6 ms·

Paul Buchheit says Google may be only a year or two away from total disruption

52 points by rmason 4y ago

sys32768 4y ago
Google's standard solution: Buy ChatGPT and plaster it with ads so that you have to scroll down below the fold to see output.
- tester756 4y ago
  Doesn't Microsoft own 49% of ChatGPT/OpenAI?
  - hsnewman 4y ago
    So Google needs to buy Microsoft.
    - BudaDude 4y ago
      Why does Apple, the largest company, simply not eat the other companies?
      - bcrl 4y ago
        I think Apple is one of the few companies that tries to maintain a level of focus that Google simply does not have. Just compare the number of cancelled Google products/services vs Apple.
        adversaryIdiot 4y ago
        You mean apple has no talent and is just riding off the Iphone wave Steve Jobs made a decade ago.
        bcrl 4y ago
        I'd rather have 1 solid product than 2 dozen cancelled products which can no longer be used.
        larkost 4y ago
        I think the difference in the number of canceled projects is that Apple cancels them internally before customers see them. Google seems to like to try things out more to see if it might work, whereas at Apple they have to clearly see how this is going to work out before they let it out. Apple certainly has a list of failed projects/products, but they certainly try to keep the public ones to a minimum. An interesting counter-example to this would be the satellite communications that they have just released. If you look into the details, Apple is covering the costs for the emergency feature for the first 2 years (unclear to me if that is first two years of phone ownership, or of the program). And there was some talk in the keynote about expanding this to non-emergency calls (e.g.: look at this beautiful photo from the middle of nowhere). This looks to me like Apple is not sure what they are going to do with this system, but are seeing how it plays out.
      - nickthegreek 4y ago
        Because they couldn't legally do that thankfully.
        BudaDude 4y ago
        I was making a Futurama reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-06ki92PyVY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-06ki92PyVY But I agree 100%
    - wtetzner 4y ago
      Or 51% of ChatGPT?
  - ShamelessC 4y ago
    They secured exclusive licensing rights to GPT3 and its spinoffs. And yes, they also have an arrangement where MS provides funding and resources (Azure compute) in exchange for such licensing rights (see GitHub Copilot).
emrah 4y ago
I couldn't care less about Google or its business but here is how I think this is short-sighted in at least on way. If there is no search engine and people can't benefit from being found, they will be less likely to produce content. So chatgpt will need to incorporate sources to its results but if any result is a combination of multiple pages then i don't know how it would show that. And without attribution, content creation will likely not die but shift and who knows what that'll look like I imagine even chatgpt's output will change in time, it can't stay like this
- nicbou 4y ago
  In the end someone needs to do the original research, to go out and take pictures of stuff. If these people are no longer entitled to the sweat of their brow - not even attribution - why would they bother? I'm one of those people. If it comes to that, I'll have to find another line of work. I won't just start doing it for free.
  - autoexec 4y ago
    The internet was filled with people posting useful content and photos long before the ad industry showed up and shat on everything. People love to share their passions and knowledge with others and will happily do it for free. Who is paying you to post comments here? An internet where clicks and ad pushes don't drive content might look different, but it certainty wouldn't be devoid of content.
    - nicbou 4y ago
      I'd keep writing comments and the occasional blog post, but I might not devote my life to documenting German bureaucracy, as I currently do. That's by far my most valuable contribution. It's a bit like how I love to cook for friends on the weekends, but don't volunteer as a line cook in restaurants. Without any reward, I'd have to get a job and I'd have far less time to write. You can't run everything on sheer passion. Some valuable things depend on creators getting rewarded for their work.
pictur 4y ago
chatgpt increasingly looks like the "bro this is going to get big and change the world" crap that comes in every few years.
- tablespoon 4y ago
  > chatgpt increasingly looks like the "bro this is going to get big and change the world" crap that comes in every few years. A lot of techies believe in science fiction and over-eagerly look for signs of the advent of worlds like those in their TV shows and books. They also seem to always imagine themselves as the protagonists in those works, so even cheer on the idea of some pretty shitty sci-fi worlds (e.g. cyberpunk dystopias).
  - pictur 4y ago
    I think most sci-fi movies are more realistic than predictions about this technology.
  - nomel 4y ago
    It's only fiction until it's real. Most everything we have today was science fiction at one point.
    - tablespoon 4y ago
      > It's only fiction until it's real. Most everything we have today was science fiction at one point. Eh, not so much. IMHO, very little science fiction has actually become real, and that which has mainly gets credit through very generous interpretation.
      - nomel 4y ago
