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Google is dead. Where do we go now?

circusscientist.com

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Re: Google is dead. Where do we go now?

#391

Post by theli0nheart »

mmmBacon wrote: post #117

I think Google’s search and ad business are at risk. Search has become such a mess that it’s become harder and harder to use to find quality results. It reminds me of Yahoo before Google in a way. I’m using ChatCPT or equivalent for 60% of my searches. The remaining 40% is just muscle memory. Of that 40% about half the time I regret using Google search due to the difficulty of finding the relevant result. I can see s…

This is a temporary situation. Think of it like how Napster let you download any song for free for a few years. For a while, all you heard was how the Internet was going to put all musicians out of business. Obviously that didn't happen.

The same will happen here. It's not like OpenAI has built a search engine; every time they need a live search they hit Bing (please correct me if I'm wrong) and get the results from there. No matter how you slice it, search companies who actually supply the data are going to get reimbursed, and since most users don't pay $20 / month, that likely means ads everywhere.

Also, Google's AI overviews are getting very good. Initially it was pretty inaccurate, but now it's basically 95% as good as ChatGPT, and faster. Most normies I talk to think it's good enough.

Re: Google is dead. Where do we go now?

#392

Post by mgaunard »

pixl97 wrote: post #353
mgaunard wrote: post #287

The old decentralized Internet is dying out and being replaced by a few apps under the total control of a few companies. I'm not sure much can be done about this. At least the physical world is still the same.

> At least the physical world is still the same You mean the physical world where businesses are signing up with companies to put AI enabled cameras all over their properties and sell your data? Why not some nice dynamic pricing on their digital price bars next (oops, we are already there).

I only go to small local specialty shops within walking distance of my house, none of which has such sophisticated equipment.

Where I live, the trend has been to make spaces more walkable and with more nature and green spaces.

Re: Google is dead. Where do we go now?

#393

Post by emodendroket »

margorczynski wrote: post #323
xthe wrote: post #51

Google isn’t dead, but it’s no longer the single answer. Even Mark Zuckerberg recently acknowledged how fast Google is improving, which explains why Meta is pushing AI harder. Still, competing shouldn’t mean replacing what already works.

But what's the endgame? What if Google has the "best" AI offering if most of their revenue that comes from ads is gone?

They'll presumably monetize their AI (more) on both ends: getting you to pay for more access and getting advertisers to pay to be mentioned more often in the outputs. I mean that isn't really a bad position for them if you "using the Internet" degrades into you just sitting there typing queries in their Web app and never going anywhere else.

Re: Google is dead. Where do we go now?

#394

Post by SR2Z »

falcor84 wrote: post #334
CobrastanJorji wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still mourn G+. It was clearly put together by somebody who thought first and foremost about privacy. It made deciding who to share what with the central, most visible part of how it worked. And that's probably part of why it failed. Was it hard to choose? Nope. But I guarantee you that if Facebook added a little "hey, are you sure you want to share this post publicly with the whole world under your real name? Yes/…

The biggest boneheaded decision from my perspective was their taking over the + prefix in Google search (to filter for results that have this term verbatim). That just positioned G+ as my enemy and I had a strong desire for it to die. Unfortunately, they didn't bring back the prefix even after it died. Quotes around a term do something similar, but I am still angry.

I think that change happened well after G+ was dead

Re: Google is dead. Where do we go now?

#395

Post by mikepurvis »

alex1138 wrote: post #303
egypturnash wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone who was on Livejournal before G+ “invented” “Circles” had absolutely no problem with locking posts to “friends” (people they followed) or various “friends groups” that were subsets of their friends. It was fucking hilarious to see everyone say it was too hard on G+. Just two dropdowns right there on the new post page next to the main text field. Super simple. Creating and editing the groups was a pretty simp…

+ also got a bad rap due to what happened to Youtube - merged accounts - and yeah Google acted in some awful ways in more than one way but they were also trying to solve a problem of Zuck's shifting views on privacy (or rather the same view, that it shouldn't exist)

It probably wasn't the worst thing ever to try to leverage some of the existing social networking going on on YouTube, but combining it with a real name policy and making the actual posts/comments into first class global content for the G+ feed? Idiotic, and completely undermined the whole premise of safely walling off your content to its intended audience.

(See also: nice how reddit now makes it possible to curate the list of which subs you participate in whose comments and posts appear on your global profile page)

Re: Google is dead. Where do we go now?

