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Two upstart search engines are teaming up to take on Google

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Re: Two upstart search engines are teaming up to take on Google

#191

Post by carlosjobim »

Rinzler89 wrote: post #173
greatgib wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not directly related except by the fact that the dynamic is the same and that it is a repeat of the previous attempt. There are 2 clear things that is so common in Europe: Politics injecting a shit load of public money thinking that if you give the money you will be able to reproduce American company success and co. In the end, the money is wasted for their own interest by big groups, intermediaries, and opport…

>- and it fails the same in a loop Because that's the desired feature, not a bug. The system works just as intended. None of the people at the helm actually believe they can create competitors to US giants, the scope is to funnel public tax money into the right politically connected private industry pockets. It's just wealth redistribution with a veneer of "sovereignty", similar to large infrastructure projects, exce…

Exactly. The worst thing that can happen for a project like this is that it becomes successful. The goal is that it fails completely, so that politicians and friends can try again in a couple of years with a massive new load of tax payer money. What about the old projects, why did they fail? Those are questions that only traitors and Russian assets would ask.

Re: Two upstart search engines are teaming up to take on Google

#192

Post by ryukoposting »

I'm beginning to suspect LLMs' viability for search purposes is dependent on your existing search habits. 40% of my search queries are just copy-pasted error messages. Another 10% are business names, for the sole purpose of finding their hours or phone number. Less than 10% are complete clauses or sentences.

I just don't see how an LLM fits my search habits. I tried using ChatGPT for search purposes, and it was dreadful. Incorrect hours for businesses, gibberish results for the copy-pasted error messages, it was an all-around failure.

Have you people been typing complete sentences into Google all these years? Is that where this whole "LLMs will replace search" thing is coming from?

Re: Two upstart search engines are teaming up to take on Google

#193

Post by SushiHippie »

disqard wrote: post #100
alabhyajindal wrote: post #92

I was hoping this will be about Kagi. A lot of companies that make bold promises of taking on Google end up in the drain 2 years later.

I'm a paying customer of Kagi. Kagi itself runs on top of Google. It's certainly worth paying for (IMO), but let's not kid ourselves -- it is *not* a competitor (as in, can replace Google). Without Google, there is no Kagi.

> Without Google, there is no Kagi.

Google isn't the only search engine they use (they have a small selfmade index, Brave, Marginalia, and others which they don't disclose, and "vertical information" like Wikipedia, Wolfram Alpha, etc..), but probably most of the results are from Google. Without Google there would still be Kagi, but maybe not as good as today.

Re: Two upstart search engines are teaming up to take on Google

#194

Post by a1o »

initplus wrote: post #188
ethbr1 wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Politics injecting a shit load of public money thinking that if you give the money you will be able to reproduce American company success The problem with public funding is not the what but the to whom ? It works fine if you put the right person in charge. However, there are very few signals to prevent the wrong person being put in charge, as it removes most considerations / incentivizes private industry uses. Whic…

It's not just that there are few signals to prevent the wrong person being put in charge, but this kind of government bureaucratic actively selects for the wrong person. These kinds of government IT projects are often soul sucking to work on, and so they attract a specific kind of applicant.

It's not only that, they would prefer to give a ton of money to a single entity with "market experience" and all the paperwork that looks good already existing. It would work better if it was lots of small amounts of money to individuals with good "business" (think about workplan, expected value and other stuff) but without paperwork - think a kid that just finished studies or a person that acquired experience freelancing and has an interesting business idea but not the money to have the paperwork. Anyway, at least it's how I feel towards the SV "tech".

Re: Two upstart search engines are teaming up to take on Google

#195

Post by ryukoposting »

BLKNSLVR wrote: post #133
PittleyDunkin wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would strongly prefer a search engine that searches and doesn't attempt to proactively answer questions.

I've recently started using Perplexity and find that I've started using it for finding answers to specific questions, where I'll still use traditional search to find "a few sites on which I may be able to cobble together a useful set of information about ". So, for me, "search" has fragmented into two separate use cases, one of which is served by the new not-really-a-search-engine.

This is one of the few comments advocating for LLM search use that actually lines up with my experience trying to use it. It's pretty good for a narrow subset of my search queries, but it's totally useless for everything else.

I gave up on it because "two search tools instead of one" is just a really hard sell for me. When I go to search something, the keystrokes/hand motions are totally intuitive. Having two different patterns was annoying. StartPage works great for me. I have no reason to replace it, much less half-replace it with something that has only proven to be incrementally better at a few tasks. That's a matter of personal preference, though.

