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ChatGPT won’t replace search engines any time soon

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

#401

Post by acdha »

uconnectlol wrote: post #399
acdha wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This point would be better without such extreme hyperbole. Google search was an improvement but it’s not like using AltaVista was that bad - many of the advanced search operators you mentioned got started there. Crashes were also far less common than you’re describing - that got worse in the 2000s when Flash became ubiquitous.

I do remember constantly hearing that Alta Vista was good but I think I only used Microsoft and Yahoo (I forget what else there was). Nope, crashes were definitely common. Browser quality until around 2010 or so was absolutely horrible. Firefox was another case like Google where it debuted around 2000-2003 and everyone immediately switched to it because it was a massive improvement over IE which barely functioned at…

> Nope, crashes were definitely common. Browser quality until around 2010 or so was absolutely horrible.

Again, this is way too hyperbolic. I was there too, and while browser crashes weren’t uncommon you’re overstating it massively. Crashes every few minutes weren’t even the case in 1995.

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

#402

Post by uconnectlol »

acdha wrote: post #401
uconnectlol wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do remember constantly hearing that Alta Vista was good but I think I only used Microsoft and Yahoo (I forget what else there was). Nope, crashes were definitely common. Browser quality until around 2010 or so was absolutely horrible. Firefox was another case like Google where it debuted around 2000-2003 and everyone immediately switched to it because it was a massive improvement over IE which barely functioned at…

> Nope, crashes were definitely common. Browser quality until around 2010 or so was absolutely horrible. Again, this is way too hyperbolic. I was there too, and while browser crashes weren’t uncommon you’re overstating it massively. Crashes every few minutes weren’t even the case in 1995.

Oh, I see, you were taking that literally. I'd estimate more like 2-5 times per day. Of course this entirely depends on which content you were viewing, and as soon as you ventured out side of the good boy zone it got much worse.

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

#403

Post by ugh123 »

cloudking wrote: post #276

I think folks are really underestimating Google in this space. They have: 1) access to way more data than what ChatGPT was trained on 2) access to data freshness through their crawlers 3) knowledge graph for a source of truth https://blog.google/products/search/about-knowledge-graph-an... 4) their own large language model LaMDA, that is apparently so good it convinced a senior AI researcher that it was sentient https…

Unless they've decided to change how Search works, everything you mention is in support of Google's way of doing search - which is the way its been done for more than 20 years. The kind of clout (and hype) that ChatGPT has built up in such a short amount of time could be indicative of a true "disrupter" (I know we hate that word here).

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

#404

Post by freediver »

Denzel wrote: post #312
xp84 wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 distributi…

Fantastic insights with a few suggesstions that I'd like to propose.

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

> How much would Google have to charge to break even?

Google also had $80B in pure profit which means break even point is $170B. That includes nearly 200K employees. It is reasonable to assume that running a search operation, especially one that does not require any ad sales personel, would require much less people and infrastructure. I will be generous and assume 50k people needed to provide search service. That means ~$45B in cost needed to break even, or 5 times less than your starting point.

So the new math becomes: $50B/yr / 4B people = ~$1/month/person

Much more doable.

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

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

> 60% of the world population survives on It is also reasonable to assume that the most of those which do not have access to internet, belong to the Since $1/month will suffice to cover the entire search cost, increasing that to just $2/mo that will be paid by the richest could also solve the problem of providing access to search to the poorest and get the other 4B people searching. Nice!

(btw I think this should not be a job of a private company, but goverments should provide public search engines, similar to public libraries, which are not providing the utility that they once did - but this is a whole another matter).

So I'd reckon it is doable.

> 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?

This would hold true only if the quality of such provided information is not affected by ads as a business model. However we now know that is not true, and quality of search has detoriated a lot in the last decade as documented by many discussions here. Simple reason is misalignment of incentives between the users and the search engine, and this will be the case as long as the provided search results are paid for by the advertisers, and not by the users. So what is really the value of information provided, if it does not have my best interest in mind?

