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Google is the only search engine that works on Reddit now, thanks to AI deal

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Re: Google is the only search engine that works on Reddit now, thanks to AI deal

#151

Post by tempfile »

ColinHayhurst wrote: post #126
em-bee wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

not that reddit has a monopoly, but that google has. google is using their power to prevent others from competing. the problem here is of course that if reddit would be in financial trouble (i don't know if they are but let's imagine they need this money), they'd be between a rock and a hard place. google should not be allowed to make exclusive deals, and reddit could not survive without the deal, then what would be…

> let's assume firefox is forced to allow people to make a choice of the default search engine let assume apple is forced to allow people to make a choice of the default search engine in safari then google might stop paying apple, and ...

surely firefox is the more interesting example, since they have orders of magnitude less alternative revenue?

Re: Google is the only search engine that works on Reddit now, thanks to AI deal

#152

Post by jedberg »

Ajedi32 wrote: post #104
Closi wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But I can understand why they made the change they did. The data was being abused. Depends how you see it - if you see it as 'their' data (legally true) or if you see it as user content (how their users would likely see it). If you see it as 'user content', they are actually selling the data to be abused by one company, rather than stopping it being abused at all. From a commercial 'lets sell user data and make a p…

> if you see it as 'their' data (legally true) Is that actually true? Reddit may indeed have a license to use that data (derived from their ToS), but I very much doubt they actually own the copyright to it. If I write a comment on Reddit, then copy-paste it somewhere else, can Reddit sue me for copyright infringement?

They own a non-exclusive worldwide right to it. You own the copyright, they have a license to use it however they see fit.

Re: Google is the only search engine that works on Reddit now, thanks to AI deal

#153

Post by splwjs »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #22

This is an interesting development. How many other sites might have leverage to charge to be indexed? I don't want to live in a world where you have to use X search engine to get answers from Y site - but this seems like the beginning of that world. From an efficiency perspective - it's obviously better for websites to just lease their data to search engines then both sides paying tons of bandwidth and compute to get…

idk man i bet you five bucks and a handshake it's just going to play out like the existing startup grift.

There's an established player with institutional protections, then a scrappy upstart takes a bunch of VC money, converts it into runway, gives away the product for free, gradually replaces and becomes the standard, then puts out an s-1 document saying "we don't make money and we never have, want to invest?" and then they start to enjoy all the institutional protections. Or they don't. Either way you pay yourself handsomely from the runway money so who cares.

The upstart gets indexed and has an API, the established player doesn't.

The upstart is more easily found and modular but the institutional player can refuse to be indexed to own their data and they can block their API to prevent ai slop from getting in and dominating their content.

Re: Google is the only search engine that works on Reddit now, thanks to AI deal

#154

Post by zamadatix »

Suppafly wrote: post #145
ColinHayhurst wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Basically all 'independent' search engines piggyback off Google or Bing Incorrect: https://www.mojeek.com/about/why-mojeek

weird, I've never heard of mojeek before and this is the 2nd comment in this thread I've seen mentioning it.

As of the time of writing there are 8 search matches in this thread: 1 from you, the rest from Colin (CEO of said company).

Re: Google is the only search engine that works on Reddit now, thanks to AI deal

#155

Post by splwjs »

VoidWhisperer wrote: post #2

Wow, reddit found a way to make themselves even less useful somehow. After the API fiasco, that seemed like it'd be pretty hard to do.

If they kept their API open then by now the entirety of the site would be ai slop that was built with chatgpt and launched with the api.

Then again most of what that site does is just blend and regurgitate the information that's currently on it anyway.

Re: Google is the only search engine that works on Reddit now, thanks to AI deal

#156

Post by toomuchtodo »

McDyver wrote: post #139
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #22

This is an interesting development. How many other sites might have leverage to charge to be indexed? I don't want to live in a world where you have to use X search engine to get answers from Y site - but this seems like the beginning of that world. From an efficiency perspective - it's obviously better for websites to just lease their data to search engines then both sides paying tons of bandwidth and compute to get…

That seems like the business model for streaming. You subscribe to X provider to watch Y series. So, as for streaming, I suppose a pirate bay search engine will come up

Pirate Bay is probably not the most optimal analogy, more like Anna's Archive imho [1], individually offered by web property scrape runs compressed into a package, maybe served by torrents like this Academic Torrents site example [2].

