A possible endgame of this quest for growth is just mixing unlabeled ads directly in with search content. Effectively pay for ranking with some quality filter. I'm pretty sure it won't come to that, but worse things have happened.
Google Earning Q1 2024 [pdf]
91–100 of 273 posts
Re: Google Earning Q1 2024 [pdf]
#92Of all the people in this thread swearing they don't use Google, I wonder how many are writing their comments using Chrome (or Chromium, or Edge, or Brave, or Opera, or any other browser that uses the guts of the Chromium project)
I'd guess only a minority.
However, we should also remember that Mozilla's main funder is... Google/Alphabet, via a royalty deal for having Google be the default search engine. See, e.g., here:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2023-05-05/why-go...
And while the royalties arrangement is not that old, Google was a main funder before that happened as well. FYI.
Re: Google Earning Q1 2024 [pdf]
#93[deleted]
Re: Google Earning Q1 2024 [pdf]
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, not really. The decline of Google's search performance is on the front page of HN at least once a week. It's common knowledge at this point. Try Kagi if you want to be reminded of what good search is like.
On what metrics of search quality is Kagi "orders of magnitude" better than Google?
That is something that you can only decide for yourself.
Re: Google Earning Q1 2024 [pdf]
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
>I’m not going to use an LLM to shop for car insurance or look for hotels. As I understand it, this is a great use-case for AI agents (a-la Custom GPT) and I wouldn't be surprised if the tech for that matures over the next year.
I guess I could imagine how they might be helpful in initial research - but no way I'm letting some LLM book a hotel that might not exist or get me car insurance from StratesFrarm Unsurance.
[deleted]
Re: Google Earning Q1 2024 [pdf]
#96Of all the people in this thread swearing they don't use Google, I wonder how many are writing their comments using Chrome (or Chromium, or Edge, or Brave, or Opera, or any other browser that uses the guts of the Chromium project)
I use DuckDuckGo for search, Apple Maps when on my iPhone, and Gnome Maps when on my computers. My main browser is Firefox, but I use Brave (Safari-based) on iOS due to better ad blocking there. I use local markdown files for all of my note taking, and Fastmail for email.
But I am aware that I’m not typical.
Re: Google Earning Q1 2024 [pdf]
#97I thought that this earnings announcement would be the first one where we'd see some impact from competitive knowledge engines, e.g. Perplexity, You.com, ChatGPT + Bing, etc., but Google still grew search $6B/15%. This is impressive both because it's hard to keep such a big business growing at that rate and because essentially everyone in my social circle has moved on from going to Google first for information. I gue…
I think I am opted into an experiment, but when I use Google search the first results are answers from their own LLM.
Re: Google Earning Q1 2024 [pdf]
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ultimately advertisers want a return on their spend and it's a closely watched metric for marketers. Them continuing to spend is indicative that there's growing value in ads, ie bots/ai agents cannot be the reason for their growth. You could argue fb and particularly twitter are incentivized to include it in their DAU counts but market cares more for revenue for large companies.
"There is no alternative" I wouldn't put it past Google/Meta coopting corporate advertisers. Everyone makes everyone look good, by stating the best possible numbers.
Google and Meta literally represent alternative advertising products.
Re: Google Earning Q1 2024 [pdf]
#99> Alphabet’s Board of Directors today authorized the company to repurchase up to an additional $70.0 billion of its Class A and Class C shares in a manner deemed in the best interest of the company and its stockholders The most important item on the report
What an odd statement. Care to explain why you think a routine buyback announcement is important?
Re: Google Earning Q1 2024 [pdf]
#100I thought that this earnings announcement would be the first one where we'd see some impact from competitive knowledge engines, e.g. Perplexity, You.com, ChatGPT + Bing, etc., but Google still grew search $6B/15%. This is impressive both because it's hard to keep such a big business growing at that rate and because essentially everyone in my social circle has moved on from going to Google first for information. I gue…
I think this is the same thing I feel when I read Meta's earnings. I continue to see growth in usage of their core properties but I don't think my entire circle touches Facebook or even Instagram nearly as much. Whatsapp certainly isn't driving those ad dollars so it truly is remarkable how disconnected my demographic (loosely using my here) is from the overall world usage.
You have no idea of Whatsapp's marketshare in India - all small businesses use Whatsapp for all communication and even take payments. That's a 1.4B population.