#396

Post by tyingq »

jonas21 wrote: post #186
senthil_rajasek wrote: post #43

I think the author intended the title to be, "Google Ads is dead, Where do I promote my business now?" When I hear "Google" I assume search, oof (sigh of relief). They mention running ads on tiktok or instagram but no mention of youtube ads... Also, In my own experience for my business ( also entertainment) I have found reddit ads to be useful. So my next steps would be, Reddit Ads Youtube Ads Instagram Ads Increase…

I’d suggest that the title should be, “Competition for Google AdWords is so strong that unsophisticated advertisers can no longer get a good return. Where do I promote my business now?”

He had presumably used it for 10 years successfully. Surely he gained some expertise over that time period.

Re: Google is dead. Where do we go now?

#397

Post by Khaine »

cookiengineer wrote: post #278
nostrademons wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my anecdotal experience, it's moved to private, trust-based channels: iMessage, WhatsApp, email, face-to-face interactions. Our 30-year bender of putting our lives online and blurring the public and the private has finally ended: people don't want to be online, don't trust social media, don't really trust any media, and are living simple local lives with a small circle of friends that they get together with regula…

I had a very interesting discussion with a friend today, where I was talking to her about the /r/golang thread about Rob Pike's comments to OpenAI and how the thread was full of bots talking with other bots. No idea why the density of bots was so high in that thread, it was kind of absurd to see. Then she said: "I know nobody that comments on online forums. Nobody would ever comment to strangers on the internet. It's…

Thats just what the internet of the mid to late 90s was like. People rarely used their real name, there were hundreds of forums, some private. You could have different nicks on them.

Nobody knew you were a dog on the internet[1] until the rise of Facebook and linking your real identity with an online identity.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Internet,_nobody_knows_...

Re: Google is dead. Where do we go now?

#398

Post by tempest_ »

joenot443 wrote: post #131
bluedino wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The person kept making the comment that she couldn't see/find the puck and it made it frustrating to watch. Lifelong hockey fan, I never understood this complaint. I believe it was FOX that did the 'highlight the puck' thing for a few years in the 1990's. You can't see the ball in American football, either. But you don't need to. The guy that's running and everyone is trying to tackle? He has the ball. Just like th…

You're right - it was called FoxTrax, it's a fairly interesting piece of engineering. It's pretty wild they were able to convince the NHL to use a modified puck with a battery and PCB inside, all so American viewers could better follow the action. It was not well received in Canada :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FoxTrax

As someone with low vision I loved when they added that and missed it when it was gone.

I can't see the puck at all at a game and have to be very close to a television to see whats going on.

As a result most sports are boring.

Re: Google is dead. Where do we go now?

#399

Post by mikepurvis »

hinkley wrote: post #260
mikepurvis wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely this. I recently got a nice photo taken with my kids and for the first time I... didn't post it on Facebook. I sent it to my family group chat. Yesterday I posted on Facebook for the first time in months and it was about the power being out for an hour in the ice storm. I haven't posted travel photos to FB in years. I'm mostly still on FB at all for the acquaintance-level connections to things like neighbo…

One of the things I hope will come from the Trough of Disillusionment in cloud computing will be families running redundant file servers hosting the family photos instead of doing everything on IG. Your three tech savvy family members should all have redundant copies of the photos of memaw’s wedding and Uncle Jim when he was 2 and looked exactly like your cousin’s second kid. I don’t need to see those. Your stalker e…

I just set up a little cube server with a Mini-ITX board I had lying around. Overall I'm very happy with it, but right now it's basically just Unraid with the built-in containers running for Deluge, Jellyfin, and the Crafty minecraft server.

I'd love for it to also be a backup of my whole Google Photos account (eg https://github.com/JakeWharton/docker-gphotos-sync) but honestly I can't imagine trying to maintain an app on there that would actually be the first class storage/sync/presentation layer for my family.

Re: Google is dead. Where do we go now?

#400

Post by frmersdog »

esseph wrote: post #148
bdangubic wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When I hear "Google" I assume search, oof (sigh of relief). If Google Ads is dead/dying the search is soon to follow...

Gemini is the new search.

AI is not and cannot be search. Search is dead and has been for a few years now. Search has seemingly been subsumed into the LLM monster, considering how "fuzzy" queries have become (probably because they're not hitting the search algorithm without being massaged by "something else"). Significant portions of the web have been purged from Google's index, which means that neither Gemini nor Search can present those pages to users.

It's over. Sorry.

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