        > very little science fiction has actually become real I can't comprehend this perspective, so you'll have to help me out. Look at the fiction from the 20's and 30's. People went to the moon. Robots walked on two legs. People had computers on their wrists. Machines made body parts for people. Do you have some examples of "very generous interpretations"?
charcircuit 4y ago
If I search for "car dealerships" how is ChatGPT's response going to make Google irrelevant? ChatGPT: "A car dealership is a retail business that sells new and/or used vehicles to customers." Google: Shows ads for local car ships, then shows me a map of nearby dealerships, then shows me some car dealership websites, then shows me some more business, then defines what a car dealership is, then shows car dealership podcasts, then shows car dealership books Google is miles ahead of of ChatGPT for this query.
RcouF1uZ4gsC 4y ago
The whole “in two years” completely destroys the credibility of the article. I think it took longer for Google to overtake AltaVista and that was with a decidedly superior product in the same category. ChatGPT is amazing, but really isn’t a replacement for search.
- pinkcan 4y ago
  yea ok, but what happens when chatgpt can search for you?
- zerr 4y ago
  Also, the UX (an empty white page with a search text entry) attracted people to Google in the first place.
woodruffw 4y ago
I keep seeing breathless claims about this, but I don't see how: ChatGPT doesn't index websites, which is what I use Google for. It doesn't manage my calendar or provide me email, which are services I actually pay Google for. At best, ChatGPT seems to be well suited for the "infobox" value-add thingies they put on search results. But those are infamously inaccurate and/or misleading, and it's unclear to me that ChatGPT will perform any better on that front (or that the majority of users even care about that feature).
- ryanSrich 4y ago
  Exactly this. ChatGPT cannot answer 90% of the questions I ask it. The reason? Because the information I’m looking for exists after 2021. I have no idea how this would ever replace a search engine that has real-time results.
  - bckr 4y ago
    Persistent indexing is just an implementation detail. Models with access to a database are already in existence.
    - kissgyorgy 4y ago
      Calling a billion dollar business an "implementation detail" is quite a stretch.
      - Euphorbium 4y ago
        Exercise left for a reader.
        bckr 4y ago
        Haha, it’s true that it’s a lot of work. But it’s just that: work. We now know that it’s possible with the current class of techniques.
    - EGreg 4y ago
jmount 4y ago
I have met quite a few Googlers that confidentially share "things are a lot more precarious than people outside know." My guess was always that this was some sort of internal motivational speech in Google, and not an actual observation.
fernandopj 4y ago
Google don't mess around existential threats to their search business model. We're talking about the company who, when they saw the iPhone, recognized the mobile apps space as a threat to search (why search if they can open an app from a walled garden) and immediately went to work on Android, even if they were never in the phone business. They reacted faster and better than everyone else and the entire phone space as it was went bankrupt (Nokia, Blackberry, et al). I have no doubt in my mind Google have ChatGPT as a top priority threat, and they'll come up with something to counter it. And Google already invest heavily on AI, they're not completely offguard. If somehow someone invented a car, today, that could threaten ad search from Google, they'd be competing with Ford, GM etc in two years.
- pier25 4y ago
  > and immediately went to work on Android Google acquired Android in 2005, years before the iPhone was released.
  - cmrdporcupine 4y ago
    Yes, and Google has had its own LLM conversational bot for years, before ChatGPT became a public phenomenon even. So, analogy holds.
  - tablespoon 4y ago
    > Google acquired Android in 2005, years before the iPhone was released. IIRC: That "Android" was nothing like what we refer to as Android today. I believe it was aiming to be a common OS for digital cameras or something. The iPhone caused them to pivot the project hard in a different direction.
    - pier25 4y ago
      That happened before the Google Acquisition. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_(operating_system) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_(operating_system)
- andrewxdiamond 4y ago
doe88 4y ago
I'm feeling lucky never worked, I doubt ChatGPT, alone, without a list of links, i.e. a page of results will work. At least to me, however good, I most of the times want choices. Nevertheless, where I think they could be impacted is to introduce new competition with new players using search powerered by these technologies, that I can see.
- add-sub-mul-div 4y ago
  You also want the ability to evaluate the trustworthiness of a fact or opinion within the context of its publication. Not delivered opaquely outside of its original context, wrapped up by a centralized giant that can create any lever it wants to massage the info for advertising purposes or worse.
- yucky 4y ago
  > I'm feeling lucky never worked Because it sent you to a website where you still had to look for your answer. It didn't just give you the answer.
rvieira 4y ago
I'm not sure about all this futurology. One thing I'm sure, despite all the papers and theoretical advances Google has on AI, the translation to Google products and user experience is dismal. I use business GChat and recently I've been graced with TL;DR summaries of threads. They are comically bad.
