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Is Google’s 20-year search dominance about to end?

economist.com

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Re: Is Google’s 20-year search dominance about to end?

#51

Post by fdgsdfogijq »

How could they have left such a massive gap in their product. They literally have the model and resources to revolutionize search. We all know LLMs will hurt their ad revenue, but regardless they have to have known this was coming. This is so similar to FB getting caught off guard by TikTok. There was a gap in the utility of their product (TikTok enabled grass roots content creation), and they just left it wide open.

Its some combination of:

1. ChatGPT is so much better than previous versions that Google themselves was stunned by the utility.

2. Incompetence/Gross negligence across Google

3. No way for them to reconcile the lost ad revenue, so they released nothing. This case is hard to argue for, as they would know theyre a sitting duck.

Regardless I am hoping for a massive Google failure. Theyre the ones responsible for the SEO content waste land that is the modern internet. We have all suffered at the feet of their ad machine

Re: Is Google’s 20-year search dominance about to end?

#52

Post by mattwad »

dilap wrote: post #31

Microsoft's integration of ChatGPT with Bing is really bad. No-one wants a busy search page with a side-bar of ChatGPT; what's the point of that? The correct interface for ChatGPT + search is just...ChatGPT. But it can also show you a list of web search results, when it's appropriate. A super-clean interface, that always shows you exactly what you want. That would be a killer feature and represent a real threat to Go…

As someone else said, the problem is ChatGPT lies straight to your face, whereas at least Google's answers are based on structured data by someone. It's traceable, whereas I would not trust ChatGPT ever to tell me the correct temperature to cook a steak.

Re: Is Google’s 20-year search dominance about to end?

#53

Post by massysett »

RosanaAnaDana wrote: post #12

The gaming of SEO has been quietly destroying the utility of search writ large as a mechanism for quite a while. Over the last year, its become palpable. Google has such utility in this regard that in some cases, a hallucinating lie-machine offers better answer than an index of what information is available on the internet. This issue with with Googles failure to respond to the deluge of SEO driven content in their s…

I see this sort of comment a lot, and I honestly don't know what it's talking about. What are people expecting out of Google that it's not delivering?

It can only index stuff that's on the Web. Stuff on the Web is, contrary to what is popularly asserted, only a tiny fraction of all human knowledge.

I think people are forgetting how bad search was before Google. Google drove Web directories to extinction. Remember Yahoo!? Back in that era, if I were looking for something as simple as the University of Michigan, I clicked and drilled down through a Yahoo directory. The obvious search query would have been useless. Google changed all that.

I view Google as the yellow pages. It works well for that. Is it an oracle of knowledge? Of course not. How could I possibly expect to find knowledge on a place where there is no reward for making it available? People producing knowledge don't work for free.

I've tried ChatGPT and it's no better. It serves up stuff that is flat-out wrong.

Re: Is Google’s 20-year search dominance about to end?

#54

Post by silisili »

mertd wrote: post #40
silisili wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stadia wasn't really that innovative, how many times has cloud/streaming gaming been done before? I can think of at least 3. Also, it's already dead.

Which three? Did they actually work with reasonable input latency?

I thought of OnLive, Shadow, and Geforce Now.

The only one of those I'd used was Geforce Now, and found it very similar to Stadia wrt latency. Stadia had a much nicer interface, though.

Re: Is Google’s 20-year search dominance about to end?

#55

Post by jibe »

marcopicentini wrote: post #15

It's been a while since they stopped innovating. Although Google, Maps, Youtube are of daily use they are monetized exclusively by advertising which is annoying and hated by many. It has been many years since Google has launched an innovative new product. I don't think ChatGPT will gain daily traction after this hype. Anyway we could say that MSFT and AMZN have demostrated more power to innovate with different busine…

Google, Maps, Youtube are of daily use they are monetized exclusively by advertising.

I don’t know how much. Money it makes, but there is paid API access to maps.

Re: Is Google’s 20-year search dominance about to end?

#56

Post by lagrange77 »

sixQuarks wrote: post #27
RosanaAnaDana wrote: post #12

The gaming of SEO has been quietly destroying the utility of search writ large as a mechanism for quite a while. Over the last year, its become palpable. Google has such utility in this regard that in some cases, a hallucinating lie-machine offers better answer than an index of what information is available on the internet. This issue with with Googles failure to respond to the deluge of SEO driven content in their s…

Agreed, I am looking forward to the disruption of google.

I am looking forward to the disruption of SEO.

Re: Is Google’s 20-year search dominance about to end?

#57

Post by OJFord »

saudade97 wrote: post #42

I don't get the HN hate of Google as a search tool. Yes, SEO has made searching more difficult, but Google is still by far the best search engine provided that your searches are focused and you use search tools (e.g., excluding terms, focusing on certain sites, etc.). I've tried other search engines (e.g., DDG, Bing) and they just aren't as good as Google.

I've used DDG exclusively for about 10 years, it's good enough that I don't realise I'm missing out.

Re: Is Google’s 20-year search dominance about to end?

#58

Post by fdgsdfogijq »

chomp wrote: post #18
Invictus0 wrote: post #9

Do you people really want AI generated answers? As if the internet wasn't bland enough as it is. This forum has been soapboxing for years about the longtail of blogs and BBs and niche sites, right up to the moment that Bing got chatgpt.

I just want Google to fall, nothing much more than that. I personally am going to continue using Kagi, but will quietly cheer Microsoft eating Google's lunch.

I would love to see google fail. They have held the internet hostage for far too long

Re: Is Google’s 20-year search dominance about to end?

#59

Post by cjbgkagh »

doctor_eval wrote: post #30
RosanaAnaDana wrote: post #12

The gaming of SEO has been quietly destroying the utility of search writ large as a mechanism for quite a while. Over the last year, its become palpable. Google has such utility in this regard that in some cases, a hallucinating lie-machine offers better answer than an index of what information is available on the internet. This issue with with Googles failure to respond to the deluge of SEO driven content in their s…

> This issue with with Googles failure to respond to the deluge of SEO driven content in their searches. I’d argue that they even encouraged it.

it sells more ads at a higher price

Re: Is Google’s 20-year search dominance about to end?

#60

Post by i_love_cookies »

silisili wrote: post #33
josu wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It has been many years since Google has launched an innovative new product. Stadia launched in 2019.

Stadia wasn't really that innovative, how many times has cloud/streaming gaming been done before? I can think of at least 3. Also, it's already dead.

[dead]
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