> Yet people would sooner reach for an ad-blocker than pay the “small monthly fee” even in nations as rich as the U.S.

That is correct, but at least YouTube Premium exists (unlike Google Premium), giving an opportunity for people who don't want ads to pay, opportunity that 25 million people took, paying a $12/month subscription [1]. Drop that down to $1/mo and maybe YouTube will not need to run ads? So if anything, this just proves the point of viability of this as a business model. Furthermore, 800 million devices having an adblocker installed already, make it the largest protest against a business model in the human history.

Disclosure: I work for Kagi, a paid search engine. I absolutely admire the search technology Google built (that we use) and people that work there (who we work with). I also believe that the days of the ad-supported business model for search are over, and in the future (~10 years) this will exists only with a 'for entertainment purposes only' label, because that will most accurately describe the level of trust we can have in the information served by this business model.

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

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

#405

Post by duckmysick »

david_allison wrote: post #203
ravenstine wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know this thread is about ChatGPT, but if you're still using Google then I suggest giving Kagi a try. It's a paid search engine, but I've been using it for quite a while now and really enjoy it. With Kagi you can rank and downrank domains as well as block them. There's also this think called "lenses" which are basically filters for specific kinds of searches. For instance, I have a "Programming" lens and a "Academi…

Kagi's 'sourced' LLM is available for free currently: https://labs.kagi.com/ai/contextai

This is fun. I tried this prompt: "Should I become a paying customer of Kagi?"

I like how it links references to support the arguments. It even gives cons and one of the sources is a HN thread from 2016! [1] It's not there yet though, because that one was about the now defunct online store platform and payment processor.

On the other hand, maybe it's my fault. I didn't specify that I meant Kagi the search engine. But it's promising.

1 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12200972

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

#406

Post by Denzel »

freediver wrote: post #404
Denzel wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 distributi…

Fantastic insights with a few suggesstions that I'd like to propose. > - Google’s 2022 revenue was $250B. (We’ll assume that’s all ads.) > How much would Google have to charge to break even? Google also had $80B in pure profit which means break even point is $170B. That includes nearly 200K employees. It is reasonable to assume that running a search operation, especially one that does not require any ad sales persone…

Thanks for taking the time to put together a well-reasoned argument. I had adopted some of your assumptions in a follow-up response to my other reply. [1] While I don't disagree with the perspective you've provided, in fact some points make a lot of sense, I think it misses the forest for the trees.

My point-by-point response should be read respectfully, since you've taken the time to do the same, I do not mean to sound argumentative. :)

> It is reasonable to assume that running a search operation, especially one that does not require any ad sales personel, would require much less people and infrastructure.

This is a reasonable assumption for running a steady-state business, but I challenge the worldview. Google does not exist in a vacuum without competitors, and contrary to what most outsiders believe, we're constantly iterating, innovating, and improving on Search alone to provide a better product and compete with our competitors. Google can't rest on its laurels.

A lot of laymen take Google Search's progress as inevitable, but I can assure you it's not. Consider the example of YouTube Snippets in Google Search. That feature was created within the last 5 years. The average person has used and found value in that new feature. (Both anecdotally and quantitatively.) That wasn't an easy feature to ideate, create, develop, or deliver. It took a lot of effort by a lot of smart people.

That's just one new feature. Google Search has been delivering several new features consistently.

Therefore I disagree with this assumption. If Google Search chose to run in steady-state, it'd soon find itself dethroned.

> That means ~$45B in cost needed to break even, or 5 times less than your starting point.

No, the financials don't work this way. [2] GOOG's Cost of Revenue is 50% Revenue. Cost of Revenue is your infrastructure, your financial floor, you can't go below this cost. Employees are accounted for under Operating Expense, specifically, your Sales under SG&A ($35B) and engineers under R&D ($35B).

So, if you'd like to banish all salespersons, you'd only save $35B. (Of which Ad Sales is only a part because Google sells many other things.)