100011_100001 4y ago
This is what ChatGPT has to say about it: No, it is unlikely that ChatGPT will be able to replace Google in two years.
m3kw9 4y ago
That’s the time if google does absolutely nothing.
woeirua 4y ago
I seriously doubt that because : 1 - there is so much money tied up in the search -> clicks for ads business model. Content providers were happy to let Google scrape their pages because indexing in Google leads to clicks. They won’t be happy to let OpenAI scrape their pages because it will lead to many fewer clicks, even if OpenAI can solve the source attribution problem. As a result, there will be many more walled gardens if ChatGPT becomes the dominant method of search as content creators see their typical stream of revenue dry up. Eventually ChatGPT will become useless as its training data becomes more and more obsolete. 2 - Google News already got sued into oblivion by content creators for summarizing news articles. (Google worked around it by removing the article snippets). ChatGPT is just doing the same thing but for every query. Their legal exposure is going to be huge for the exact same reasons. 3 - Lastly, how will OpenAI make money on ChatGPT? Advertisers won’t pay to “maybe” show up in query results. A monthly subscription? Unless the results are drastically better than Google that will be a big pass from most people. Could OpenAI become the dominant player in search? Sure, there is a path there, but I would probably bet against it right now.
- JamesBarney 4y ago
  1. Almost all high value content on the web exists on far more than one site. Any individual website which opts in will get more clicks with ChatGPT than without. Given this, most websites will let ChatGPT index them in order to drive more clicks. 3. It seems like a pay per click model would work. Basically get ChatGPT to weigh paid content higher than unpaid content.
  - woeirua 4y ago
    1. Does it? There are a bunch of sites that mirror high quality content but I don’t see many direct replacements for StackOverflow. 3. But most people are asking ChatGPT queries that don’t require you to click on anything. Why do I want to click through to see the code that ChatGPT copied from if it got the answer right in the first place? The click thru rate will be a small fraction of what it is today. Why would advertisers buy into that model?
    - 4y ago
cmrdporcupine 4y ago
It is not clear to me why people keep saying this. Google has a competitor to ChatGPT, internally. The thing that that Blake Lemoine guy was playing with and decided had selfhood? I played with an earlier version of it when I was there... Google is not slouching in this area. There's nothing that OpenAI can do that Google couldn't also do. If they feel the need to integrate it into search, they will do so. If they need to roll out a new product, they will do so. But LLMs are not a replacement for search. For one... they "lie." For two, from my understanding they don't really accommodate real-time / recent information very well. Can they augment search? Almost certainly. And in that regard, I suspect Google is better positioned than most to take advantage of that kind of fusion. If anything, I suspect Google has more of an unfair advantage in this kind of domain than most. Huge amount of computing power, boatloads of AI expertise on staff, and access to probably the biggest corpus of learning and search material out there.
pier25 4y ago
Google has been investing in AI for over a decade. I seriously doubt they don't have their own ChatGPT and haven't experimented with it to replace search.
- yamtaddle 4y ago
  But I bet (probably well-founded) fears of drawing anti-trust or copyright infringement legal action has them hesitant to push that functionality on something as prominent as the Search page. A relatively small company with no pre-existing monopoly position summarizing pages so you don't need to visit them is one thing. Google doing it (too much, and too well) is practically guaranteed to draw one or more credible challenges (again). This may leave a gap in which to challenge Google and win. But even the little company is likely to see some risky lawsuits as they monetize and grow. A lot's gonna hinge on whether telling a computer to do some math on content launders copyright as well as having a human learn something, then explain it, or synthesize something "new". And actually, it'll need to launder it much better, in the eyes of the courts, or else still be hopelessly vulnerable to legal attack—it's not like humans don't unintentionally infringe copyright, as the courts see it, pretty often, so if "AI" is held to the same standard it'll just be a mass-lawsuit-magnet. Uber for getting yourself sued.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
daenney 4y ago
The premise seems to be: Google makes money from ads on search pages. ChatGPT will replace search, so no money for Google. Assuming Google has the tech for it, they can provide a ChatGPT-like thing that peppers context relevant ads into the response. Heck, you could go to Google.com as it is today and instead of the search bar chat with the AI. Why would their primary source of income crumble?
sva_ 4y ago