Scraper engine->validation/processing/cleanup->object storage->index + torrent serving is rough pipeline sketch.

[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... ("HN Search: annas archive")

[2] https://academictorrents.com/details/9c263fc85366c1ef8f5bb9d... ("AcademicTorrents: Reddit comments/submissions 2005-06 to 2023-12 [2.52TB]")

Re: Google is the only search engine that works on Reddit now, thanks to AI deal

#157

Post by sct202 »

wtf242 wrote: post #148

This problem is only going to get worse. for my thegreatestbooks.org site i used to just get indexed/scraped by google and bing. now it's like 50+ AI bots scraping my entire site just so they can train a LLM to answer questions my site answers without having a user ever visit my site. I just checked cloudflare and in the past 24 hours I've had 1.2 million bot/automated requests

There's a new setting in Cloudflare to block AI/scraper bots. https://blog.cloudflare.com/declaring-your-aindependence-blo...

Re: Google is the only search engine that works on Reddit now, thanks to AI deal

#158

Post by crazygringo »

dvngnt_ wrote: post #119
crazygringo wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not saying it's not bad for competition. I'm saying the blame is 100% with Reddit. Blaming Google for accepting it makes no sense. That's like if a shopper goes to grocery store and buys an expensive $20 piece of cheese, and other shoppers can't afford cheese that pricey, and you're blaming that one shopper for buying it because it means other shoppers can't also get the cheese without paying for it. That doesn't…

bing probably has the money to reach a deal, smaller companies without monopolies is less likely, and that's the problem. i don't think google is blameless like you propose.

> bing probably has the money to reach a deal, smaller companies without monopolies is less likely, and that's the problem.

Reddit can charge smaller companies less money. So if there's a problem, again, the problem is 100% with Reddit.

Google is absolutely blameless here. You may not like Google, and you can certainly blame them for plenty of other things. But in this situation, literally all of the blame is with Reddit for deciding to remove their content from all search engines unless they pay. Reddit didn't have to do that. Google didn't make them do that.

Reddit did this. Not Google.

Re: Google is the only search engine that works on Reddit now, thanks to AI deal

#159

Post by splwjs »

wuiheerfoj wrote: post #132
jasode wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>But, apparently, they did finally find a way to make money. The most recent 10-K financial results 2024-03-31 (filed 2024-05-08) shows they actually lost money: https://www.sec.gov/edgar/browse/?CIK=1713445 (For 2024-Q1, Reddit lost -$575 million on revenue of $242 M.) If the quoted "$60 million deal" [1] from Feb 2024 is accurate, that small amount from Google may not be enough for Reddit to turn a profit. It remai…

Wow, perhaps I’m naive but what the hell are they spending over $800M a year on? That seems an obscene amount for a glorified message board. I just read they have 2000 employees which is also puzzling to me

it's not just a message board, it's an influence machine.

They need to make sure the stuff they want people to think is posted often and has a big number next to it, they need to make sure things that people like are associated with the stuff they want people to like/think/do and things that people don't like are never associated with the stuff they want people to like/think/do. They need to make sure that people who say the wrong things are silenced or persuaded to leave, etc etc. Man they probably have at least one contact in at least one intelligence agency and they have to make sure not to run afoul of that contact.

Like the news isn't just a list of what happened recently, political debates aren't just two guys talking, and reddit/twitter aren't just message boards.

Re: Google is the only search engine that works on Reddit now, thanks to AI deal

#160

Post by talldayo »

twelve40 wrote: post #120
JohnMakin wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a false dichotomy. You can have services, and not have them devolve into complete unusability in the name of profit. This isn’t sustainable either. The myopic pursuit of short term gains at the expense of the product will collapse at some point in the future, no matter how much you believe in this weird frog-boil internet we’ve inherited now.

Complete unusability is when ai tools clone the content and people stop visiting the original service and participating. I'll leave it up to them to defend blocking duck duck go for example, but blocking "AI" bots for an online community is a matter of survival at this point.

Alternatively, it's because the base platform has also devolved into unusability. Both Reddit and Twitter are in a position where their info is easily scraped, and their community is barely worth the advertising/paid-premium experience they demand from you. As both platforms continue to decline in quality, you might not even need to replace the original service. Both businesses appear intent on getting replaced.
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