Is Google’s 20-year search dominance about to end? • Hacker News Board

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

#151

Post by emodendroket » Wed, Feb 08, 2023, 10:12 PM UTC

nearbuy wrote: post #128

mattwad wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Perhaps a bad example, since ChatGPT consistently gets the steak temperature right (or at least gives the same values as Google). Internal temperature of about 130-135°F (54-57°C) for medium rare, etc.

“It tells me the right answer” and “I trust it to give me the right answer” are two different propositions.

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

#152

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Feb 08, 2023, 10:12 PM UTC

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.

[deleted]

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

#153

Post by bloblaw » Wed, Feb 08, 2023, 10:12 PM UTC

josefresco wrote: post #22

Let us think about the defaults in our life: Windows: Most use Chrome (Google default), the rest use Edge (Bing default). MacOS: Safari (Google default) and Chrome (Google default) Android: Chrome (Google default) iOS: Safari (Google default) So it looks like the only vulnerability here would be iOS and then possibly PC/MacOS if enough users switch their browser.

All good points. Windows still very much dominates desktops / laptops sold (especially large corp environments)...so the default installed Edge browser + Bing is a significant share of users.

And with Edge being "basically chrome", and supporting Chrome plugins, the switching cost from Chrome -> Edge is quite small.

But for mobile, Android + iOS dominate...so that all goes to Google.

I think this could mean that Bing + ChatGPT has a really opportunity to beat Google in Search...it's gonna be hard, but I've never even considered them more than a distant 2nd option until now.

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

#154

Post by emodendroket » Wed, Feb 08, 2023, 10:12 PM UTC

TheCoelacanth wrote: post #115

mattwad wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

ChatGPT lies to your face, while Google just finds other peoples lies and shows you a list of the best ones.

And the latter gives me a lot more to go on when I wish to evaluate what I’m reading.

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

#155

Post by tootie » Wed, Feb 08, 2023, 10:12 PM UTC

Betteridge's law right here. I don't see how ChatGPT is going to do anything in the search space and it's stunning to see people tripping over themselves to declare Microsoft the winner already. I'm already predicting they will write down this acquisition for a few billion in 2 or 3 years.

AI question and answer searches have existed for a while. Alexa does an equivalent job as ChatGPT and I find it to rarely be useful. Google's stroke of genius was to skip curation and algorithmic ranking in favor of a heuristic. Namely, PageRank. I know it's gone through years of refinement, tuning and tinkering, but the fundamental basis of popularity is just a way more reliable and durable approach than trying to intuit what people want based on what's on the page. You'd absolute be back to dark days of blackhat SEOs bombing results by inundating GPT with keywords. It won't work. The popularity model works with and only with a network effect of having zillions of successful searches to mine. Maybe Bing has just enough data to be useful and maybe ChatGPT can do a marginally better job of giving boxed answers to specific questions, but that's not the thing that makes search valuable.

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

#156

Post by basch » Wed, Feb 08, 2023, 10:13 PM UTC

emodendroket wrote: post #151

nearbuy wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps a bad example, since ChatGPT consistently gets the steak temperature right (or at least gives the same values as Google). Internal temperature of about 130-135°F (54-57°C) for medium rare, etc.

“It tells me the right answer” and “I trust it to give me the right answer” are two different propositions.

Trust but verify

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

#157

Post by emodendroket » Wed, Feb 08, 2023, 10:14 PM UTC

basch wrote: post #156

emodendroket wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“It tells me the right answer” and “I trust it to give me the right answer” are two different propositions.

Trust but verify

If I need to verify the information somewhere trustworthy why not just skip the first step where I get unreliable information?

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

#158

Post by ezoe » Wed, Feb 08, 2023, 10:14 PM UTC

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…

The last year? Google search was defeated by SEO for more than a decade ago for non-English language such as Japanese.

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

#159

Post by Aeolun » Wed, Feb 08, 2023, 10:14 PM UTC

mywittyname wrote: post #97

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 suspect the future is far more bleak. At least with "search results", users can scroll down past the SEO content to something more relevant. Once these new chatgpt models take over, it's winner-take-all for search results. Everyone is going to be throwing money at getting their message seen, since it will be the final word. How much do you think companies are willing to spend to be the answer to, "what is the most…

I imagine that ChatGPT would be useless for these things. Immediately saying “I’m sorry dave, I can’t answer that” even now.

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

#160

Post by bloblaw » Wed, Feb 08, 2023, 10:14 PM UTC

lvl102 wrote: post #74

ChatGPT is still a novelty. People will kick tires etc but utility is just not there yet.

Similar statements have been made about most dominant technology when it was in its infancy. You are not wrong, but it can quickly go from novelty to necessity once folks start to rely on it.