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Google search's death by a thousand cuts

matt-rickard.com

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Re: Google search's death by a thousand cuts

#211

Post by correlaroate »

hsjqllzlfkf wrote: post #148

This is Google's inability to innovate. Google stated goal was the "organize the world's information". Nevertheless, they didn't come up with Wikipedia, the highest quality curated human-readable information repository. They also didn't come up with ChatGPT, arguably the first LLM good enough that can perform non trivial tasks of data recall and organization. Google had early success with search. Then decided to ceme…

> Google is dead man walking, unless something very substantial changes.

Beyond search, they are controlling the Android ecosystem. Your predictions may be immature.

Re: Google search's death by a thousand cuts

#212

Post by tyre »

mrazomor wrote: post #160
hsjqllzlfkf wrote: post #148

This is Google's inability to innovate. Google stated goal was the "organize the world's information". Nevertheless, they didn't come up with Wikipedia, the highest quality curated human-readable information repository. They also didn't come up with ChatGPT, arguably the first LLM good enough that can perform non trivial tasks of data recall and organization. Google had early success with search. Then decided to ceme…

Google had LLMs before OpenAI. It also produced the core techniques for making it happen. My take is that it was taken by its own weight. The government fines & incorporation that started to fear those fines slowed down the progress. How difficult is to launch a change in that environment? Same for the baseline -- people react to changes. You consider the baseline to be the Golden standard. How difficult is to launch…

> IMO, the only way out is to shrink the product. Split, shard, whatever

Microsoft and OpenAI nailed this in my opinion. The funding deal between the two was genius. OpenAI gets billions of dollars from Microsoft that it then spends on Azure.

Microsoft got priority access to ChatGPT, equity in OpenAI, high-scale testing of Azure, plus some margin on OpenAI's usage for training. At the same time, it _didn't_ get the legal liability of running ChatGPT. Maybe it could eventually be hit for allowing training models with copyright data on its servers, but that feels unlikely.

It got all of the access to cutting edge productized LLMs that it could have wanted, including financial upside, without the bad parts.

Re: Google search's death by a thousand cuts

#213

Post by SamoyedFurFluff »

DeathArrow wrote: post #193
hsjqllzlfkf wrote: post #148

This is Google's inability to innovate. Google stated goal was the "organize the world's information". Nevertheless, they didn't come up with Wikipedia, the highest quality curated human-readable information repository. They also didn't come up with ChatGPT, arguably the first LLM good enough that can perform non trivial tasks of data recall and organization. Google had early success with search. Then decided to ceme…

> Wikipedia, the highest quality curated human-readable information repository I have some doubts about the quality of Wikipedia content. Everything that can be politicised is politicised , everything that can be played in order for someone to advance his/her plans or point of view is played. Apart from bad faith, some article lack relevant info or contain errors due the volunteer nature of it.

I think it’s possible for Wikipedia to have certain flaws and for Wikipedia to be the highest quality curated human-readable information repository available.

Re: Google search's death by a thousand cuts

#214

Post by seri4l »

supriyo-biswas wrote: post #110
cma wrote: post #12

In the TPUv4 paper it sounded like Google search moved over to some really crude AI embedding vector stuff. If you search "book of master system" it gives only results for "book of genesis" because it mixes up the biblical book of Genesis with the Sega Master System. Searching any programming terms, like camel-case variable names from a system library without exact quotes, just gives random results about Katy Perry a…

I looked for “book of master system” and it gave me results about the SEGA book. Granted, vectorization could be one of the issues plaguing search, but it isn’t the primary issue.

I get results for the Bible book when I search for "book of megadrive". Genesis and Megadrive are different names for the same SEGA console. Master System is a different console altogether.

What would you say is the primary issue? Personally I see vectorization and similar fuzzy techniques as the things that have most affected search results in the last <10 years, both positively and negatively. On one hand it allows me to search really dumb queries and still get sort of relevant results, on the other it makes well thought query tuning for more specific results seem futile. I don't know what goes on internally, but it's as if Google just discards as noise most of the words in the search query. "Verbatim" mode seems to tune that down somewhat.

Re: Google search's death by a thousand cuts

#215

Post by DeathArrow »

jnurmine wrote: post #95
pupppet wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh man can you imagine Yahoo, playing the long game, brings back their user-managed indexes and becomes the dominant search engine again.

I might pay like max. 3 EUR a year for this to get a search engine that gives the good results without ads, SEO spam and bogus clone sites. That amount of money is probably more than Google now makes from my online presence because I adblock, block 3rd party cookies, tend to click "block" to everything including the idiotic "legitimate concern" and never ever click on ads.

I would pay 10 EUR. :)

Would 3 EUR or even 10 EUR / year for each customer be enough to run operations?

Re: Google search's death by a thousand cuts

#216

Post by quench »

in the 90's one search engine after another went this way. Each new engine worked for a while then advertisers started to game it and it gradually became useless.

It actually impressive that google has managed to avoid this flaw for so long.

The only thing I am not sure of is have advertisers finally found ways to game the system or is google doing it to themselves having forgotten why we all started using it in the first place.

I reckon that chat GPT will end up like the Douglas Adams HHGTG dystopian elevators at some point too :)

Re: Google search's death by a thousand cuts

#217

Post by CoastalCoder »

DeathArrow wrote: post #201
courseofaction wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, and people's unwillingness to pay for the things they value causes the thing to no longer be 'for' them. It's for those who are willing to pay for it (investors).

Once someone had something for what he perceived as free, it's hard to convince that person to pay.

The evolution of cable television in the U.S. might be instructive.

At first, TV (broadcast) was free, with ads.

IIUC, when cable TV later rolled out, it was ad-free. Viewers paid for it instead.

But eventually even those paying for cable TV were shown ads.

So one lesson is that paying for a service might only delay its enshitification.

EDIT: It seems I was wrong about cable TV starting out ad-free [0]. So my example isn't strong evidence for my enshitification claim.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18409942

Re: Google search's death by a thousand cuts

#219

Post by dmvdoug »

mrazomor wrote: post #160
hsjqllzlfkf wrote: post #148

This is Google's inability to innovate. Google stated goal was the "organize the world's information". Nevertheless, they didn't come up with Wikipedia, the highest quality curated human-readable information repository. They also didn't come up with ChatGPT, arguably the first LLM good enough that can perform non trivial tasks of data recall and organization. Google had early success with search. Then decided to ceme…

Google had LLMs before OpenAI. It also produced the core techniques for making it happen. My take is that it was taken by its own weight. The government fines & incorporation that started to fear those fines slowed down the progress. How difficult is to launch a change in that environment? Same for the baseline -- people react to changes. You consider the baseline to be the Golden standard. How difficult is to launch…

Are… are you blaming the government for Google’s enshittification? Because that’s the only factor related to its size you cite as causally connected to its decline.

Re: Google search's death by a thousand cuts

#220

Post by sixothree »

hooby wrote: post #173

I feel that Google search has been slowly dying for many years now. Where in the past I could find documentation, forum-posts, wikis - concise information - these days I find SEO-optimised marketing fluff, link-farms, clickbait, long-form articles with thousands of words that ultimately say nothing, political tirades that don't make sense for any non-U.S.-citizen, and ads - tons and tons of ads. It would seem that it…

Last night I searched for a phrase that was the title of a page. Zero results. I changed my search and what I was looking for was the first result. Google has really gone down hill severely.
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