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

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

#191

Post by sidewndr46 »

joe_the_user wrote: post #124
qrio2 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Things that i *know* were parts of the internet, that I could find via google 5-10 years ago are no longer possible to find. I get single page search results sometimes, with not even the capability to keep browsing 'more' pages to see things that may be tangentially related. Google has just decided to not show them at all. Remember when the bottom of the page was "Goooooooooooooooogle" and you could click each "o" to…

Absolutely this. Google has gotten notably worse in just the last two years. Today: * Any term that might be related to a commercial product? That product comes first and frequently only. * Search for two terms? It will first give it's prefer result for each separately - usually commercial products (ha). And then might give them together. * Quoted terms are often taken as vague suggestions. Negative sign is often use…

One of the worst innovations they've introduced is returning results for things you did not search for. At this point, potentially anything is a valid search result for any search query.

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

#192

Post by adam_arthur »

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…

If search gets usurped, or even a marginal but meaningful reduction in usage due to competition from AIs, then its not surprising at all that Google’s near term prospects could be worse than Coke.

Even Google winning the AI wars leaves them worse off as the operating profit potential of querying an AI vs their search index has to be far lower.

As to usage, once you start to integrate ChatGPT into your workflows it can meaningfully benefit vs traditional search. Ive been able to find information on specific programming language concepts, with generated examples, far faster than searching.

I can ask it about GameDev concepts and ask for bulleted lists or higher/lower level of detail in the answers. Information is presented in a much easier to consume manner

That being said, most stocks that are considered defensive are quite overvalued on a fundamental basis. I would consider a PE of 26 for Coke quite undesirable, though there’s much worse

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

#193

Post by bitL »

system16 wrote: post #87
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…

Ads aside, the UI of Youtube and Maps is atrocious. There is so much room for improvement here, but it will never happen from Google. It's just not in their DNA. Unfortunately, they have such a huge moat here I doubt we'll see anything better for a long time.

They used to have pretty good UI for maps until some PM needed to make their mark... Given they count individual pixels and +/-1 deltas in colors I don't think they are ever going to get any UI correctly. The initial simple UI with just a single search input box that was highly praised by minimalists was just an accident.

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

#194

Post by [deleted] »

awad wrote: post #169
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…

I think YouTube, which has a paid and ad-free version along with its Live TV offering, somehow manages to still be a sleeper hit within the larger Google portfolio and doesn't get talked about enough.

[deleted]

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

#195

Post by sidewndr46 »

massysett wrote: post #53
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 Yah…

Just search for "chocolate chip cookie recipe" and show me a single result that isn't a complete trash website. A significant number are nothing more than ad farms that just load infinite ads in IFRAMEs and similar stuff like that.

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

#196

Post by likeabbas »

awad wrote: post #169
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…

I think YouTube, which has a paid and ad-free version along with its Live TV offering, somehow manages to still be a sleeper hit within the larger Google portfolio and doesn't get talked about enough.

What happened to the Waymo hype? If Waymo manages to break through and become a sufficient AI taxi, then car ownership becomes optional for a majority of Americans (unlike today).

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

#198

Post by emodendroket »

squiffsquiff wrote: post #188
emodendroket wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also challenge people’s memory of it being so much better. Was it really? Or just different?

It was an honest attempt on the crawlers' part and it was a more level playing field. If you didn't find what you wanted on lycos, you could look on Yahoo or Alta Vista or WebCrawler or something instead. For a time there were meta Search engines that allowed you to search other search engine amalgamated results.

Yeah, you had your choice of several awful results and everyone couldn’t shut up about how good Google was when it was available. If people mean “Google used to be better” I’m willing to entertain the idea, but you’re out of your mind if you miss using Altavista and Dogpile.

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

#199

Post by Bhilai »

Sorry to break it to you folks but if you hated your data being with Google, you are in for a surprise on how atrociously bad Microsoft is at privacy and security. Multiple close friends who have worked at Microsoft tell me that search history data - who is searching what, is basically sitting in systems with ACLs so bad that 20-30K employees have access through transitive membership of groups. To access a customer's data you just need to know token which is logged everywhere and is apparently very easy to generate. I have heard horror stories from them about privacy incidents which never went public.

From what I know about Google, they are serious about least privilege type of stuff internally and employees dont get arbitrary unbound access to systems or data.

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

#200

Post by kikokikokiko »

The quality of Google search has decreased so much over the last few years that I had to resort to using Yandex, a company that has a budget that is orders of magnitude smaller that the Big G and is under the control of a dictatorship. Google search has two huge problems: SEO and censorship. Search for anything related to products/torrents/streams/politics on Google and your results will SUCK, due to one of the two reasons stated above.

The recent Yandex hack/leak has the cynic in me connecting the dots and, seeing how Google search seems to be facing REAL threats to it's dominance since it's creation... maybe some guys with the deepest pockets in the world are starting to enter WAR mode.

Destroying Yandex advantages on the SEO battlefield by way of divulging their parameters to the world would be the Franz Ferdinand assassination moment of the Great Search War.

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