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 158 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 6 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
Lessin: Microsoft, Amazon, and Google Used Multi-Billion Acqui-Hires to Avoid Regulators
“These deals, we've now had three, basically like billions of dollars of acquihires of teams to get around acquiring companies. Microsoft's done it, Amazon's done it, and now Google's done it.”
Lessin: Extremely bullish on AI only for Google and Meta ads
“I'm, as, if you hadn't heard, I'm extremely long AI only in the case of ads optimization and making a shitload of money for Facebook and Google”
Jessica Lessin: Google is highly unlikely to acquire Wiz for $23B
“Like, is Google for twenty-three billion dollars gonna buy Wiz security company? I think it's highly unlikely, but.”
Gil: Google canceling Maven prompted defense tech pivot and backing Anduril
“I started getting into defense tech when Google shut down Maven because I was like, oh my gosh, if Google isn't doing it, what a great startup opportunity, you know? So I started looking for defense companies and then I met Anduril and I was like, oh my God, t…”
Khosla: OpenAI executes crisply, while Google has great technology but poor execution
“I think OpenAI has been very good in execution, but Google has great technology and technologies. They just haven't been as crisp about their execution.”
Jessica Lessin: Publishers will accept low AI licensing payouts out of fear
“Like, they're all sitting here now saying, you know, do we take the relative pennies from OpenAI and Apple and everyone who wants to license our content? And I actually think, unfortunately, they are, because publishers are so scared about what any kind of dro…”
Lessin: An 'apocalypse' is coming for SEO-driven publisher search traffic
“There's just an apocalypse coming, I have to say, around this kind of, sort of, publisher-driven search traffic, and so, And ergo, you know, they're taking deals that make no sense.”
Sam Lessin: AI startup talent will recombine into Big Tech within years
“If you believe, as I do, that all the value is going to accrue to the top five players anyway, what you'd expect is that, like, on some non-zero timeline, but in the next few years, all the talent that got excited about these startup opportunities and went fly…”
Lessin: Android is dying while Apple iOS completely dominates the market
“Android is kind of dying slash not working and iOS is just completely dominating.”
Sam Lessin: Incumbents like Meta and Adobe will win AI through grinding warfare
“And Meta and Adobe. And like, it's all the same people, right? And they're just going to do grinding warfare.”
Brit Morin: The AI platform race will end with Apple and Google winning again
“I think it ends up being Apple and Google all over again, to be honest, at the end of the day.”
Morin: Google Gemini Achieved 90% on MMLU, Beating Human Experts
“The essence of Gemini is, is this idea of multi-modality AI and the idea that it's now finally 90% Of sort of capability, and it outperforms humans. So the human percentage was, 86.4% as far as the human expert scale. Gemini is now 90%, and they call it”
Jessica Lessin: Replacing blue links with AI answers kills 75% of news
“I'm just saying that kills the news business right there. So, or it kills 75% of the news business, right?”
Lessin: Microsoft, Amazon, and Google are the big winners of OpenAI drama
“I think the big winners on this are Microsoft, actually, despite the challenges of the eyes. It's Amazon. It's going to be Google.”
Jessica Lessin: Big Tech agreed to alert government when training AI models
“Meanwhile, Secretary Raimondo is telling me that all the big tech companies, OpenAI, Meta, Google, and so forth, are cooperating, are, and down to the level of agreeing to tell the government when they're running their next model.”
Lessin: DOJ antitrust case against Google will not be earth-shattering
“The DOJ Google case, it's hard to know how it's going. I think the DOJ will land some blows, but it's not going to be. Earth shattering.”
Sam Lessin: Meta, Google, and Amazon will be uncapped AI winners
“The big platforms, the Facebooks, sorry, the Metas, the Googles, the Amazons, are really going to be obviously huge winners from AI, and there's no cap on how big they can get anymore.”
Jessica Lessin: Google Cloud is not gaining market share or meeting targets
“It's still nowhere, it's not gaining market share, which I don't know how much that really matters, but it and they've set all sorts of goals around that, that they're nowhere close to meeting.”
Brit Morin: Google is directly targeting Canva with Google Pics and Gemini
“Canva was on this like IPO darling list for so long, and now Google launched Google Pix, P-I-C-S, and without saying they're basically going after Canva, they're going after Canva, and everything is like Gemini integration, Google workspace integration, you co…”
Current market conditions present a buying opportunity for Alphabet stock
“No, the markets today is another buying opportunity for Google.”
Brit Morin: Mainstream consumers will choose Google over pricier AI rivals
“The normal Americans are going to go with the Google prices of this gas chart.”
