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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?

#481

Post by donkeybeer »

gopalv wrote: post #251
Ingaz wrote: post #244

I think that ChatGPT3 does not matter a lot. But a lot of people fed up with Google and will be glad to try something different. It's like when Apple came and eat 15-20% of market of notebooks. Dominance of Microsoft still not ended. Actually I suspect that Yandex search is better - I like how they preview answers for technical questions. Picture search - seems that Google is the worst. Maybe it's time to start searc…

> a lot of people fed up with Google and will be glad to try something different. I had to use DuckDuckGo to locate some mailing list threads (about an apache jira issue) which were clearly on Google at least a few years ago. So "hdfs forward seek" in Google returns nothing , but DDG does. If Google isn't repurposing all its search compute to something else secret, I can't explain why it suddenly got all dumb and for…

Its very strange. There are many cases I noticed where I double quote search a string and it yields no results but once I do "my query" site:thesiteiknowitsfrom.com it gives the results.

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

#482

Post by futureshock »

college_physics wrote: post #425

It is depressing that people dont recognize that Google has invented and perfected a parasitic business model that has destroyed the internet (and much of tech with it) and this episode feels like just another turn of the downward spiral. The article aims to offer a preliminary analysis of whether Microsoft can become a better parasite: Grabbing the content people generate online, paying nothing, and using it deftly…

Google started out noble, but was poisoned by its own success and by extension, poisoned everything it touched. The web, as a platform, is nearly dead. Walled garden phone apps are almost completely dominate. The revenue model is on such shaky ground that almost all remaining websites either went clickbait with a pox of ads or paywall. I would not be able to list more than 5 websites that survived Ads and SEO, perhaps only Wikipedia.

These LLMs will be the end. They will capture enough of the user attention that the few remaining ad supported sites will be wiped out. “Content”, that low quality grist every site is filled with to capture users for a few seconds before they click on will become worthless, no different than the low quality crap the LLMs spew out.

Finally, we will stop trying to keep the bloated corpse of the web alive and will move on. It will be the death of a dream. At least we can all let go and focus our energies on a new dream. Whatever that dream is, I hope high quality, human created art, knowledge, opinion and creativity is at the center of it.

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

#483

Post by zarzavat »

graphe wrote: post #463
PostOnce wrote: post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? Webrings? Don't tell me you forgot Yahoo, Excite, Altavista, Lycos, and all those other search engines existed! Lycos also had hotbot and tripod.com, back when homepages were your internet presence instead of social media. Maybe Google had results that were a bit more relevant and won that competition, but they didn't Change Everything.

Where are they now? Yahoo was good before google, but google did change everything. It's as if you brought up the first Motorola phone or blackberry and compared it to the iPhone saying it was just ok.

Google changed everything but nowadays it feels as bad as Yahoo was at the time. Google search is now optimised for ad $$$, not for finding what you're looking for. If Google hadn't existed then maybe we would have got competitiveness in the search space.

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

#484

Post by zarzavat »

nootropicat wrote: post #467
dietr1ch wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I grew up using the internet as a child and when Google came out it was way more a blessing than a parasite. The web was hard to navigate and you relied on webpages "befriending" each other and helping you navigate to similar pages. That was real navigation and it had terrible recall. Once google became the Internet's frontend everything was one or two hops away. It was awesome, and I think that it has evolved in a w…

I would have agreed with you in the past. Now, I have to disagree. >the web was hard to navigate and you relied on webpages "befriending" each other and helping you navigate to similar pages. That was real navigation and it had terrible recall. This is exactly why internet was decentralized. A network of social connections between small online spaces people congregated in was essential to find what you wanted. It was…

I don't think LLMs will replace Reddit. Reddit is mostly a social network for people with similar interests, or for funny cat pictures. LLMs don't provide that human connection.

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

#485

Post by sw104 »

fithisux wrote: post #438
azangru wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is depressing that people dont recognize that Google has invented and perfected a parasitic business model ... The article aims to offer a preliminary analysis of whether Microsoft can become a better parasite In this model, are end users who use it to search for information parasites as well? After all, they are consuming content that other people generate online, and usually pay nothing for it. And they love t…

Google is there to put tolls. This is a parasitic model by definition. Search should be democratized by governments. It is central and should be for everybody. No control.

Ah yes.

Search provided by the Russian government to the Russian people, Chinese government to the Chinese people, British government to the British people, X government to the X people..

What could go wrong?

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

#487

Post by rwalle »

revskill wrote: post #256
erklik wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I don't use Phone, nor Maps, nor Youtube, nor Kubernetes, all the things you listed. They're helpful to you, not me.

"I don't use phone"

You have already lost the argument. I'm sorry but nobody would care about anything you say because that almost just does not apply to anyone else.

Also the fact that those products have no effects on you has nothing to do with whether a company is important or if their products are significant or helpful to the vast majority of human population.

And to be a bit cynical, it feels the only purpose of this comment is to show that you have a unique lifestyle, not to contribute to the discussion constructively or based on consensus. (Of which there are many on HN)

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

#488

Post by yyyk »

victor106 wrote: post #341
Bhilai wrote: post #199

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…

Both are evil but I agree that Google is less evil than Microsoft. Just like the OP I have first hand info on how atrocious Microsoft’s internal privacy controls are. The later versions of Windows are just ad space for Microsoft to advertise. Azure is the worst of the 3 cloud providers. Horrible developer experience and documentation and reliability. That said, I would still take Satya’s Microsoft over Balmers any da…

It's a slightly different from of eeeevil, up to you to decide which is lesser, or if the distinction has any meaning at all.

Microsoft is the capitalist evil. Google is the technocratic AI evil. The first wants your money, as much of it as they can hoover, using dark patterns if useful for it. The second wants to optimize your life using _their_ metrics, without ever engaging with you (humanity is the problem - engaging with it never scales).

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

#489

Post by college_physics »

futureshock wrote: post #482
college_physics wrote: post #425

It is depressing that people dont recognize that Google has invented and perfected a parasitic business model that has destroyed the internet (and much of tech with it) and this episode feels like just another turn of the downward spiral. The article aims to offer a preliminary analysis of whether Microsoft can become a better parasite: Grabbing the content people generate online, paying nothing, and using it deftly…

Google started out noble, but was poisoned by its own success and by extension, poisoned everything it touched. The web, as a platform, is nearly dead. Walled garden phone apps are almost completely dominate. The revenue model is on such shaky ground that almost all remaining websites either went clickbait with a pox of ads or paywall. I would not be able to list more than 5 websites that survived Ads and SEO, perhap…

I wish I could find something to disagree. If there is any hope it ultimately comes from the fact that the technologies we talk about are at various stages of commoditization. Maybe at some point the gap between what-is and what-can-be will be so stark that it will set in motion positive forces that are currently dormant.

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

#490

Post by throw_away1525 »

ajdoingnothing wrote: post #130
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…

Completely agree. Heck, even the current 'waiting list' page (bing.com/new) looks so outdated and a mess. I don't know whether it is the font, the colors, the composition or margins.. Bing itself looks like a mess too. Microsoft truly has no taste.

Holy moly this is bad. It looks like a Github portfolio project done by someone who is looking for their first front-end job.
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