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Google changes its search box

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Re: Google changes its search box

#381

Post by AlienRobot »

Hackbraten wrote: post #246
BrunoBernardino wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't entirely true, because they use more than one search index.

The other search indexes are largely negligible in comparison: [0] > This is not a competitive market. It is a monopoly with a distant second place. > The search index is irreplaceable infrastructure. Building a comparable one from scratch is like building a parallel national railroad. Microsoft spent roughly $100 billion over 20 years on Bing and still holds single-digit share. If Microsoft cannot close the gap, no…

This is a problem of their own invention.

Nobody said you have to index the entire web.

The web would probably be a lot healthier if we had several small search engines that focused on niches rather than 5 failed search engines that tried to index everything that was ever written and then ended up paying Bing.

Re: Google changes its search box

#383

Post by ChoGGi »

youre-wrong3 wrote: post #347
burnte wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What scares me about this new AI mode thingy What scares me is the rampant inaccuracy. In my experience, the AI responses are wrong about 65% of the time. I just did a search today about an error talking about a disconnected link between apps, and Google AI result summary told me that the error was related to my pulling a USB drive too quickly in windows. The ONLY word similar to my query and that AI response was t…

[flagged]

95% closer to your expectations?

Re: Google changes its search box

#384

Post by estebank »

mghackerlady wrote: post #135
pclowes wrote: post #22

I understand why they are doing this. My Google search usage is easily down 50%+. I doubt I am unique here. While there are times where I want pure search (Kagi, Old Google) I mostly use LLMs to search now and have them provide me links for source data. When I do use LLMs as a search engine I always want it integrated into my AI workflows with access to tools and scripts etc. I never want to have a conversation with…

I think LLMs are good answer engines, but terrible search engines. For example, if I just want the answer to "How do I foo this bar with a thingamajig", or "what kind of foo exists for bar", LLMs are 100% better because they'll give me an answer without trying to sell me their thing or pump me with ads. It also lets me go more in depth than the very surface level seo spam sites that appear when you do a search like t…

> LLMs are 100% better because they'll give me an answer without trying to sell me their thing or pump me with ads.

Yet.

Re: Google changes its search box

#385

Post by SoftTalker »

thisisit wrote: post #251
SoftTalker wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The web as we know it is over. Websites will die on the vine if LLMs intermediate all the content. The "website" of the future will be an API optimized for LLM crawlers, serving plain-text content that no end-user will ever view directly. The SEO game will change to LLMAO.

Or more likely move towards substack or newsletters where the pitch is - Don’t let the LLM chose the output for you, go directly to our Substack/newsletter instead. This will happen especially with things like conspiracy theories because the choice might be to pollute the output or share the general consensus. Like searches for Apollo landing conspiracy theories can either chose to present “alternate facts” so that p…

The truth is out there!

Re: Google changes its search box

#386

Post by marginalia_nu »

BrunoBernardino wrote: post #203
charles_f wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Self hosting a web search engine is probably quite a feat

You can self-host Marginalia [1] or Hister [2], for example. Takes up some space, but it's totally doable. Your biggest problem (assuming you have disk space) will be crawling. [1] : https://github.com/MarginaliaSearch/MarginaliaSearch [2] : https://github.com/asciimoo/hister

Emphasis on "doable".

At least if we're speaking a more generalist web search it requires dedicated hardware, that's pretty costly. Marginalia's production server cost about $20k back when RAM and SSDs were cheap. It used to run on $5k of PC hardware before, but that was very limiting.

So no data center, but at the same time, not everyone has that sort of cash to throw around.

Re: Google changes its search box

#388

Post by ChoGGi »

vntok wrote: post #289
margalabargala wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They have no obligation to respect your wishes I have no obligation to not send all scraper-looking traffic to a black hole full of zip bombs.

Spreading malware to your website's visitors is wild and illegal in most jurisdictions. I certainly wouldn't confess about it online.

Is AI a visitor or malware? It certainly steals paid resources (bandwidth).

Disclaimer: his website is for hosting malware for "testing" purposes. Testing how well AI can't deal with it.

Re: Google changes its search box

#389

Post by OGWhales »

DANmode wrote: post #370
OGWhales wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup, I was looking up a pair of IEMS vs another pair of IEMs. It said option A is overall better, when really it was just reciting a single person's opinion. I've been aware it will summarize only a single source and present it as an aggregation of many opinions, but it stood out to me how matter-of-fact it was that the one was definitely better than the other. I simply wanted to find forum discussions on people's th…

> I simply wanted to find forum discussions on people's thought Why didn’t you tell the robot that , as your query?

I searched something like “top pro vs tea pro se reddit” so I kind of did.

Re: Google changes its search box

#390

Post by runlevel1 »

fidotron wrote: post #23

Objecting to this from the user end seems a bit like complaining the original Google was trying to be too magic when what you wanted was AltaVista. This has been the inevitable direction the whole time. The real problem here is assuming this takes off what incentives will anyone have to provide the information to feed the beast?

You're damned if you do and damned if you don't. That all but ensures Google will face antitrust action in the US if the administration sours on them.
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