Samsung considers moving to Bing as default search engine • Hacker News Board

Re: Samsung considers moving to Bing as default search engine

#431

Post by JustLurking2022 » Mon, Apr 17, 2023, 4:54 PM UTC

GeekyBear wrote: post #387

simula67 wrote: post #21

I always thought that Google made a big blunder by not encroaching upon Microsoft's turf more aggressively. They should have tried to make a better desktop OS (just buy Canonical or something) and then eat into Microsoft Office market share by releasing Google Office for Desktop. Wait for an opportunity to emerge and then pounce. This is precisely what Microsoft did to Google. They had Bing running in the background…

> I always thought that Google made a big blunder by not encroaching upon Microsoft's turf more aggressively. I've always been shocked that Google didn't face antitrust action over using their internet video monopoly to kill Windows Phone. They wouldn't create a Youtube app for Windows Phone, nor would they allow Microsoft to create one themselves.

I had a Windows phone and android simultaneously - I actually liked the UI on the windows phone but I think I may have been the only person on earth that did because I virtually never saw another one. From that perspective, I can understand choosing not to build for the platform.

Re: Samsung considers moving to Bing as default search engine

#432

Post by moonchrome » Mon, Apr 17, 2023, 4:55 PM UTC

gremlinsinc wrote: post #355

bowsamic wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

10 years ago, Google was one of the most exciting companies in the world to me, culminating in that amazing Google Chrome comic https://www.scottmccloud.com/googlechrome/ Their products and software seemed genuinely inspiring. Now, it seems to just be maintenance or death. Seemingly happens with all once-loved tech companies to some degree. It's quite sad but I guess time moves on. Totally self-inflicted for them tho…

The very nature of how people search is changing. Personally, I'm LOVING phind.com, it hits all my buttons of what a modern AI inspired SE should be. IMHO someday soon, Google will just be the Youtube company. That will be their primary thing, and maybe that's good so they can make that better so it doesn't fail too.

Meh - using phind a few times so far :

  - regurgitates stuff it hits on a shallow search as authoritative response (communicating uncertainty would be a great improvement for GPT models but I'm guessing that's not going to happen because of shallow RHLF preferences)
  - search index is worse than google (eg. I've tried a search where google lands on a good solution, phind hits official docs and offers suboptimal solution)
  - produces results slower than I can read source 
  - I still need to go to the source for full reference or do follow-up (but again it's slow)

Not seeing the value tbh. If it was gpt 3.5 fast with 4 quality now we might be on to something.

Re: Samsung considers moving to Bing as default search engine

#433

Post by mikem170 » Mon, Apr 17, 2023, 4:55 PM UTC

muyuu wrote: post #143

gspencley wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of Android is licensed under the Apache 2.0 license. So while the word "owns" is true in a technical legal sense, there is nothing to prevent anyone from forking it and doing their own thing. Unlike with GPL code, they don't even need to license their changes under the same license as long as they abide the terms with respects to the original. Personally I use GrapheneOS in order to "de-Google" without switching…

I've been looking at it. Ironically, you needed a Google Pixel to run it last I checked, right?

> you needed a Google Pixel to run it

That's correct. It's my understanding that this is for two reasons:

1) google opened api/support for verified boot on the pixels (so you can tell if a border agent hacked your grapheneos phone, for example)

2) it's easier to support fewer phone models (given they are not a large team)

I bought a refurbished pixel 3a last year for a little over $100 and have been thrilled with my grapheneos experience. I don't run google play, but it is my understanding this can be done in a sandbox (allowing for more privacy than usual).

Re: Samsung considers moving to Bing as default search engine

#434

Post by strgcmc » Mon, Apr 17, 2023, 4:56 PM UTC

eldavido wrote: post #370

ravenstine wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps it's overly reductionist, but I think a lot of The Google's issues come down to their self-image. To this day they're stuck in the year 2006 when everybody and their grandma saw them as "cool", "innovative", "not Micro$oft", and "not evil." Most average joes don't believe those things anymore and just see The Google as the default thingamahoozie for looking up stuff on their phone. The Google believed they co…

I think there's something to this. Another perspective might be Apple vs Intel, where one of my friends worked (at both) in fairly senior roles 5+ years. The problem is that companies get really good at solving yesterday's problems. In Intel's case, that was making great CPUs for desktop PCs and servers. I have no doubt that the absolute pinnacle of desktop PC CPU engineering, was done at Intel in the last ~10 years.…

Riffing on this: another aspect of how business-life is harder for Google is, who actually is the customer?