I'm seeing a lot of skepticism about these claims of GPT models becoming important in search, especially on here. What people seem to find remarkable about ChatGPT is, that it seems to answer general questions fairly well, but what I find remarkable about it is: it makes you feel like it understands what you're trying to tell it. I sometimes make a half-assed prompt not even spelling correctly (and not caring, because the GPT will pick it up anyways), and the result from the model seems to repeat to me what I wanted from it. Then it sometimes gives a wrong answer, but it legitly seems to correctly repeat what I asked from it. I think this might be the real killer feature - it isn't (currently) giving accurate answers, but it is giving people the feeling that they're being understood. Humans crave that, and I find that might be the main reason for its popularity. And the issue of providing the 'correct' information might just be an engineering problem.
- jodrellblank 4y ago
  That is a good point. I asked ChatGPT "What was the book with the guy stuck on Venus or wherever who had to grow food in poop?". ChatGPT replied "The book you're referring to is likely "The Martian" by Andy Weir." which makes me feel like it understood me even though I deliberately got the planet wrong and was vague about the rest. A human who knows the story would likely get it right because one of the most grossly memorable scenes is him growing potatoes using poop for fertiliser. To the same prompt, Google's top result was a Wikipedia page for a Ray Bradbury book, and told me the result was "missing poop". It's always frustrating that Google ignores words I typed in, and here it's one of the key words in the query. Yes, ChatGPT makes me feel like I'm talking to a helpful assistant and Google, Bing, Siri, Cortana, OK Google, Alexa, don't. (I think Google used to feel like that, years ago when its results were good?)
waynesonfire 4y ago
Google makes money from advertising. It will deploy a ChatGPT version with conversational ads. The challenge that ChatGPT presents is that it is the only technology that appears to threaten Googles search dominance (and thus, ad revenue) in 25 years. It's very wise and appropriate of them to treat this as "code red". MSFT is foaming at the mouth for the opportunity to finally be able to compete with Google search. I think Google comes out unscathed. When their identity is at stake, they'll have no troubles executing.
excerionsforte 4y ago
ChatGPT is amazing. It can do things that Web/Location/etc. search cannot do. I love that it can do Q/A, summarize and assist in tasks that have to do with writing. BUT, web search will always be needed and ChatGPT will co-exist with Search. If ChatGPT ever makes inroads into real time information then queries like "restaurants in my area" and "latest news" and other similar queries then Google Search will be destroyed. At that point, I don't know what else Google Search will be useful for other than to search for web sites which is useful for me. ChatGPT is a long time away from that though.
linkjuice4all 4y ago
If people are able to run ChatGPT (or similar) locally and can either buy access to large training datasets or generate them on their own then Google and others are probably in trouble - there's no business opportunity to jam paid messages in there. So how will they (OpenAI/Microsoft/whoever else comes up with something similar) monetize this? They can charge for access or turn ChatGPT into SalesGPT. I've worked with a lot of great sales people and they're a lot of fun to hang out with when they're not working - but I think users would eventually get tired of their Chatbot trying to convince them to buy something when they just wanted answers.
temp00345 4y ago
Funny how in making this prediction, the author of gmail seems to forget that google also has.. gmail and a gazillion other products which bring in revenue. ChatGPT can't find videos or images or company home pages or the tax office website or the electrical utilities, etc. It could, but that would turn it into a search engine and I think it's reasonable to assume that Google would come up with its own version of ChatGPT sooner than OpenAI would build a search engine.
pxue 4y ago
How do you integrate chatgpt with actual up-to-date search results? Don't you need to retrain the model all the time? Isn't that the most prohibitive part? Am I missing something?
bambax 4y ago
I'm very curious about this. I'm starting to develop an irrational hatred of all things AI which obviously clouds my judgement, so I'm not sure if I see it failing because I want it to fail so much, or because it actually cannot work. But there is a fundamental difference between Google search and ChatGPT. Google search (or any search, so far) just point to sources of information, and we can then evaluate those for reputation, reliability, accuracy, and in the end form an opinion. ChatGPT speaks in its own name and affirms things, without ever sourcing them, that are sometimes wildly incorrect. The sourcing problem is itself huge, because it makes it so easy to poison the well without a trace.
DueDilligence 4y ago
.. to which I will raise a celebratory pint.
dang 4y ago
Google may be only a year or two away from total disruption - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33826577 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33826577 - Dec 2022 (13 comments)
onewheeltom 4y ago
How much more of this work will ChatGPT continue to do? Clean training data is expensive. https://www.businessinsider.com/openai-kenyan-contract-workers-label-toxic-content-chatgpt-training-report-2023-1 https://www.businessinsider.com/openai-kenyan-contract-worke...
sacnoradhq 4y ago
That's a John McAfee-level proclamation.

