AI is making Google and Meta even stronger and richer

When generative AI exploded into public view in late 2022, plenty of pundits predicted it would be bad news for the likes of Google and Meta as nimble AI-powered rivals found new ways to capture netizens’ attention and monetize it. Those pundits appear to have been wrong, as the two tech giants on Wednesday used quarterly …

[beast666]

It's all funny money.

[Like a badger]

Who's losing?

If Google et al are making more money on the back of AI, and that growth is far greater than the growth rate of the economy at large, then they must be taking that money away from other companies. So as per title, whose business is shrinking, or ad/hosting costs are rising dramatically?

[Curious]

Re: Who's losing?

Companies paying their advertising and sales budget for bots to 'train' using their ads and webstores?

[Wellyboot]

Re: Who's losing?

When the 2000 dot com bubble popped all the worried investors threw money into nice safe and relatively undervalued BANKING stocks, wait a while and hello to the 2007/8 financial crisis.

Given the price of gold, I think the smart money hasn't spotted the undervalued (not the same as under performing) currently safe sector yet.

[Wellyboot]

That last sentence speaks volumes!

>>>Meta shares sank seven percent, probably because its net income slipped 83 percent year-over-year due to coughing up a one-time income tax charge of $15.93 billion.<<<

A one-time tax hit drops the company market value by ten times that amount.

Increasing the annual infrastructure spend (on just the AI line) to essentially five times that tax hit passes with barely a glance, volatile is becoming a tame description of the current tech market.

[Anonymous Coward]

Who is paying for Facebook adds

I only ever use it in a friefox container tab so itgets no cookies from anywhere else.

My ad experience is attrocious. They come in waves.

Monday it was constant Insoles of various makes to cure plantir fascitis which I dont have and have never had or ever searched. There was a day when it was full of "Dating Apps" and most of the adverts were normal PG fdodder then the video suddenyl changed to hardcor porn then back to pg, all such ads were resported but as sual FB seen nothing wrong with them. Ive had a day of robot lawnmoivers adn I liv in an apartment nad have done since I setup my FB account.

When you mess with their data collection boy do they have no idea what to serve you.

Oh and today it seems to be various different versions of Chicken Road all promising to pay me £250+ on sign up.

[Anonymous Coward]

Given the number of AI ads on YT

it isn't easy to see why Google is making gazillions.

I only ever use Google on an old iPad (2017 vintage). It is used for nothing else and runs in its own subnet.

Just avoid using any of the usual suspects on a device where their AI can slurp you life and everything.

[EricM]

I thought this was the actual reason for AI startups still getting "investments"..

The big cloud providers, including AWS (plus Nvidia) invest in AI shops, so they have the money to spend on AI Cloud Services and AI hardware.

Cory Doctorow and Ed Zitron have some very good write ups on that topic.

https://pluralistic.net/2025/10/29/worker-frightening-machines/#robots-stole-your-jerb-kinda

https://www.wheresyoured.at/costs/

The big question is: How big is the crater going to be, once this growing circular dependency hits the bump in the road, namely customers stopping to fall for the hype of AI wonders (like for example deterministic responses) coming "real soon now".

[Kurgan]

Re: I thought this was the actual reason for AI startups still getting "investments"..

Customers cannot stop using AI because there is no service or product without AI nowadays. Likewise you cannot buy a non-connected home appliance because there are no more non-connected home appliances for sale. Or non-smart TVs.

The customers buy what the sellers want them to buy because there is no other choice.

[Anonymous Coward]

Local use has gone down

It's funny, but all the people that were going "well ChatGPT sez..." disappeared in the last set of layoffs. Darn shame, that.

Also, the management people that kept prodding me "did you ask ChatGPT?" have also shut up. They're still here, but they aren't pushing AI any more. Maybe it's because I keep saying "you can't spell FAIL without AI"?

I kept reporting all the AI videos of impossibly top heavy women in skin tight spacesuits or whatever as spam or porn in YouTube, and I don't see those so much.

[Kurgan]

Re: Local use has gone down

Actually I am seeing a rapidly increasing (and I mean RAPIDLY INCREASING) wave of shitty AI results to every (mostly technical topics) search I do on Google or Qwant.

More and more sites are just full of (wrong or useless) AI-generated "content". And all of these AI-slop results are making me lose a lot of time looking for some real, useful, human-generated information.

My time-to-google for a useful result has increased 4X in the last three months. And I don't even count the "AI answer" from Google itself which is invariably useless or wrong but at least is easy to skip.

[Blackjack]

One, AI is giving literally negative profits so far.

Two, a lot of people is having a negative reaction to not being able to opt out.

Three, all bubbles burst.

So how big will be the hole in these companies pockets when the AI bubble pops?

[Dinanziame]

So how big will be the hole in these companies pockets when the AI bubble pops?

The likes of Google take very little risk when they invest in data centers. They are eventually going to need those data centers for their normal order of business one way or another; so the worst that can happen is that they slow down construction in a few years.

[Smaritz]

Yeah right

It's pretty much rendering Google search results useless. So no.