For Amazon (at least in the classic retail sense), the customer is clear and obvious: the person buying a thing from your website, who wants good-selection, cheap and fast/delivered to their door. It's relatively easy to orient your entire company around the question of: "but is this actually good for The Customer?" That is, until you feel you've established your business model well enough, that you no longer need to focus on creating customer value, and instead turn towards growing your business value (i.e. the shift of 3p sellers going from "gee this is a cool way to expand selection for customers beyond what Amazon 1p offers by itself", into "wow this is just a cesspool for fakes and fraud, but who cares since they all pay fees to Amazon").

For Google, with the nature of the search business and the fact that it is their primary cash cow, the incentives are "mixed" to put it mildly. The true customer of Google is not the users, but the advertisers. The users are simply an ingredient to be fed into the advertising engine -- any decisions you make to benefit the user, are only from the perspective of, not pissing them off so much that they leave your platform (and even that, is a sliding scale depending on the viability of alternatives -- Bing along wasn't very viable, but Bing + ChatGPT might be...).

In a twisted way, maybe comparing Google to Amazon is more like this:

- G's search users = A's warehouse workers

- G's advertisers = A's shoppers

How well does Amazon treat its warehouse workers? Only as well as needed to achieve 2 goals: not break employment laws too egregiously, and not churn through the entire employable labor pool too quickly.

Re: Samsung considers moving to Bing as default search engine

#435

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Apr 17, 2023, 4:57 PM UTC

[deleted]

Re: Samsung considers moving to Bing as default search engine

#436

Post by 2OEH8eoCRo0 » Mon, Apr 17, 2023, 5:00 PM UTC

kvn8888 wrote: post #389

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They used to ship a Google Drive app for Windows that adds it to Explorer similar to OneDrive. They killed it, as with everything else. Edit: I'm wrong!

No, backup and sync was rebranded to Google drive for windows

Very well, I stand corrected.

Re: Samsung considers moving to Bing as default search engine

#437

Post by rchaud » Mon, Apr 17, 2023, 5:01 PM UTC

simula67 wrote: post #21

I always thought that Google made a big blunder by not encroaching upon Microsoft's turf more aggressively. They should have tried to make a better desktop OS (just buy Canonical or something) and then eat into Microsoft Office market share by releasing Google Office for Desktop. Wait for an opportunity to emerge and then pounce. This is precisely what Microsoft did to Google. They had Bing running in the background…

A Google desktop OS wasn't going to win against Windows in PC gaming compatibility. Nor was it going to displace MS Office + Active Directory at the enterprise level.

With ChromeOS, they took the route available to them, which was to enter the school market and try to build something from there.

Re: Samsung considers moving to Bing as default search engine

#438

Post by caeril » Mon, Apr 17, 2023, 5:01 PM UTC

robotresearcher wrote: post #242

rmbyrro wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was not at all surprised, to be honest. ChatGPT took over about 90-95% of my what I would previously resort to Google. Since Microsoft was dealing cards at OpenAI, it was just a matter of time...

How do you manage the hallucination problems, or do you not seem to be having them? I’m blown away by the competence of the language model but its willingness to make up facts makes me leary.

Hallucination problem is easily solved by using it as a code/config template or starter, and actually vetting its output. It's still a huge time-saver, even with the vetting time involved.

Cold War strategy. Trust but Verify.

Re: Samsung considers moving to Bing as default search engine

#439

Post by huimang » Mon, Apr 17, 2023, 5:01 PM UTC

godshatter wrote: post #276

jfoster wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you mean is that you don't want a search engine that guesses wrong. If you happen to get a search engine that is correctly giving you the right result every time because it happens to know what you want, I am guessing you will not have a problem with that.

I would have a problem with that, because for a search engine to know me well enough to know what I actually want despite what I typed in it would have to know a lot of information about me I wouldn't trust the company behind it with. I spend most of my browsing time in a browser configured to clear cookies, cache, and history on exit. I'm not sure why most people are okay with companies gathering tons of data about…

"I'm not sure why most people are okay with companies gathering tons of data about them and trying to use it to manipulate them into buying products they don't actually want or need (among other uses), but I'm not one of them."

It takes a ton of work to prevent it and it's more or less futile anyways. It's not so much that people are okay with this, rather it's a part of modern life and it's exhausting trying to mitigate it. And impulsively buying products due to ads is a personal failing.

Re: Samsung considers moving to Bing as default search engine

#440

Post by rchaud » Mon, Apr 17, 2023, 5:02 PM UTC

vanviegen wrote: post #377

__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

95% of what I search for, I can independently confirm once I have it in hand. For the other 5%, I avoid ChatGPT.

Reminds me of Knoll’s law of media accuracy: “everything you read in the newspapers is absolutely true, except for the rare story of which you happen to have firsthand knowledge”. Humans are pretty good bullshitters too!

Newspapers print their errata though. Does ChatGPT ever admit to making a mistake?