52 points by rmason 4y ago

Google's standard solution: Buy ChatGPT and plaster it with ads so that you have to scroll down below the fold to see output.

tester756 4y ago
Doesn't Microsoft own 49% of ChatGPT/OpenAI?
- hsnewman 4y ago
  So Google needs to buy Microsoft.
  - BudaDude 4y ago
    Why does Apple, the largest company, simply not eat the other companies?
    - bcrl 4y ago
      I think Apple is one of the few companies that tries to maintain a level of focus that Google simply does not have. Just compare the number of cancelled Google products/services vs Apple.
      - adversaryIdiot 4y ago
        You mean apple has no talent and is just riding off the Iphone wave Steve Jobs made a decade ago.
        bcrl 4y ago
        I'd rather have 1 solid product than 2 dozen cancelled products which can no longer be used.
      - larkost 4y ago
        I think the difference in the number of canceled projects is that Apple cancels them internally before customers see them. Google seems to like to try things out more to see if it might work, whereas at Apple they have to clearly see how this is going to work out before they let it out. Apple certainly has a list of failed projects/products, but they certainly try to keep the public ones to a minimum. An interesting counter-example to this would be the satellite communications that they have just released. If you look into the details, Apple is covering the costs for the emergency feature for the first 2 years (unclear to me if that is first two years of phone ownership, or of the program). And there was some talk in the keynote about expanding this to non-emergency calls (e.g.: look at this beautiful photo from the middle of nowhere). This looks to me like Apple is not sure what they are going to do with this system, but are seeing how it plays out.
    - nickthegreek 4y ago
      Because they couldn't legally do that thankfully.
      - BudaDude 4y ago
        I was making a Futurama reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-06ki92PyVY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-06ki92PyVY But I agree 100%
  - wtetzner 4y ago
    Or 51% of ChatGPT?
- ShamelessC 4y ago
  They secured exclusive licensing rights to GPT3 and its spinoffs. And yes, they also have an arrangement where MS provides funding and resources (Azure compute) in exchange for such licensing rights (see GitHub Copilot).

emrah 4y ago

I couldn't care less about Google or its business but here is how I think this is short-sighted in at least on way. If there is no search engine and people can't benefit from being found, they will be less likely to produce content. So chatgpt will need to incorporate sources to its results but if any result is a combination of multiple pages then i don't know how it would show that. And without attribution, content creation will likely not die but shift and who knows what that'll look like I imagine even chatgpt's output will change in time, it can't stay like this

