Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

ChatGPT won’t replace search engines any time soon

algolia.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

311–320 of 427 posts

Re: ChatGPT won’t replace search engines any time soon

#311

Post by swyx »

uconnectlol wrote: post #152
ipython wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you looking for the movie The Blues Brothers? (Not ChatGPT, I promise)

EDIT: Nah that's not it. It's way too old. And in mine the police crash for no reason before they even get anywhere near the scene of the crime. I will skim thru it, but it doesn't look like the right setting. The movie was some generic action movie for some reason I remember Denzel Washington being in it but I looked through his movies from 2006-2012 and didn't find it. It was around that time. Setting had to be som…

can you recall anything else about the movie? its not a lot to go on if its not a major plot point

Re: ChatGPT won’t replace search engines any time soon

#312

Post by Denzel »

xp84 wrote: post #275
retinaros wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

google is an advertisement company not a search one. and chagpt as soon as they start to be in the business of search engines will be one too. that is the fate of any tool that is free to use

The notion that every information service should be free with ads is one of the main poisons that have made the cesspool that is the net today. Imagine how different the incentives would be if Facebook and Google just made money by making their endusers happy enough to keep their memberships active with a small monthly fee. Their customers would be the end users, instead of being the advertisers.

Reality doesn’t lend support toward your arguments. I assume you’re from a first-world country, based upon your comment.

- Google’s 2022 revenue was $250B. (We’ll assume that’s all ads.)

- 8B people in the world; we’ll assume only 4B people have internet access to the web.

How much would Google have to charge to break even?

$250B/yr / 4B people = $62.5/yr/person = $5/month/person

What does the world income distribution look like? [1]

60% of the world population survives on We expect more than half the world’s population to pay more than 2% of their income for a single service? To put that in a first-world perspective, that’s $100/month for someone earning $60k; $200/month for someone earning $120k; etc. Does the average American spend that amount of money per month on a single web service?

Well of course, you may say, let’s charge more for those who earn more so we can ease the pain on those who earn less! That sounds great in theory, but once again, how many people do you know dropping $200/month on a web service even if they can afford it?

Back to two of your points:

1. “Imagine how different the incentives would be” - Yes, imagine, only the wealthy would have access to state-of-the-art search for the web and other services, further increasing the disparity between the two groups. Consider, maybe, that ads represent one of the greatest wealth transfers in our history. One perspective to consider is that the rich (advertisers) are subsidizing the poor (information access) via ads. That sounds like a net positive to me?

2. “Keep their memberships active with a small monthly fee” — YouTube premium exists. What do you think the uptake is on that? YouTube has provided immeasurable benefit to people across the world in the form of knowledge, resources, training, etc. Yet people would sooner reach for an ad-blocker than pay the “small monthly fee” even in nations as rich as the U.S.

What causes you to believe that people will pay even more than that for Google’s other services?

Disclosure: I work for Google. The opinions and data represented in this post are my own, and not representative of my employer.

[1]: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/07/21/are-you-in-...

Re: ChatGPT won’t replace search engines any time soon

#313

Post by vkou »

jsnell wrote: post #235
charlieyu1 wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't even understand why Google doesn't allow blocking some sites in search results. Paid ads, I understand, these generate profits. Although Facebook still allow me to remove some ads that I don't want to see. But unpaid SEO rubbish, how does it benefit Google at all? If anything these parasites bogs down the quality of search results

They had a feature to block domains from search results in the past (like, 10 years ago). It was removed. I don't know why, but it feels like exactly the kind of feature that sounds great on paper but doesn't actually survive contact with real users. First, I'd bet that very few people are actually interested in doing that kind of manual curation or engaging with power user features. How large a % of users need to in…

I'm not trying to block domains from my search results because I'm afraid of spam. Google does a pretty good job of not putting spam in my search results.

I'm trying to block particular domains because I know the websites hosted on them are utter garbage, and better alternatives containing the same information exist.

