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Ask HN: Do you still use search engines?

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Re: Ask HN: Do you still use search engines?

#351

Post by octernion »

wavemode wrote: post #328
keithnz wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

have you tried chatgpt search? you can do "DC plane crash" or "Frob" it will come up with links to the story, but it will quickly give you a summary with links to its sources. Best thing is you can follow up with questions.

Yes, I have. If I want something to read the page for me, then that's where LLMs come in. But what I'm talking about is when I want to read the page for myself. Waste of time to have to wait for an LLM to chew on it.

hah i use llms for that now too - "option-space 'link to lang'" and chat returns faster than the whole endeavor of opening google or putting stuff into the nav bar.

Re: Ask HN: Do you still use search engines?

#352

Post by ImaCake »

bufferoverflow wrote: post #188
dowager_dan99 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

but the AI responses from google that dominate the screen real estate are terrible. When you repeat the exact same query and get changing (but all wrong) answers, something is broken. I've resorted to including profanity in all my searches to prevent the AI responses, which is suboptimal at work...

The results I get from google's AI at the top of search results are usually spot-on. I often search for code-related technical stuff, and like 90% of the time it saves me a trip to StackOverflow.

Agreed with this. A lot of people seem to think they suck, and sometimes they do, but I find them to be more useful than not. It’s actually really nice having a prose digest of the most plausible links for my search query.

Re: Ask HN: Do you still use search engines?

#354

Post by mikrl »

Yep. I ask LLMs the XY questions since they don’t get annoyed, and when my question is very concrete and reduced to its essence, I ask the search engine and usually get a better answer than the LLM would give me.

Basically, there’s a lot of good and specific information on the web, but not necessarily combined in the way I want. LLMs can help break apart my specific combination at a high level but struggle with the human ability to get to solutions quickly.

Or maybe I just suck at asking questions haah

Re: Ask HN: Do you still use search engines?

#355

Post by d4mi3n »

I think this is mainly a symptom of poor alignment between search engines and their customers. ChatGPT works well now but the plan there seems to be to monetize search-like queries. I fear it won't be long until chat AI agents using this model bring us back to the same frustrations we have today with Google et all.

There is some room for optimism, though. There's been a rise in smaller search engines with different funding models that are more aligned with user needs. Kagi is the only one that comes to mind (I use it), but I'm sure there are others.

Re: Ask HN: Do you still use search engines?

#356

Post by kbutler »

exe34 wrote: post #278
npilk wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly :-) Unfortunately you can’t really show ads if you take someone directly to the destination without any interstitial content like a list of links…

wrong - that's how YouTube works. 30s advert before a video on CPR.

I'd rather have a list of links with text ads I can ignore...

Re: Ask HN: Do you still use search engines?

#359

Post by kbutler »

wavemode wrote: post #312
xorcist wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no exclusive-or between business models, there is an inclusive-or. Over time subscription models will converge to subscription with advertisements. Like newspapers did.

And streaming services. People really thought streaming would be the end of TV commercials. Ha!

Define ad infinitum

What you don't get with pay TV

  Originally for cable, but then you got ads with cable. 
  Then for streaming, but then you got ads with streaming. 
  Physical DVDs? Ads. 
  Paid Roku device? Ads. 
  Paid windows installation? Ads.
Available eyeballs will be sold.

Re: Ask HN: Do you still use search engines?

#360

Post by sshine »

star-glider wrote: post #159

This is my favorite thing about Kagi; you can do both. If you just append a question mark, it'll run the search through a simple LLM and give you those results (with citations) right before standard search. From there, you can proceed into a more sophisticated frontier model if that's more effective. "Search" can mean a lot of things. Sometimes I just want a website but can't remember the URL (traditional); other tim…

And sometimes you have all the data, but it’s too much, so you ask for a summary and ask elaborating questions.
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