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Is Google’s 20-year search dominance about to end?

economist.com

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Re: Is Google’s 20-year search dominance about to end?

#311

Post by Invictus0 »

ranting-moth wrote: post #262
Invictus0 wrote: post #9

Do you people really want AI generated answers? As if the internet wasn't bland enough as it is. This forum has been soapboxing for years about the longtail of blogs and BBs and niche sites, right up to the moment that Bing got chatgpt.

People want answers. Google isn't giving them answers. If you ask google a question then an awful lot of the time the majority of top 10 results will be promoting or selling stuff.

So you'd rather have a load of probabilistic bullshit? The training sets are way too huge to be human audited, just wait until the malicious actors start producing propaganda with their own GPT sites and deepfakes. The fucking thing can't even tell a straight fact about a telescope. If you thought searching the internet was fucked before GPT, give it a few years.

Re: Is Google’s 20-year search dominance about to end?

#312

Post by jsemrau »

TheCoelacanth wrote: post #115
mattwad wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone else said, the problem is ChatGPT lies straight to your face, whereas at least Google's answers are based on structured data by someone. It's traceable, whereas I would not trust ChatGPT ever to tell me the correct temperature to cook a steak.

ChatGPT lies to your face, while Google just finds other peoples lies and shows you a list of the best ones.

Or even worse, shows you the lies from 2015 and ignores newer information.

Re: Is Google’s 20-year search dominance about to end?

#313

Post by TeMPOraL »

revskill wrote: post #309
knome wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this setup and response seem a little silly to me. "what did the romans ever do for me?" "roads? aquaducts?" "ha! I don't go anywhere and drink well water!"

It's fine right ? Life gives you many choices.

But no man is an island, the minimum reproductive unit of homo sapiens is a village, etc.

You may not use those things directly, but you're dependent on those who do.

Re: Is Google’s 20-year search dominance about to end?

#314

Post by revskill »

erklik wrote: post #295
revskill wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't use Phone, nor Maps, nor Youtube, nor Kubernetes, all the things you listed. They're helpful to you, not me.

You literally said "made human life better" ... it doesn't matter if you use them or not. Also, you don't use a Phone? or Maps? Really? Do you use Chrome? Do you use Firefox, because Google's contributed a massive amount to the web standards that are implemented in both Firefox, and Chrome.

As far as i know, all serious libraries now always have first class TS library client. Is it an improvement, to Java, JS, or C,.... ?

Re: Is Google’s 20-year search dominance about to end?

#315

Post by fleddr »

The concern is not whether Google or Microsoft is first, the attention should go to web publishers. If ChatGPT as a search engine works well, it would mean that the user gets a direct answer without ever hitting the website.

Which begs the question...why produce any content at all? It will be gobbled up by AI and you'll never hear back. Thanks, I guess.

I can think of one issue delaying this inevitability: consumer laziness. Most people type one or two words, usually misspelled. That makes for a pretty poor AI prompt.

Re: Is Google’s 20-year search dominance about to end?

#317

Post by rvba »

NayamAmarshe wrote: post #298
scubadude wrote: post #277

If anything kills Google search it's the ads. Search for a product and the first page can entirely be ads or sales links. You have to specifically search to find reviews (many of which are likely paid reviews), and search even harder to find actual real user reports. Typically I add "site:reddit.com" to the end of any search where I want to read people's opinions of a product.

> Typically I add "site:reddit.com" to the end of any search where I want to read people's opinions of a product. Brave Search natively shows you reddit discussions on every search query. You can give that a try as well.

Problem is that it seems there are more and more reddit posts with paid SEO spam. Some even look AI generated.

Re: Is Google’s 20-year search dominance about to end?

#318

Post by crazygringo »

valley_guy_12 wrote: post #228

The article starts, "Nestled in the hills of Mountain View", which is worrisome, because as anyone with even a passing familiarity with Silicon Valley geography knows, Mountain View is mostly flat. And Google's Mountain View offices are located on reclaimed baylands, which are especially flat. I wonder if the article authors were thinking of Xerox PARC's offices in Palo Alto's hills? Or the road named "Sand Hill Road…

Ha, they have since changed it to "Near the bay in Mountain View".

Re: Is Google’s 20-year search dominance about to end?

#319

Post by captainmarble »

dilap wrote: post #31

Microsoft's integration of ChatGPT with Bing is really bad. No-one wants a busy search page with a side-bar of ChatGPT; what's the point of that? The correct interface for ChatGPT + search is just...ChatGPT. But it can also show you a list of web search results, when it's appropriate. A super-clean interface, that always shows you exactly what you want. That would be a killer feature and represent a real threat to Go…

The best way IMHO is to add another tab next to it similar to image, video search etc.

Re: Is Google’s 20-year search dominance about to end?

#320

Post by gcanyon »

Probably not because of Bing's most recent moves, but inevitably, yes -- depending on your definition of "about to" and your definition of "end".

Search in general, and specifically Google search, depends on Adwords for revenue similar to how newspapers used to depend on classified ads. Once ChatGPT.next or something similar removes the opportunity to display ads that people will click on, search will face a similar crisis of revenue to newspapers. Maybe Google will figure out the economics of the new landscape, but it certainly won't hold the same position of prominence in the internet at large as it does now.

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