Brit Morin: Google will eventually converge to build the best AI interface
“I think the fact that they have five products with more than three billion users that they can start implementing AI into, and even if it takes them longer to string it all together and unify the UI and the user experience across these things, they have the pe…”
Lessin: OpenAI and Anthropic represent half of major cloud deal backlogs
“And then we charted of the, we just had earnings, of the backlogs in deals for Microsoft, Oracle, Google, and Amazon, what percentage are OpenAI's commitment and Anthropi's commitment? It's together, they're about half, ok?”
Brit Morin predicts Google's Gemini will rise in AI rankings this year
“I think by the end of this year, Gemini is, is much higher in the rankings.”
Jessica Lessin: Google is winning AI summarization in existing products
“Google is winning the AI summarization battle in terms of like your existing product.”
Dave Morin: Winning enterprise healthcare matters more to OpenAI than Google
“I think it matters more to OpenAI to get that enterprise business than it does to Google.”
Dave Morin: Google was the most dramatic mover in AI execution
“Not just sentiment, also an execution. I mean, if you just look at the usage of Gemini year over year, one year later, I mean, they were the most dramatic mover.”
Jessica Lessin says Apple and Google partnered for Gemini to power Siri
“Google and Apple are doing a Siri deal, so Siri is going to be powered by Gemini, essentially, until, until Apple, quote, figures it out, but it, there seems to be this pattern here of Apple realizing Google is, is pretty good at this stuff, and they'll be pre…”
Morin: Top hyperscalers projected to spend $400B this year
“And the Meg seven, not Apple, but the rest of them met a Google, Amazon, et cetera, are projected to spend about four hundred billion this year.”
Lessin: AI startups cannot compete directly against incumbent tech giants
“Like, I just think, like, the chessboard has matured enough that, like, the children don't think they're gonna get a seat at it. So, like, there was this moment where, like, a bunch of small warlords with, like, two followers were like, I'm gonna be the next k…”
Jessica Lessin: OpenAI and Google have struck a cloud deal
“And so now all of a sudden Google like open AI actually in Google. Have a deal. A cloud deal. It's, like, wild.”
Dave Morin: Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet put 60-80% of cash into AI; Apple 10%
“Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet are all in the 60 to 80% range right now. Apple is at 10%.”
Jessica Lessin: Anthropic will probably IPO before OpenAI
“I think Anthropic probably does it before OpenAI because they need it more, right? So if you put the need before, although I think Google and Amazon will continue to fund them.”
Sam Lessin: AI threatens Google's core business, but not Apple's
“His core business isn't threatened. Like, Google has to put chips down because, like, their core business is, like, too threatened. Meta has to put chips down, one, because Mark is just, like, hyper-competitive and cares about this. And because, like, they hav…”
Lessin: Google Ads are The Information's best subscription acquisition channel
“Google, I will say Google's ads are wonderful for the information. Like, I will go on record saying that they are the best performing driving quality subs.”
Sam Lessin: Google Will Not Save Publishers with Ad Micropayments
“The idea that Google is going to balance the equation with micropayments on ads, that's not going to happen.”
Sam Lessin: Media Should Paywall High and Reinvest in Google Ads
“What you do is you keep behind a paywall, you charge a lot, you use that money to buy some ads from Google, it works.”
Google is the only major AI product innovator among big tech
“We're also not seeing any product innovation from basically anyone other than Google, at least at the Meg seven level, Google's the main product innovator right now.”
Lessin: Google is offering buyouts to its search and advertising employees
“Another big story we had this week that kind of went under the radar because there's so much news is that Google's offering buyouts to employees in search and ads.”
Sam Lessin: OS is the obvious place for age enforcement, not apps
“Obviously the OS is the place to do this enforcement. If you care about it, it's one of those things. I've always found it fascinating that Apple and the community was able to like, put the blank, put the finger on Facebook or Google or Snapchat or whatever, w…”
Morin: ChatGPT consistently outperforms Google Gemini on general contextual queries
“I've actually tried, I tried what you just described this week several times where I asked the same question to both. And ChatGPT always answers better in context, like in a way that makes me feel like the work is better than what Gemini answers for me. Not in…”
Lessin: Courts Likely to Bar Apple-Google Search Deal in Current Form
“The courts are likely to say that the Apple Google search deal cannot continue in its current form for antitrust reasons.”
Jessica Lessin: Gemini's Daily Active Users Are Three Quarters of ChatGPT's
“I mean, if you look at daily actives, Gemini is about three quarters of ChatGPT at the moment.”
Sam Lessin: Big tech antitrust trials will have no real impact
“I really doubt that any of this will have any real impact. What will ultimately happen is the technology winds will change, and just like United Fruit, it'll eventually kind of unravel.”
Britt Morin: Roughly 40% of people expect to stop using Google
“It's something like 40% of people think they're going to stop using Google the next two years.”