So if I ask Google's AI studio the wrong question, I might get my G-drive, Gmail, API access, Play store, YouTube channel, "login with Google" tokens, and more all ripped away instantly with no recourse?

No thanks

It was an email system that ran on top of file system. If I recall, mail clients connected over a networked drive to access mailboxes. So it was never regarded as being very scalable.

Because of proximity it was easy to run over and service the systems physically if needed, and we also used modem based KVM systems if we really needed to reboot a locked up system quickly (not sure that ever actually happened!).

I'm sure customer owner hardware place in a datacenter rack is still a major business

If any company controls some (high) percentage of a particular market, say web browsers, search, or e-commerce, or social media, the public's equal access should start to look more like a right and less like an at-will contract.

30 years ago, if a shop had a falling out with the landlord, it could move to the next building over and resume business. Now if you annoy eBay, Amazon or Walmart, you're locked out nationwide. If you're an Uber, Lyft, or Doordash (etc) gig worker and their bots decide they don't like you anymore, then sayonara sucker! Your account has been disabled, have a nice day and don't reapply.

Our regulatory structure and economies of scale encourage consolidation and scale and grant access to this market to these businesses, but we aren't protecting the now powerless individuals and small businesses who are randomly and needlessly tossed out with nobody to answer their pleas of desperation, no explanation of rules broken, and no opportunity to appeal with transparency.

It's a sorry state of affairs at the moment.

First were the models. Then the APIs. Then the cost efficiencies. Right now the tooling and automated workflows. Next will be a frantic effort to "AI-Everything". A lot of things won't make the cut, but absolutely many tasks, whole jobs, and perhaps entire subsets of industries will flip over.

For example you might say no AI can write a completely tested, secure, fully functional mobile app with one prompt (yet). But look at the advancements in Cline, Claude code, MCPs, code execution environments, and other tooling in just the last 6 months.

The whole monkeys typewriters shakespeare thing starts to become viable.

I agree with you that we're moving away from banner ads to some novel way of monetizing traffic, and therefore content published by authentic human beings.

Let's see!

I hope the current strategy is to prove demand and when it's time lean into efficiency and hopefully non-obtrusiveness. If they don't, the volume of complaints is a threat to the whole business model. A drone delivering lunch potentially takes a combustion engine off the road for dozens of minutes and leaves more room on congested streets for other traffic. If the tech can be optimized to sound like a bird (essentially inaudible), we've probably gained something overall.

It's chaotic. They will usually have mid level officials announce some new policy as if it's a done deal.

Then, if there's no public outcry, a higher level official will confirm it and maybe, eventually, details will roll out.

If the public responds very negatively, the idea will just disappear or the higher level guy can distance himself from the low level guy "who was misinformed".

I think it's how they test the water and decide if it's worth the effort.

I fondly remember my first few experiences after the family PC got it first modem and computing has never been the same since.

Surprisingly the author skipped over CompuSERVE, Prodigy, and AOL, all of which had very active messaging forums and early chat systems.

The signup and setup flow is quite lengthy because they need to implement email flows, abandoned cart reminders, sms flows, push messaging which of course it needs to be highly customized. All of this is needed just to unlock some of the basic features of the tool.

I was surprised and delighted to begin setting up an email series only to discover it had already scanned my website and used AI to write the content of all the messages to be applicable to our tone and messaging.

Highly impressive and it makes getting it up and running super fast.

I've been slowly moving everything to self hosted to reduce the pain if/when I'm ever randomly banned from Google or some other huge network and can't get it re-enabled.

The downside is that I'm now my own IT department and need to perpetually monitor these things.

I'm sure the rigs are an expensive capital outlay, but do the operators require advanced skills?

Once a hole is drilled, does it have a limited lifespan, or is that investment something that can be hypothetically used for eternity?