nicbou 4y ago
In the end someone needs to do the original research, to go out and take pictures of stuff. If these people are no longer entitled to the sweat of their brow - not even attribution - why would they bother? I'm one of those people. If it comes to that, I'll have to find another line of work. I won't just start doing it for free.
- autoexec 4y ago
  The internet was filled with people posting useful content and photos long before the ad industry showed up and shat on everything. People love to share their passions and knowledge with others and will happily do it for free. Who is paying you to post comments here? An internet where clicks and ad pushes don't drive content might look different, but it certainty wouldn't be devoid of content.
  - nicbou 4y ago
    I'd keep writing comments and the occasional blog post, but I might not devote my life to documenting German bureaucracy, as I currently do. That's by far my most valuable contribution. It's a bit like how I love to cook for friends on the weekends, but don't volunteer as a line cook in restaurants. Without any reward, I'd have to get a job and I'd have far less time to write. You can't run everything on sheer passion. Some valuable things depend on creators getting rewarded for their work.

pictur 4y ago

chatgpt increasingly looks like the "bro this is going to get big and change the world" crap that comes in every few years.

tablespoon 4y ago
> chatgpt increasingly looks like the "bro this is going to get big and change the world" crap that comes in every few years. A lot of techies believe in science fiction and over-eagerly look for signs of the advent of worlds like those in their TV shows and books. They also seem to always imagine themselves as the protagonists in those works, so even cheer on the idea of some pretty shitty sci-fi worlds (e.g. cyberpunk dystopias).
- pictur 4y ago
  I think most sci-fi movies are more realistic than predictions about this technology.
- nomel 4y ago
  It's only fiction until it's real. Most everything we have today was science fiction at one point.
  - tablespoon 4y ago
    > It's only fiction until it's real. Most everything we have today was science fiction at one point. Eh, not so much. IMHO, very little science fiction has actually become real, and that which has mainly gets credit through very generous interpretation.
    - nomel 4y ago
      > very little science fiction has actually become real I can't comprehend this perspective, so you'll have to help me out. Look at the fiction from the 20's and 30's. People went to the moon. Robots walked on two legs. People had computers on their wrists. Machines made body parts for people. Do you have some examples of "very generous interpretations"?

charcircuit 4y ago

If I search for "car dealerships" how is ChatGPT's response going to make Google irrelevant? ChatGPT: "A car dealership is a retail business that sells new and/or used vehicles to customers." Google: Shows ads for local car ships, then shows me a map of nearby dealerships, then shows me some car dealership websites, then shows me some more business, then defines what a car dealership is, then shows car dealership podcasts, then shows car dealership books Google is miles ahead of of ChatGPT for this query.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 4y ago

The whole “in two years” completely destroys the credibility of the article. I think it took longer for Google to overtake AltaVista and that was with a decidedly superior product in the same category. ChatGPT is amazing, but really isn’t a replacement for search.

pinkcan 4y ago
yea ok, but what happens when chatgpt can search for you?
zerr 4y ago
Also, the UX (an empty white page with a search text entry) attracted people to Google in the first place.

woodruffw 4y ago

I keep seeing breathless claims about this, but I don't see how: ChatGPT doesn't index websites, which is what I use Google for. It doesn't manage my calendar or provide me email, which are services I actually pay Google for. At best, ChatGPT seems to be well suited for the "infobox" value-add thingies they put on search results. But those are infamously inaccurate and/or misleading, and it's unclear to me that ChatGPT will perform any better on that front (or that the majority of users even care about that feature).

ryanSrich 4y ago
Exactly this. ChatGPT cannot answer 90% of the questions I ask it. The reason? Because the information I’m looking for exists after 2021. I have no idea how this would ever replace a search engine that has real-time results.
- bckr 4y ago
  Persistent indexing is just an implementation detail. Models with access to a database are already in existence.
  - kissgyorgy 4y ago
    Calling a billion dollar business an "implementation detail" is quite a stretch.
    - Euphorbium 4y ago
      Exercise left for a reader.
      - bckr 4y ago
        Haha, it’s true that it’s a lot of work. But it’s just that: work. We now know that it’s possible with the current class of techniques.
  - EGreg 4y ago

jmount 4y ago

I have met quite a few Googlers that confidentially share "things are a lot more precarious than people outside know." My guess was always that this was some sort of internal motivational speech in Google, and not an actual observation.

