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0 pointshn_throwaway_992y ago0 comments

> Well, which is it? Is it so trivial that anyone can compete, or is it too costly to build it?

I think that's the wrong "either/or" framing in this case. It's not that building competing tech would be trivially cheap, but it's something around which Snap would not likely have a moat or any sort of competitive advantage. It's also in a business area that's pretty unrelated to their core offering.

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2 comments · 1 top-level

jeremyjh2y ago· 1 in thread

And they didn't know these things six months ago? No. They tried something, and it failed, and they don't want to say that.

hn_throwaway_99OP2y ago

> They tried something, and it failed, and they don't want to say that.

The CEO's exact quote was "Leading in augmented reality means that sometimes we will fail, and I am proud that our team dared to build this business even if we did not succeed." So I'm not sure why you think "they don't want to say that."

> And they didn't know these things six months ago?

Given that the initiative was originally announced in March, I'm assuming the whole project was greenlit at least 3-6 months prior to that. And ChatGPT was only just released on Nov 30, 2022, and since then it hardly feels like a week goes by where I'm not mindblown by some new AI announcement. So yeah, I think it's entirely reasonable to think that the landscape when this ARES project was first started is very different than the one we find ourselves in today.

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