I hope Google is not pulling a Blackberry moment. I remember when the iPhone was first announced, BB scrambled to put out press releases saying they have competing products in development. 2 years later the Bold(EDIT: Storm) was released and everyone realized it's just a hastily designed iPhone clone. That marks the end of BB's dominance. >Used to work for BB/RIM
Google's live from Paris event private/deleted immediately
121–130 of 391 posts
Re: Google's live from Paris event private/deleted immediately
#122Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Google is going to bleed credibility for every month that they don't have a lamda/llm enabled search integrated into the home page. I don't know that end-users really care about having a GPT-written paragraph accompanying their search results. Is there some other kind of output AI search currently provides that I'm missing?
Usually I do a search, looking for specific facts, like what is the pricing for X? On Google you get to click through links and read a lot of filter, ads, promotions, etc. Why not just get the answer? A huge percentage of searches are for existing websites, like "facebook." This might not be a big challenge if you just wanted to go to facebook. This morning I saw a retweet from a Google/former Deepmind engineer, of s…
https://www.perplexity.ai/?s=u&uuid=6f7fe592-c11f-4df9-a2bf-...
https://www.google.com/search?q=what+is+the+current+average+...
Google's results were far more informative and usable.
I then tried something I thought would be more up Perplexity's alley: "Who was the first US president with a last name starting with R?"
https://www.perplexity.ai/?s=u&uuid=8d60cf3f-eab5-4af6-a616-...
Their answer is not correct. Google didn't even try to answer my question directly, but it did send me to a government website with a chronological list of presidents where I was able to quickly verify that the answer was Teddy Roosevelt.
Re: Google's live from Paris event private/deleted immediately
#123Re: Google's live from Paris event private/deleted immediately
#124ChatGPT as a search engine sounds amazing but also really quite problematic. It's an extension of the issue with Google's "instant answers" (or whatever they're called): right now the creators of the content Google/ChatGPT scrapes are usually paid via the advertisements on their pages. When no-one clicks though any more, no-one gets paid. I know, I know, the ad banner-funded web is a mess and I wouldn't mourn its dem…
Perplexity https://www.perplexity.ai/ does it well in my opinion. It builds a paragraph answering your query but it has a lot of footnotes that link directly to websites. Ex: "geopolitical reason for palm oil being banned and why it's bad for health" The EU has banned palm oil in biofuels due to its negative impacts on health[1] and its geopolitical implications, such as favoring alternative crops grown in Europe[2].…
Re: Google's live from Paris event private/deleted immediately
#125I think the bigger problem is how does something like ChatGPT fit into Google's business model for search. Conversational interface and/or giving immediate answers may not be the best option in terms of ad revenue. Users re-iterating their search queries gives more opportunities to show ads. When users are scanning the page for best results, they might be more likely to click on the ads with clever wording.
> I think the bigger problem is how does something like ChatGPT fit into Google's business model for search. Alternatively, how does ChatGPT fit into the usage model for search? I know it's taken on faith in this forum that somehow Google[1] search is bad or failing or about to be killed or whatever. But... it's actually just fine? It does what the market wants, more or less perfectly. Everyone uses it to find the 99…
I don’t think it does fit into it, but search is a means to an end. What people want is to find stuff.
For that, it might work. I also agree with you that Google already works for it in many cases, though. For example, if you ask Google for the weather in Foo, it first shows you the weather in Foo, then ads from advertisers who claim they can answer that question, and only then search results for hopefully relevant sites.
Re: Google's live from Paris event private/deleted immediately
#126ChatGPT as a search engine sounds amazing but also really quite problematic. It's an extension of the issue with Google's "instant answers" (or whatever they're called): right now the creators of the content Google/ChatGPT scrapes are usually paid via the advertisements on their pages. When no-one clicks though any more, no-one gets paid. I know, I know, the ad banner-funded web is a mess and I wouldn't mourn its dem…
Perplexity https://www.perplexity.ai/ does it well in my opinion. It builds a paragraph answering your query but it has a lot of footnotes that link directly to websites. Ex: "geopolitical reason for palm oil being banned and why it's bad for health" The EU has banned palm oil in biofuels due to its negative impacts on health[1] and its geopolitical implications, such as favoring alternative crops grown in Europe[2].…
I feel like there is something here, but I wonder if second order effects make it trickier than it appears atm
Re: Google's live from Paris event private/deleted immediately
#127I hope Google is not pulling a Blackberry moment. I remember when the iPhone was first announced, BB scrambled to put out press releases saying they have competing products in development. 2 years later the Bold(EDIT: Storm) was released and everyone realized it's just a hastily designed iPhone clone. That marks the end of BB's dominance. >Used to work for BB/RIM
Blackberry Storm was released in November 2008, which is a year after the iPhone, not 2 years. The first Android phone came out just a month before in October. I was in NYC for job interviews then I saw billboards for both everywhere.
Re: Google's live from Paris event private/deleted immediately
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
Google’s dominance is because of network effects; the largest search engine collects more data about what people are searching for and has the largest ad inventory, making it hard to compete with. ChatGPT has similar network effects with feedback. If Google is displaced, it will likely be in favor of another single dominant solution, not a commoditized industry with lots of players. It’s possible that niche domains l…
With this kind of reasoning there would be no way to disrupt a first actor in a new field.
Re: Google's live from Paris event private/deleted immediately
#129I hope Google is not pulling a Blackberry moment. I remember when the iPhone was first announced, BB scrambled to put out press releases saying they have competing products in development. 2 years later the Bold(EDIT: Storm) was released and everyone realized it's just a hastily designed iPhone clone. That marks the end of BB's dominance. >Used to work for BB/RIM
Re: Google's live from Paris event private/deleted immediately
#130Wow, they really are in disarray. Maybe the (ex-)Googlers in recent AI HackerNews articles are wrong in proclaiming that Google will come on top of the AI wars, due to their immense contributions to its lead-up. I look forward to see what new Bing amounts to the industry, as well as Microsoft’s partnership with OpenAI for Bing, Azure, and whatever else is planned. This is an exciting tectonic shift.
It's a similar reaction that Intel supporters had when it was clear AMD had become a credible threat. There were claims that Intel had 1-2 unreleased CPU architectures just ready to drop at a moments notice to counter anything AMD came out with... we've seen how that played out. Google has been distracted milking their cash cow, just as Intel was, while the competition caught up. The main difference is that Google do…