Chatbots are replacing Google's search, devastating traffic for some publishers • Hacker News Board

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

#251

Post by hadlock » Thu, Jun 12, 2025, 6:17 PM UTC

skeaker wrote: post #242

hadlock wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yahoo had 90%+ of the search market and they lost it in a few years to google because they were unable to innovate. I don't think anyone saw that coming. Everyone was building "portals" (remember those? AOL.com? I think verizon.com was one at some point with news and weather) to try and compete with Yahoo's dominance in search. It can happen again. LLM Chat is certainly an existential threat to the googs. Part of the…

The major flaw in your argument is that Yahoo is still around. They still have tons of traffic, some of the most in the world, just behind Reddit. They are not constantly growing, yes, but that is exactly my point. They have a satisfied userbase who will use them for life as does Google. Neither is going anywhere any time soon. Both make billions of dollars annually.

Yahoo's peak (inflation adjusted value was ~$325 billion and the last sale of their assets was $4.5 billion in 2017 which is about 1% of it's peak value. I can't imagine google investors wanting to risk 99% of their investment.

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

#252

Post by dzhiurgis » Thu, Jun 12, 2025, 10:04 PM UTC

lostmsu wrote: post #133

w-ll wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think we wont start seeing ads or paid for refs/links in those AI responses? Not defending Google here, when they turned that feature on I posted to some friends "another nail in the coffin for the web as we know it" or something to that effect.

Eventually open models will be able to do the same, so why would anyone use ad-ridden service? The first LLM provider who turns on ads on their responses will disappear in a brink.

Because it's going to be 100x better than open models.

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

#253

Post by busterarm » Fri, Jun 13, 2025, 2:24 AM UTC

dgimla20 wrote: post #246

busterarm wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They've shown in their other products that they really don't even care anymore. Roughly 30% of the YouTube ads I get served recently are 10minutes long or more. At least once a day I feel like I'm reporting some 50+ minute long alternative medicine scam ad.

I'm surprised Googles ad business stays afloat. It seems every video I watch on YouTube is preceded with a Grammarly advert, a service I have no use for and will not subscribe to/pay for in the future. I feel like Google should be the one company that has enough data and the widespread scope to really excel in advertising, yet on every site I see their ads, its as if they have no idea who I am and what I might want.…

As someone who worked in advertising...advertising isn't really about connecting you with things that you want. It's about putting something in your head to make you want it.

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

#254

Post by skeaker » Fri, Jun 13, 2025, 5:01 PM UTC

hadlock wrote: post #251

skeaker wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The major flaw in your argument is that Yahoo is still around. They still have tons of traffic, some of the most in the world, just behind Reddit. They are not constantly growing, yes, but that is exactly my point. They have a satisfied userbase who will use them for life as does Google. Neither is going anywhere any time soon. Both make billions of dollars annually.

Yahoo's peak (inflation adjusted value was ~$325 billion and the last sale of their assets was $4.5 billion in 2017 which is about 1% of it's peak value. I can't imagine google investors wanting to risk 99% of their investment.

Regardless, they are far from dead. Multiple billions of dollars is still doing fantastic for any business, investors and shareholders be damned.