“The alpha and the beta adjusted Returns. I would put Google number one.”
Brin: Google mostly uses custom TPUs over GPUs for Gemini
“Well, we mostly, for Gemini, we mostly use our own TPUs.”
Brin: Google's newest, most computationally expensive AI models won't be free
“I don't think we're gonna like necessarily our latest and greatest models, which are, you know, take a lot of computation. I don't think we're gonna just be free to everybody right off the bat.”
Brin: Google is internally testing third-party AI coding tools like Cursor
“No, we're trying to, you know, roll out every possible kind of AI and trying external ones, you know, be whatever the cursors of the world, all, all of those to just see what really makes people more productive.”
Pichai: YouTube is likely the largest podcasting service in the world
“I think we are the largest podcasting service in the world.”
Pichai: Google intensely debated acquiring Netflix at one point
“Maybe Netflix, right? Like we debated Netflix at some point super intensely inside.”
Pichai: Some Alphabet subsidiaries will eventually spin off and IPO
“Some of them will leave and IPO out because maybe that's the best way they can make progress.”
Pichai: Search query serving costs fell dramatically over 18 months
“We've actually seen, like, you know, for a given query, the cost to serve that query has fallen dramatically in an 18 month time frame.”
Calacanis: Google will execute large layoffs and mandate return-to-office
“I think they're going to cut a large number of employees, get people to return back to office.”
Friedberg: Google's $75B CapEx signals high confidence in returns
“I would view the seventy five billion dollar capex actually as a very positive signal for the company. I think that it means that they have a really strong line of sight on how they're going to have full utilization and great return on this.”
Mark Pincus: MBA jobs at Meta and Google have dried up
“Everyone wants a job at Meta or Google, and that's the get rich quick place, and it's, I don't even think that's necessarily true anymore, and they can't get those jobs because those companies are now trying to get rid of middle management. So those jobs have …”
Calacanis predicts Tesla and Google will be 2025's biggest business winners
“My biggest business winner prediction for 2025 is Tesla and Google.”
Chamath: Big Tech incumbents consistently win when threatened by upstarts
“And I think in, in the last 20 or 25 years, what you've seen is those companies, when their backs are against the wall, they use money, they're sharp elbowed, but the consistent thing is they've won.”
Sergey Brin confirms he works at Google 'pretty much every day'
“Honestly, like, pretty much every day.”
Sergey Brin admits Google was 'quite a ways behind' when ChatGPT launched
“We've come a long way since you know, a couple whatever years ago when ChatGPT launched and we were quite a ways behind.”
Calacanis: Google has a search monopoly but not an ad monopoly
“They do have a massive monopoly in search. That's absolutely true and the Justice Department, I think, is well within their rights to take a deep dive on that. They don't have it in ads.”
Friedberg: Strong push coming to curb power of Meta, X, and Google
“I think that because of how inflamed people are at the influence that these companies have meta and Twitter and Google, there is going to be a strong push to do a lot more than what the narrow focus of the ruling in this particular case to do something much mo…”
Calacanis predicts Google will face major publisher lawsuits over AI Overviews
“And I think that we're going to see a major lawsuit here.”
Friedberg: Meta and Amazon lack high-value call options like Google's Waymo
“Meta and Amazon do not have an isomorphic lab and Waymo sitting inside their business that suddenly pops to a couple hundred billion of market cap. And Google does have a few of those.”
Calacanis: Generative AI will increase total search queries and user engagement
“My belief is that this is going to result in more searches and more knowledge engagement because once you Get how to cook your steak and get the right temperature, right? For medium rare. It's going to anticipate your next three questions better. So now to say…”
Calacanis: Tech companies open-source when behind and closed-source when ahead
“Open source when you're behind, closed source, lock it up when you're ahead.”
Sacks: Google had no choice but to fire protesting employees
“Well, Google had no choice but to fire these employees. They were being disruptive, and they were trespassing, and Google has a business to run, so this is what any business would do, and I don't think they deserve either credit or blame for taking the action …”
Chamath: Google acquiring HubSpot would take three years for antitrust approval
“If it took Google almost two years to get a, an accelerometer on a wrist to prove from antitrust, this is going to take three years.”
Friedberg: Massive corporate acquisitions typically signal a slowdown in organic growth
“When a big company like this makes a big acquisition offer like this, as much as I know Google's business, I think it's a generalization that can be drawn here. It's usually a negative signal about organic growth.”
Sacks: Enterprise software is the most neglected part of Google's business
“If you think about the business that this is most like, it would be G suite and because it's an enterprise play and that's the most neglected part of Google's business.”
Calacanis: Google wants HubSpot for customer data, not a SaaS business
“That's what's actually happening here. It's, they don't want a SaaS business. They want the data. They want to retarget folks, and then they want to make, close more sales and be more efficient than TikTok and Facebook and Meta.”
Chamath: HubSpot is not strategically valuable for Google
“I would not characterize HubSpot as strategically valuable for Google. I think it's an important ecosystem player, and it's probably better off as an independent company.”
Calacanis: Apple-Google AI deal cements alliance to counter Microsoft
“What I do think about this deal that's really interesting is it's sort of cementing the Google and the Apple Alliance against Microsoft and Microsoft has big, you know, AI ambition. So this is kind of interesting. If you lock in the duopoly of Google and Apple…”
Sacks: Over 90% of Google employee political contributions go to Democrats
“When everybody is left to center, I mean, just look at something like political contributions, right? It's 90 something percent are democratic. I mean, like high nineties.”
Palihapitiya: Google pays Apple $18B to $20B annually for default search
“On the iPhone, it's somewhere between 18 and 20 odd billion dollars a year is what now Google pays Apple.”
Friedberg reveals Sergey Brin pitched a Google search-data hedge fund
“When I was at Google in Oh, four or so Sergei Was kind of throwing around the idea. Why don't we start a hedge fund? Because we have all this data about what people are searching for, and we can see all of this consumer behavior, and we could trade on that and…”
Calacanis: Google paid Activision $360M to stay in the Play Store
“Google paid Activision three hundred sixty million dollars to keep in the Play Store.”
Calacanis: The idea that Google is moving slowly in AI may be antiquated
“So this idea that Google is going to be displaced or they're moving slow, that might be antiquated information.”
Brad Gerstner reveals Altimeter bought back Google stock around Google I/O
“I said on CNBC that we had sold our shares. We bought back some of the shares around Google IO because we do think they're going to be a player.”
Sacks predicts Google and Big Tech will win Supreme Court Section 230 case
“So it looks to me like Google and big tech are going to win this one.”
Palihapitiya predicts Google's default search deal with Apple could cost $25 billion
“This year, this renegotiation for that deal could mean that Apple gets paid twenty-five billion dollars for giving away that right to Google.”
Chamath: Big tech giants raised under $250M total before IPOs
“Less than a quarter billion dollars.”
Calacanis: Google exhibits monopoly behavior in search by self-preferencing
“No, I, there is monopoly behavior going on at Google, obviously, with search and putting their own content and services up top, and to Shemad's point, like, that's probably the easier target.”