> It is also reasonable to assume that the most of those which do not have access to internet, belong to the This is not a reasonable assumption. Many people surviving on > quality of search has detoriated a lot in the last decade as documented by many discussions here

HN is a unrepresentative sample of the world population with respect to wealth, income, knowledge, interests, etc. I wouldn't consider HN as documentation for this. In fact, once again, the real-world data disagrees with HN's characterization.

> YouTube Premium exists (unlike Google Premium), giving an opportunity for people who don't want ads to pay, opportunity that 25 million people took, paying a $12/month subscription. So if anything, this just proves the point of viability of this as a business model.

That proves a 5-10% take-rate from YouTube's MAU. :) Which changes the break-even math on delivering a service. With a 5-10% take-rate on "Google Premium", your price must be 10-20x higher.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34301742

[2]: https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/GOOG/financials?p=GOOG

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

#407

Post by SteveGerencser »

radium3d wrote: post #249
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…

I agree, Google has gotten worse, I find more and more often lately I do not find what I am searching for. I try to change my question/wording and it just gets worse. I think their algorithm is failing. Did they lose their way? It used to supply useful information. I think they may need to reduce their reliance on website performance. Site performance does not equate good information. They are excluding the best info…

The whole site speed thing is purely a cost reduction on Google's part IMO. By convincing site owners that being fast is a ranking factor they can save millions in bandwidth costs as more and more people lighten their page load.

I have watched many web developers absolutely lost their mind trying to squeeze fractions of a second from their load time when there are far better ways to be using their time.

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

#409

Post by agar »

spaceman_2020 wrote: post #339
xp84 wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They clearly have the ability to compete -- STRONGLY -- in this space. The only question is if they want to, or if they'll act like the carmakers did 10 years ago when EVs were heading toward feasibility. They felt like they wouldn't be as profitable as gas cars, so they mostly ignored the concept and forfeited the chance to be first movers. Then when Tesla finally started moving significant numbers they were caught…

Any shift from monetizing search via AdWords to monetizing single-answer responses via a chatGPT-like interface is going to involve major revenue disruptions. Meta is a great example. The company is still reporting exceptional revenue results, but because Mark is forcing the company in a new direction, the stock has been crashing since there is no more guaranteed revenue growth in the near future. Zuckerberg can stil…

The assignment of blame to VR/AR for Facebook's stock drop is mostly media noise and not reality. The "metaverse" term is cringeworthy, the technology is early and easy to critique, and the tech-savvy public hates Zuckerberg. All this combines to create easy click bait about how VR is leading to Meta's problems.

In reality, Apple's changes to tracking in OS 14.5 has cost Facebook at least $10B in annual revenue and - far worse from an investment thesis perspective - likely continues to constrain growth for the foreseeable future. As a growth stock, this is poison.

Yes, VR/AR investments are also $10B, but they can be turned off and there is a revenue stream coming from them today (at least 10M users, at least $500M in app store revenue) and a potential large market in the future.

A $10B hit to annual revenue in perpetuity and growth cut from 36% to 12% is a far worse problem and a huge overhang on the stock.

That story just doesn't get clicks though. You can't accompany that article with a stupid picture of Zuck's comical avatar in front of the Eiffel Tower and make jokes about missing legs in the metaverse.

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

#410

Post by graeme »

elboru wrote: post #328
graeme wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this a good chart? First result for “Messi vs. Ronaldinho stats” https://fbref.com/en/stathead/player_comparison.cgi?show_for... Searching without stats had a lot of other stuff, but this was near top. And searching without stats shows broader potential interests.

I did check that table, the data is great, but the readability not so much (especially on mobile) the meaning of some column names was not clear (tooltip didn't work on mobile). That's why I was looking for a chart (in the graphical sense), it amazed me that I didn't find one.

Hmm. Is it possible no one has made a good one? I searched for an infographic, came up dry. Usually have no trouble in domains I know well where
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