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Chatbots are replacing Google's search, devastating traffic for some publishers

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Re: Chatbots are replacing Google's search, devastating traffic for some publishers

#121

Post by flokie »

waldrews wrote: post #118
ajross wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems to my untrained eyes like Google's AI search is actually the best on the market, no? Seems like a lot of HN users have trained themselves not to type queries into the search prompt anymore and then complain about the quality of a product they don't use.

The model that's doing AI Summary for search results - that presumably needs to be fast and cheap because of the scale - is still sufficiently bad as to give people a bad taste. Presumably they're frantically working to scale their better models for this use case. If you could get Gemini Pro on every search result the experience would be effectively perfect (in the sense of better error rates than what a non-speciali…

In the US (to start) there's now a flavor of Gemini 2.5 to power Search experiences like AI Mode and AI Overviews. Should be sufficiently good at this point.

source: https://blog.google/products/search/google-search-ai-mode-up...

Re: Chatbots are replacing Google's search, devastating traffic for some publishers

#122

Post by bgwalter »

spankalee wrote: post #21

Google's damned if they do and damned if the don't here: - If they don't make search AI centric, they're going to get lapped by AI-first competitors like Perplexity, OpenAI, etc. We saw many people here predict Google's pending demise from this. - If they do make search centric, they're unfairly consuming they world's content and hoarding the user traffic to themselves. Since no reasonable company is just going to st…

They could simply restore the search quality they had in 2010. No one wants these "AI" summaries except for people looking to get promoted for "having an impact" inside Google.

What Google is doing right now is sabotage the search moat they do have. They are throwing it all away because of some "AI" rainmakers inside the company.

Re: Chatbots are replacing Google's search, devastating traffic for some publishers

#123

Post by yummypaint »

msgodel wrote: post #51
spankalee wrote: post #21

Google's damned if they do and damned if the don't here: - If they don't make search AI centric, they're going to get lapped by AI-first competitors like Perplexity, OpenAI, etc. We saw many people here predict Google's pending demise from this. - If they do make search centric, they're unfairly consuming they world's content and hoarding the user traffic to themselves. Since no reasonable company is just going to st…

For anything important I always ask LLMs for links and follow them. I think this will probably just create a strong incentive to cover important things and move away from clickbait. It's probably a win for everyone in the long run although it means news sites will have to change. That's going to be painful for them but it's not like they're angels either.

I'm surprised the links work for you at all. 90+% of citations for non trivial information (i.e. not in a text book but definitely in the literature) I've gotten from LLMs have been very convincing hallucinations. The year and journal volume will match, the author will be someone who plausibly would have written on the topic, but the articles don't exist and never did. It's a tremendous waste of time and energy compared to old fashioned library search tools.

Re: Chatbots are replacing Google's search, devastating traffic for some publishers

#124

Post by charcircuit »

Infinity315 wrote: post #53
charcircuit wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they are actually needed they shouldn't have any issue finding funding.

How do you define what is needed? The vast majority of reporting does not affect one's own behaviour at all. For example, consider the Snowden leaks, I guarantee you the vast majority of people did not even attempt to modify their own behaviour at all in light of this new information--despite having read or heard about it. I'd argue that this reporting was still needed, despite it having very little material impact o…

Almost all news has very little material impact on one's life which is why it is treated as entertainment when targeting consumers. The Snowden leaks was an entertaining story that would be easily monetizable.

Re: Chatbots are replacing Google's search, devastating traffic for some publishers

#126

Post by ketzo »

bgwalter wrote: post #122
spankalee wrote: post #21

Google's damned if they do and damned if the don't here: - If they don't make search AI centric, they're going to get lapped by AI-first competitors like Perplexity, OpenAI, etc. We saw many people here predict Google's pending demise from this. - If they do make search centric, they're unfairly consuming they world's content and hoarding the user traffic to themselves. Since no reasonable company is just going to st…

They could simply restore the search quality they had in 2010. No one wants these "AI" summaries except for people looking to get promoted for "having an impact" inside Google. What Google is doing right now is sabotage the search moat they do have. They are throwing it all away because of some "AI" rainmakers inside the company.

Then what explains people doing millions of web searches on perplexity/chatgpt/claude?

Re: Chatbots are replacing Google's search, devastating traffic for some publishers

#128

Post by ajross »

bcoates wrote: post #110
ajross wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems to my untrained eyes like Google's AI search is actually the best on the market, no? Seems like a lot of HN users have trained themselves not to type queries into the search prompt anymore and then complain about the quality of a product they don't use.

Every once in a while I bother not ignoring a Google AI overview, then I waste some time fact-checking it and find out it's wrong. Most recently about a python library (where it hallucinated a function that doesn't exist, complete with documentation and usage examples) and breaking news (where it authoritatively said [non-culture war, non-controversial, local] thing doesn't happen, above a dog-bites-man story from a…

> Every once in a while

Pretty much what I said, no? You don't use the product and when you do, do it through a filter[1] where you only remember the bugs. Do you use other AI search products and find that they don't show this behavior?

[1] I mean, come on: framing it as "bother not ignoring" is just a dead giveaway that you aren't doing a product evaluation in good faith!

Re: Chatbots are replacing Google's search, devastating traffic for some publishers

#129

Post by kccqzy »

bgwalter wrote: post #122
spankalee wrote: post #21

Google's damned if they do and damned if the don't here: - If they don't make search AI centric, they're going to get lapped by AI-first competitors like Perplexity, OpenAI, etc. We saw many people here predict Google's pending demise from this. - If they do make search centric, they're unfairly consuming they world's content and hoarding the user traffic to themselves. Since no reasonable company is just going to st…

They could simply restore the search quality they had in 2010. No one wants these "AI" summaries except for people looking to get promoted for "having an impact" inside Google. What Google is doing right now is sabotage the search moat they do have. They are throwing it all away because of some "AI" rainmakers inside the company.

That's impossible unless the web reverted back to 2010, when walled gardens weren't prevalent, making your own blog was common, doable and often done by those without programming experience, forums were alive and well, and people wanted to share things on the web rather than group chats.
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