Re: Two upstart search engines are teaming up to take on Google

#196

Post by carlosjobim »

ryukoposting wrote: post #192

I'm beginning to suspect LLMs' viability for search purposes is dependent on your existing search habits. 40% of my search queries are just copy-pasted error messages. Another 10% are business names, for the sole purpose of finding their hours or phone number. Less than 10% are complete clauses or sentences. I just don't see how an LLM fits my search habits. I tried using ChatGPT for search purposes, and it was dread…

You should use the right tool for the right purpose. If you're searching for a physical place and want opening hours, reviews and photos, it's Google Maps. If you're looking for updates and photos for a physical place, it's Instagram. If it's detailed articles it's Wikipedia. If it's to define or translate a word, right click and "Look up". Or if it's general search, you have Kagi.

Re: Two upstart search engines are teaming up to take on Google

#197

Post by TremendousJudge »

ryukoposting wrote: post #192

I'm beginning to suspect LLMs' viability for search purposes is dependent on your existing search habits. 40% of my search queries are just copy-pasted error messages. Another 10% are business names, for the sole purpose of finding their hours or phone number. Less than 10% are complete clauses or sentences. I just don't see how an LLM fits my search habits. I tried using ChatGPT for search purposes, and it was dread…

I'm mostly on the same boat as you, but yes, I'd say most people type complete sentences (usually questions) into Google. The results for these types of queries are usually:

- An autogenerated info card that usually is regurgitating wikipedia.

- Several SEO blog spam posts that have the exact query as the title and kinda answer it while trying to sell you something. No sources for more info of course, just a link to the store or whatever.

With this landscape, LLMs for search kinda make sense. In a way we are already 90% of the way there.

Re: Two upstart search engines are teaming up to take on Google

#198

Post by Al-Khwarizmi »

ryukoposting wrote: post #192

I'm beginning to suspect LLMs' viability for search purposes is dependent on your existing search habits. 40% of my search queries are just copy-pasted error messages. Another 10% are business names, for the sole purpose of finding their hours or phone number. Less than 10% are complete clauses or sentences. I just don't see how an LLM fits my search habits. I tried using ChatGPT for search purposes, and it was dread…

I think the point is not what people type, but what people need... I haven't been typing complete sentences into Google because I know it's not the best way to use Google, but indeed many of the information needs I use google for are very often questions, even if I never typed the question directly but instead tried to find some suitable keywords.

LLMs are indeed not the right tool for finding opening hours or phone numbers (at least for now), but I actually find them more useful than Google for error messages. I guess this depends a lot on what compiler/program is reporting the errors.

Re: Two upstart search engines are teaming up to take on Google

#199

Post by carlosjobim »

weitendorf wrote: post #144
arnaudsm wrote: post #4

Every new search engine I've seen was a Bing wrapper with sometimes light reranking. I understand that competing with Google was borderline impossible a decade ago. But in 2024, we have cheap compute, great OSS distributed DBs, powerful new vector search tech. Amateur search engines like Marginalia even run on consumer hardware. CommonCrawl text-only is ~100TB, and can fit on my home server. Why is no company buildin…

To properly compete with Google search you have to: 1. Create your own index/crawl and true search engine on top of it, rather than delegating that back to bing or Google. In doing so, solve or address all the related problems like SEO/spam, and cover the “long tail” (expensive part) 2. Monetize it somehow to afford all of the personnel/hardware/software costs. Probably with your own version of Google’s ad products.…

> You will probably at the very minimum need to implement your own platform (device, OS, browser alone probably won’t cut it).

What do you mean? Google gained dominance just being a dot com URL. This in a time when competitors were already very well established.

Re: Two upstart search engines are teaming up to take on Google

#200

Post by ryukoposting »

carlosjobim wrote: post #196
ryukoposting wrote: post #192

I'm beginning to suspect LLMs' viability for search purposes is dependent on your existing search habits. 40% of my search queries are just copy-pasted error messages. Another 10% are business names, for the sole purpose of finding their hours or phone number. Less than 10% are complete clauses or sentences. I just don't see how an LLM fits my search habits. I tried using ChatGPT for search purposes, and it was dread…

You should use the right tool for the right purpose. If you're searching for a physical place and want opening hours, reviews and photos, it's Google Maps. If you're looking for updates and photos for a physical place, it's Instagram. If it's detailed articles it's Wikipedia. If it's to define or translate a word, right click and "Look up". Or if it's general search, you have Kagi.

My purpose is Search, and I want one right tool for it. I have had one right tool for my entire life - first Google, and then StartPage since ~2017.

I considered Kagi. I like the concept, and I'm willing to pay for search, but Kagi costs more than I'm willing to pay.

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