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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?

#371

Post by midoridensha »

netheril96 wrote: post #362
midoridensha wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It has been many years since Google has launched an innovative new product. I can say the exact same thing about countless other large companies: Facebook, Intel, Microsoft, Boeing, AMD, AT&T, I could go on and on. At some point, launching innovative new products isn't really that important for a company, when many people on the services that company provides.

Google used to be considered different from and better than all the companies you list (except Facebook). Being lumped together with those companies would have been seen as an insult to Google in the past.

Times change, and companies grow and mature. Intel used to be a big innovator too, like when they decided making RAM wasn't the best strategy and decided to try making CPUs instead. They've come a long way since inventing the 4004.

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

#372

Post by nr2x »

somethoughts wrote: post #185
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…

Some have postulated that this might be Google's Blackberry moment. On the flip side I wonder if its actually more like its Dropbox moment. The press loves a David and Goliath story; the young disruptor versus the stodgy disrupted.[1] At that time, Dropbox was David, coming out of nowhere in a hurry and had a product that seemingly should be so obvious for Google to launch but hadn't - making Google seem antiquated a…

Google makes fuck all revenue from Drive, it never mattered. EVERYTHING at Google, most notably the cash fire that is Cloud, is funded by Search. This is the first time that is in danger and over 25 years they never came up with a fallback plan. This is an unmitigated disaster and purely the result of mismanagement.

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

#373

Post by netheril96 »

danShumway wrote: post #178

I don't understand this hype and I feel like I'm looking at different products than everyone else is. There are very few complaints I have about Google that I think this technology helps solve, and for most of my complaints, getting summaries of searches makes the situation worse, not better. To be completely clear: even if the AI was perfect , I don't know that I want even an actual human being to sit down and summa…

From my point of view the only usage of LLM is generation. Such as writing peer reviews, self reviews, OKRs, when I already know the truth and can edit out any errors. I will never trust a LLM's answer to something I don't already know.

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

#374

Post by nr2x »

xyzzyz wrote: post #38
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…

They didn’t exactly stop innovating: ChatGPT itself is using tremendous amounts of innovation that was done and published by Google. What they stopped is beating their competition to launching compelling products based on the innovation they do.

Nearly all of the authors left Google years ago. If the company doesn’t keep the people innovating it’s not like they’re some magic middle manager who can make it happen without them.

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

#375

Post by onethought »

MuffinFlavored wrote: post #364
blarghyblarg wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both are driven by a profit motive, but Google takes some forms of privacy more seriously. Lets not use emotionally driven, ambiguous terms like 'evil' to describe these kinds of things. Google is not, for instance, conspiring to commit genocides, nor is Microsoft planning a coup in an Eastern European nation with the goal of colonizing them to use as indentured technical support.

> Both are driven by a profit motive What do you want a corporation/company/business (of any size) to be driven by?

- Some environmental metrics (could be solved by pricing environmental harm)

- Ethical Metrics (could be solved by allowing corporations, directors, boards to face similar punishments to humans committing crime).

– Something that measured employee treatment.

Profit is such a shitty motive... it's effective, but still shitty.

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

#376

Post by nr2x »

likeabbas wrote: post #196
awad wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

I wouldn’t be surprised if they got spun off to die. The amount of cash they burned on that is insane.

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

#377

Post by netheril96 »

bloblaw wrote: post #160
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.

Similar statements have been made about metaverse too.

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

#378

Post by kweingar »

I am really perplexed by people talking about the end of traditional web search.

I guess HN users tend to look up lots of facts and whatnot. But generative AI is not a better UX for queries like "LeBron James instagram" or "wordle" or "Avatar 3 release date" or "WSJ" or "Spanish to English" or "cricket news".

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

#379

Post by scubadude »

rvba wrote: post #317
NayamAmarshe wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Typically I add "site:reddit.com" to the end of any search where I want to read people's opinions of a product. Brave Search natively shows you reddit discussions on every search query. You can give that a try as well.

Problem is that it seems there are more and more reddit posts with paid SEO spam. Some even look AI generated.

Oh reddit has always been a guerilla marketer's wet dream lol

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

#380

Post by throwaway2037 »

erklik wrote: post #235
revskill wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not much about Microsoft. At least it improved human life in serious ways (Typescript, VSCode,...). What did Google bring to my life ? Nothing except for spam stuffs from Ad, Email,... You're responsible for your data, not Google, not Microsoft.

Uh... Maps? Open, Permissive phone OS compared to the alternative? Greatest entertainment/information system, especially one that's democraticsed producing media? In terms dev-related stuff, TensorFlow - literally something that's made today's ML possible, Kubernetes, BigTable, MapReduce, and yknow, that good old thing called Chrome.. I understand hating on Google. They're not that great, but none of the FAANG are "g…

Real Question: What is wrong with Netflix? (The "N" in FAANG, right?) The only thing I can think of: Work life balance does not sound good. It sounds like you need to be "pro-athlete" level and are constantly at risk of being laid-off or replaced by someone better. That said, they pay silly good money. But are they evil to their customers? I don't see that.
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