Re: ChatGPT won’t replace search engines any time soon

#314

Post by jakeinspace »

crabmusket wrote: post #140
daveFNbuck wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first half is wrong too. GPS has nothing to do with satellites being able to see lots of things from high up. The whole thing is just nonsense that looks plausibly like an explanation until you try to decipher it.

I didn't even notice that bit (maybe GPT is a flat-earther?). Something GPT discourse has been demonstrating to me is that I'm not usually a very careful reader. I apparently skim a lot. Or maybe I skim GPT outputs because I'm biased in my expectations already?

I’ve noticed this too! It’s excellent at mimicking an expert voice, and it puts me off guard.

Re: ChatGPT won’t replace search engines any time soon

#316

Post by naturedivine »

mfDjB wrote: post #171

For me, Google Search just doesn't seem to be getting better over the years, if anything its getting worse. I honestly feel like its hard to get what I want half the time with all the SEO spam, most of the time I have to input "inurl:reddit.com" just to get good results. At the same time, ChatGPT has frequently impressed me, not with everything (my expectations are reasonably low) but it has performed amazing work fo…

An interesting point is then that we don't need specifically Google search engine. Any search engine will do.

Re: ChatGPT won’t replace search engines any time soon

#317

Post by freediver »

s3p wrote: post #269
freediver wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Care to expand on that?

I will. As a Kagi user I loved the quality and authenticity of search results but couldn't justify paying $10 / month for it. In my view that is far too expensive for something I can get for free from Google/DDG with concessions.

Fundamentally there are only two business models available for search.

Since searching the vastness of the web in under 500ms is not free, it is either the user paying for that, or a 3rd party (usually advertisers) paying on the behalf of the user. We (Kagi) thought that for something as intimate as search the latter made no sense, hence the birth of paid search business model where incentives between the user and search engine are aligned.

Price not being right for you currently is another matter, and hopefully one day it will be (you could help by sharing feedback how to improve the product, and there is new Kagi pricing coming up soon).

I personally pay for YouTube Premium ($15/month I believe?) just to not have to see ads on any device I watch YouTube on. Many people would never consider that, but many (~25 million subscribers [1]) still do, despite being able to watch videos for free, availability of adblockers and what not. So YouTube Premium makes half a billion dollars every month and that is essentially using the same business model as Kagi's.

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1261865/youtube-premium-...

Re: ChatGPT won’t replace search engines any time soon

#318

Post by lamontcg »

tester457 wrote: post #309
lamontcg wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been trying to get ChatGPT to solve pretty basic calculus questions and it is often either totally wrong or wrong in some tiny detail. I got into an argument over dimensional analysis a few weeks ago where it felt like it was gaslighting me.

I like chatgpt for programming but I don't like the sound of using a language model for math. I rather use Wolfram alpha

programming and math are the same thing

Re: ChatGPT won’t replace search engines any time soon

#319

Post by iambateman »

In the days of the Romans, tech writers carefully explained all the reasons Hannibal would never get elephants over the mountains…

More seriously, Google seems capable of learning from and acquiring similar technology. In that sense, I think their market position will remain. But ChatGPT is a threat to Google in the sense that it’s already drawing search volume away for some searches for some influential people.

ChatGPT is much worse at some things than Google - timely relevance and over-confidence come to mind. But it is astonishingly better at a surprising number of search queries. Given the rate of improvement and the ability for young developers to plug into the ecosystem and make unexpected new stuff, Google has plenty to be concerned about.

Re: ChatGPT won’t replace search engines any time soon

#320

Post by mizzao »

mfDjB wrote: post #171

For me, Google Search just doesn't seem to be getting better over the years, if anything its getting worse. I honestly feel like its hard to get what I want half the time with all the SEO spam, most of the time I have to input "inurl:reddit.com" just to get good results. At the same time, ChatGPT has frequently impressed me, not with everything (my expectations are reasonably low) but it has performed amazing work fo…

your first point (about both the crappiness of search, and Reddit) reminds me of this earlier post: https://dkb.io/post/google-search-is-dying
Post reply on HN