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Ask HN: Do you still use search engines?

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Re: Ask HN: Do you still use search engines?

#241

Post by [deleted] »

coldtea wrote: post #229
wavemode wrote: post #69

Search is primarily a portal - you know a particular resource exists, you just don't know its exact URL. You hear about this new programming language called "Frob", and you assume it must have a website. So you google "Frob language". You hear that there was a plane crash in DC, and assume (CNN/AP/your_favorite_news_site) has almost certainly written an article about it. You google "DC plane crash." LLMs aren't ever…

> LLMs aren't ever going to replace search for that use case, simply because they're never going to be as convenient. Sounds trivial to integrate an LLM front end with a search engine backend (probably already done), and be able to type "frob language" and it gives you a curated clickable list of the top resources (language website, official tutorial, reference guide, etc) discarding spam and irrelevant search engine…

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Do you still use search engines?

#244

Post by nitwit005 »

rav wrote: post #91
nitwit005 wrote: post #85

If Google provided an option to disable AI search results, I'd happily turn it off. I'd also happily turn off several other search features, more directly tied to revenue, which is probably why they don't like adding options. I'm sure their AI will be selling products soon enough. Got to make those billions spent back somehow.

At the moment it seems like you can avoid AI search results by either including swear words, or by using 'minus' to exclude terms (e.g. append -elephant to your search query).

I have done that on occasion, but it's easier to just scroll a bit.

Re: Ask HN: Do you still use search engines?

#245

Post by layer8 »

dowager_dan99 wrote: post #76
mepian wrote: post #59

Yes, I'm still using Google as I haven't found LLMs useful as a search engine replacement.

but the AI responses from google that dominate the screen real estate are terrible. When you repeat the exact same query and get changing (but all wrong) answers, something is broken. I've resorted to including profanity in all my searches to prevent the AI responses, which is suboptimal at work...

Use verbatim mode (tbs=li:1). Use a content blocker that removes the AI responses and ads.

Re: Ask HN: Do you still use search engines?

#246

Post by xorcist »

ethbr1 wrote: post #172
ptmcc wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If LLMs aren't already doing this, they certainly will soon. And it'll be even more insidious and "invisible" than sponsored search results.

This is the biggest argument in favor of subscription-based funding models for search I've heard. (Kagi et al.) Ad-sponsored models are going to be dead as soon as people realize they can't trust output. And because the entire benefit to LLM search is the convenience of removing a human-in-the-loop step (scanning the search results), there won't be a clear insertion/distinction point for ads without poisoning the ent…

There is no exclusive-or between business models, there is an inclusive-or.

Over time subscription models will converge to subscription with advertisements. Like newspapers did.

Re: Ask HN: Do you still use search engines?

#247

Post by saaaaaam »

Do you really though? Because I had this conversation recently and she was still typing stuff into the browser bar in chrome and then clicking on stuff from search results. I think a lot of folk think ChatGPT has superseded search but they don’t realise they are still carrying out a load of low level or transactional search queries via chrome.

Re: Ask HN: Do you still use search engines?

#248

Post by Adachi91 »

Agreed, I also use ChatGPT now mostly for searches, because it will pick the best sources that are not content farms, so I don't have to look through garbage to get a result. I started doing this about a year ago and was like "Oh, wow. This could disrupt search engines" and refer to it as "Super Google" now. I always have it link me to the source of what I'm looking for so I don't worry about it hallucinating, for common information I'm looking for reputable sources but don't know which `X` source has them for `Y` info.

Re: Ask HN: Do you still use search engines?

#249

Post by jay_kyburz »

llm_nerd wrote: post #225
jay_kyburz wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried the trick of asking Gemini to search the web. It respond by telling me Jeep was "average". When I checked the Consumer reports website it gave me, It scores Jeep 19th out of 22. I don't call that average.

Which Gemini? I asked 2.5 Pro and this was the result- https://g.co/gemini/share/b5e5ea80548b Seems entirely reasonable to me. Didn't have to trick it into providing citations.

Ahh, I'm only on 2.0 Flash.

Re: Ask HN: Do you still use search engines?

#250

Post by bayindirh »

I use Kagi exclusively and refuse to offload my brain to a thing which has no accuracy guarantee ever. The emitted answers to the queries it has given can be completely bogus, and developers of these things low key expect me to believe what their black box say? Nah, never.

Instead I use a search engine and do my own reading and filtering. This way I learn what I'm researching, too, so I don't fall into the vicious cycle of drug abu ^H^H^H^H^H laziness. Otherwise I'll inevitably rely more on more on that thing, and be a prisoner of my own doing by increasingly offloading my tasks to a black box and be dependent on it.

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