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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?

#481

Post by mikestorrent »

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…

To be fair, back in those "good old phpbb days", people trolled just as hard as anyone does now, and maybe worse, since the consequences of it were not as visible, and getting in trouble for things you said online was virtually nonexistent. Everyone used a fake name, and while it might be possible to dox someone, it wasn't an operational concern for anyone who just wanted to be a jerk...

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

#482

Post by willparks »

m3kw9 wrote: post #450
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…

Apple has photo sharing where you can share photos privately.

Agreed, Apple shared albums seems to be the default. It’s not amazing, but your photos and contacts are already there, no new network required.

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

#483

Post by fragmede »

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…

All my real HN friends are on https://news.ysimulator.run/news

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

#484

Post by goatlover »

wolttam wrote: post #194
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…

It's the people with money, houses, and kids that departed the 'simple local' lifestyle when the Internet and social media become large. It's them that are re-discovering the joys of the simple local lifestyle. The simple local lifestyle is that which was lived by all of humanity for all of history up until the last ~75 years (give or take).

> The simple local lifestyle is that which was lived by all of humanity for all of history up until the last ~75 years (give or take).

A percentage of people still traveled, communicated, traded and migrated to other places in the past. Cities were a mix of lots of people, commerce, news. It was just slower and a smaller percentage. Look at the letters of Paul in the bible. He was writing to different communities around the Roman Empire, and traveled to them when he could.

Looking at the big picture, trade, communication and migration are the norm over human history. We colonized the world before the Industrial Revolution, some humans did it thousands of years prior.

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

#485

Post by skeptic_ai »

TacticalCoder wrote: post #425
mingus88 wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google ads is dead precisely because their search product is dead. Ever since Google bought double click, their ads business has been their search business. They are the same product.

Google search ain't dead at all: it became so good something silly like 99% of all the queries have to be answered by the Google AI before the very first "result". And for those who want more, there's the "continue this discussion with Gemini". Now this may not be great for Google Ads (dunno about that) but Google search now works better than it ever did.

Try to double check the AI inline response. Got it wrong way too many times to trust it now.

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

#486

Post by Seanambers »

CobrastanJorji wrote: post #305
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…

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/…

Discovery was bad.

I was the one to push G+ and Gwave on my friends and it did not take at all.

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

#487

Post by starik36 »

verelo wrote: post #426

It’ not Google that’s dead. It’s the economy in North American markets. I am finding conversion way down, clicks and impressions I’m still getting. People are just being way more fussy before handing over cash. Everyone i talk to is quoting the same time line, this started in September and it hasn’t returned to normal. Winter is coming.

The blog in question is in South Africa.

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

#488

Post by austinbaggio »

I can't find it, but there's a good graph that shows Google search decline in share to GPT, but it excludes Gemini. With Gemini, it stays relatively on par. That's pretty much the answer with where one goes. LLMs are higher intent than search could ever be, and they are closer to you selling to yourself than a store selling to you since they have all of your user context

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

#490

Post by throwaway5465 »

brandon272 wrote: post #461

Watching other people use Google, the predominant method of searching for information involves a query followed by getting their answer from the AI summary that appears above any search results. I'm not sure what impact this would be having on Adwords, but another commenter mentions that Google isn't hurting in the ad revenue department.

While TFA is anecdote, the author mentions maintaining their spend, being gifted adword budget, and getting lower returns so increasing spend.

This suggests adword revenue is up, conversion to adword 'dollar' balances is inflating those balances, so both return per dollar in is down and even more down is return per adword balance dollar.

It's a leading indicator that quarterly-return focused Google must be scrambling to fix right now - they inflated themselves out of Q4 2025 but 2026 is a question mark, or to parle some Boxton Matrix, is the cash cow dying and if so is the extension strategy ad injection in AI responses, product placement in your AI videos, background changes in your family snaps, etc.

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