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OpenAI tech gives Microsoft's Bing a boost in search battle with Google

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Re: OpenAI tech gives Microsoft's Bing a boost in search battle with Google

#61
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sad but true. Google is the new altavista or yahoo.

That's unfair to altavista. Altavista never got evil, they just became irrelevant. (And even when they were irrelevant, they still had a search syntax that I miss. You could search for things like term_a NEAR term_b.)

Amen. Buried, unknown to most, Google used to have a similar AROUND(n) syntax. No idea if it still is respected.

Google seems to have refocused around returning any result out of a set of popular links rather than deep dives. It feels like I must quote every term I enter now.

Re: OpenAI tech gives Microsoft's Bing a boost in search battle with Google

#62
post #56

I feel like I’m missing out on something but other than to summarize text or fill pointless and lazy homework assignments I don’t have much of a use of gpt search. I think I have a trust issue with it and I rather get the raw result and process it myself than to believe that what this model “understood” is right. Anyone else feels this way?

I find it useful in Edge where it's aware of the tab contents. It's nice to be able to ask it to summarize a long article, or find Reddit comments about it and summarize those. I think it uses Bing's search index because it does not seem to be aware of my personal data on my tabs

Is that an opt-in option or a default 'feature'?

Re: OpenAI tech gives Microsoft's Bing a boost in search battle with Google

#63

Maybe because Google is actual trash and it went from being the best search engine to being an SEO-infested desert of a search, where your query is interpreted however they want not how you want. Latest example from today - search for "micropython html parser" - 100% of results are about normal python not micropython, with the first 4 results being for generic paid programming courses. It's completely useless as a se…

> where your query is interpreted however they want not how you want

Exactly, I feel it is because with Google advertisers are the real customers and they could not care less about user experience unless it affects that bottom line. Case in point is the removal of the dislike button which users loved but advertisers hated. Google is a rich one trick pony right now anyway.

Re: OpenAI tech gives Microsoft's Bing a boost in search battle with Google

#65
post #15

I signed up to the Bing GPT "beta" waitlist (I hadn't logged into my Microsoft account in years) only to be told, days later, that I had to use Edge to try it. I noped out of there.

You can just install the app on your phone and use it

Re: OpenAI tech gives Microsoft's Bing a boost in search battle with Google

#66

That's cool in the short term, but it will be news when it's sustained. I logged in to Bing for the first time in forever to play with the AI some, but it didn't change my default search behavior of using Google, and now it's been easily two weeks since I went to Bing at all.

Right, I would be surprised if Bing sees any sustained benefit. The search engine still sucks, and the way they integrated ChatGPT sucks even more. I use Google a lot less these days, but the beneficiary, in my case at least, is not Bing, but chat.openai.com, where I have become a paying customer.

Re: OpenAI tech gives Microsoft's Bing a boost in search battle with Google

#67
post #40

Maybe because Google is actual trash and it went from being the best search engine to being an SEO-infested desert of a search, where your query is interpreted however they want not how you want. Latest example from today - search for "micropython html parser" - 100% of results are about normal python not micropython, with the first 4 results being for generic paid programming courses. It's completely useless as a se…

I just performed that search in Google and the top two results are links to PyPI and Snyk packages for micropython-html.parser. The third result is a link to python.org documentation for html.parser (not micropython). Bing returns the result for PyPI and the one for the non-micropython python.org result. I don't see a big difference here (except maybe me learning about Snyk through google and not Bing?).

I mean, this is a big part of the issue. Of course the issue isn't reproducible; Google is trying to do the search based on their model of what you want back. Sometimes you benefit from that, other times it pushes the results you want way down. I just tested this and there were some micropython related results in the top ten, but the majority were for beautiful soup with no mention of micropython.

Re: OpenAI tech gives Microsoft's Bing a boost in search battle with Google

#68
The broader question may not be whether its Bing or Google. People may not be searching anymore to find the sites which can potentially answer a problem/query - instead they may just want the answer. GPT/LLms may even slow down the whole search engine industry or make it more like chatgpt versions of it.

Re: OpenAI tech gives Microsoft's Bing a boost in search battle with Google

#69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not since Google results became such garbage. Plus, the chats provide references. So easy to verify.

I love that Bing Chat actually links to references. It felt like something was missing from ChatGPT without it.

Just because it does, it doesn’t mean they’re being interpreted correctly, so watch out for https://xkcd.com/906/

Re: OpenAI tech gives Microsoft's Bing a boost in search battle with Google

#70
post #51

Maybe because Google is actual trash and it went from being the best search engine to being an SEO-infested desert of a search, where your query is interpreted however they want not how you want. Latest example from today - search for "micropython html parser" - 100% of results are about normal python not micropython, with the first 4 results being for generic paid programming courses. It's completely useless as a se…

I know this might be controversial but I believe SEO ruined search.

It totally did! It’s the Eternal September effect on the internet as a whole. Marketers climbing all over each other, desperate to steal the eyeballs of the naïve masses.
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