fernandopj 4y ago

Google don't mess around existential threats to their search business model. We're talking about the company who, when they saw the iPhone, recognized the mobile apps space as a threat to search (why search if they can open an app from a walled garden) and immediately went to work on Android, even if they were never in the phone business. They reacted faster and better than everyone else and the entire phone space as it was went bankrupt (Nokia, Blackberry, et al). I have no doubt in my mind Google have ChatGPT as a top priority threat, and they'll come up with something to counter it. And Google already invest heavily on AI, they're not completely offguard. If somehow someone invented a car, today, that could threaten ad search from Google, they'd be competing with Ford, GM etc in two years.

pier25 4y ago
> and immediately went to work on Android Google acquired Android in 2005, years before the iPhone was released.
- cmrdporcupine 4y ago
  Yes, and Google has had its own LLM conversational bot for years, before ChatGPT became a public phenomenon even. So, analogy holds.
- tablespoon 4y ago
  > Google acquired Android in 2005, years before the iPhone was released. IIRC: That "Android" was nothing like what we refer to as Android today. I believe it was aiming to be a common OS for digital cameras or something. The iPhone caused them to pivot the project hard in a different direction.
  - pier25 4y ago
    That happened before the Google Acquisition. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_(operating_system) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_(operating_system)
andrewxdiamond 4y ago

doe88 4y ago

I'm feeling lucky never worked, I doubt ChatGPT, alone, without a list of links, i.e. a page of results will work. At least to me, however good, I most of the times want choices. Nevertheless, where I think they could be impacted is to introduce new competition with new players using search powerered by these technologies, that I can see.

add-sub-mul-div 4y ago
You also want the ability to evaluate the trustworthiness of a fact or opinion within the context of its publication. Not delivered opaquely outside of its original context, wrapped up by a centralized giant that can create any lever it wants to massage the info for advertising purposes or worse.
yucky 4y ago
> I'm feeling lucky never worked Because it sent you to a website where you still had to look for your answer. It didn't just give you the answer.

rvieira 4y ago

I'm not sure about all this futurology. One thing I'm sure, despite all the papers and theoretical advances Google has on AI, the translation to Google products and user experience is dismal. I use business GChat and recently I've been graced with TL;DR summaries of threads. They are comically bad.

100011_100001 4y ago

This is what ChatGPT has to say about it: No, it is unlikely that ChatGPT will be able to replace Google in two years.

m3kw9 4y ago

That’s the time if google does absolutely nothing.

woeirua 4y ago

I seriously doubt that because : 1 - there is so much money tied up in the search -> clicks for ads business model. Content providers were happy to let Google scrape their pages because indexing in Google leads to clicks. They won’t be happy to let OpenAI scrape their pages because it will lead to many fewer clicks, even if OpenAI can solve the source attribution problem. As a result, there will be many more walled gardens if ChatGPT becomes the dominant method of search as content creators see their typical stream of revenue dry up. Eventually ChatGPT will become useless as its training data becomes more and more obsolete. 2 - Google News already got sued into oblivion by content creators for summarizing news articles. (Google worked around it by removing the article snippets). ChatGPT is just doing the same thing but for every query. Their legal exposure is going to be huge for the exact same reasons. 3 - Lastly, how will OpenAI make money on ChatGPT? Advertisers won’t pay to “maybe” show up in query results. A monthly subscription? Unless the results are drastically better than Google that will be a big pass from most people. Could OpenAI become the dominant player in search? Sure, there is a path there, but I would probably bet against it right now.

JamesBarney 4y ago
1. Almost all high value content on the web exists on far more than one site. Any individual website which opts in will get more clicks with ChatGPT than without. Given this, most websites will let ChatGPT index them in order to drive more clicks. 3. It seems like a pay per click model would work. Basically get ChatGPT to weigh paid content higher than unpaid content.
- woeirua 4y ago
  1. Does it? There are a bunch of sites that mirror high quality content but I don’t see many direct replacements for StackOverflow. 3. But most people are asking ChatGPT queries that don’t require you to click on anything. Why do I want to click through to see the code that ChatGPT copied from if it got the answer right in the first place? The click thru rate will be a small fraction of what it is today. Why would advertisers buy into that model?
  - 4y ago

cmrdporcupine 4y ago

It is not clear to me why people keep saying this. Google has a competitor to ChatGPT, internally. The thing that that Blake Lemoine guy was playing with and decided had selfhood? I played with an earlier version of it when I was there... Google is not slouching in this area. There's nothing that OpenAI can do that Google couldn't also do. If they feel the need to integrate it into search, they will do so. If they need to roll out a new product, they will do so. But LLMs are not a replacement for search. For one... they "lie." For two, from my understanding they don't really accommodate real-time / recent information very well. Can they augment search? Almost certainly. And in that regard, I suspect Google is better positioned than most to take advantage of that kind of fusion. If anything, I suspect Google has more of an unfair advantage in this kind of domain than most. Huge amount of computing power, boatloads of AI expertise on staff, and access to probably the biggest corpus of learning and search material out there.

pier25 4y ago

Google has been investing in AI for over a decade. I seriously doubt they don't have their own ChatGPT and haven't experimented with it to replace search.

yamtaddle 4y ago
But I bet (probably well-founded) fears of drawing anti-trust or copyright infringement legal action has them hesitant to push that functionality on something as prominent as the Search page. A relatively small company with no pre-existing monopoly position summarizing pages so you don't need to visit them is one thing. Google doing it (too much, and too well) is practically guaranteed to draw one or more credible challenges (again). This may leave a gap in which to challenge Google and win. But even the little company is likely to see some risky lawsuits as they monetize and grow. A lot's gonna hinge on whether telling a computer to do some math on content launders copyright as well as having a human learn something, then explain it, or synthesize something "new". And actually, it'll need to launder it much better, in the eyes of the courts, or else still be hopelessly vulnerable to legal attack—it's not like humans don't unintentionally infringe copyright, as the courts see it, pretty often, so if "AI" is held to the same standard it'll just be a mass-lawsuit-magnet. Uber for getting yourself sued.

deleted 4y ago

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daenney 4y ago

The premise seems to be: Google makes money from ads on search pages. ChatGPT will replace search, so no money for Google. Assuming Google has the tech for it, they can provide a ChatGPT-like thing that peppers context relevant ads into the response. Heck, you could go to Google.com as it is today and instead of the search bar chat with the AI. Why would their primary source of income crumble?

sva_ 4y ago

I'm seeing a lot of skepticism about these claims of GPT models becoming important in search, especially on here. What people seem to find remarkable about ChatGPT is, that it seems to answer general questions fairly well, but what I find remarkable about it is: it makes you feel like it understands what you're trying to tell it. I sometimes make a half-assed prompt not even spelling correctly (and not caring, because the GPT will pick it up anyways), and the result from the model seems to repeat to me what I wanted from it. Then it sometimes gives a wrong answer, but it legitly seems to correctly repeat what I asked from it. I think this might be the real killer feature - it isn't (currently) giving accurate answers, but it is giving people the feeling that they're being understood. Humans crave that, and I find that might be the main reason for its popularity. And the issue of providing the 'correct' information might just be an engineering problem.

jodrellblank 4y ago
That is a good point. I asked ChatGPT "What was the book with the guy stuck on Venus or wherever who had to grow food in poop?". ChatGPT replied "The book you're referring to is likely "The Martian" by Andy Weir." which makes me feel like it understood me even though I deliberately got the planet wrong and was vague about the rest. A human who knows the story would likely get it right because one of the most grossly memorable scenes is him growing potatoes using poop for fertiliser. To the same prompt, Google's top result was a Wikipedia page for a Ray Bradbury book, and told me the result was "missing poop". It's always frustrating that Google ignores words I typed in, and here it's one of the key words in the query. Yes, ChatGPT makes me feel like I'm talking to a helpful assistant and Google, Bing, Siri, Cortana, OK Google, Alexa, don't. (I think Google used to feel like that, years ago when its results were good?)

waynesonfire 4y ago

Google makes money from advertising. It will deploy a ChatGPT version with conversational ads. The challenge that ChatGPT presents is that it is the only technology that appears to threaten Googles search dominance (and thus, ad revenue) in 25 years. It's very wise and appropriate of them to treat this as "code red". MSFT is foaming at the mouth for the opportunity to finally be able to compete with Google search. I think Google comes out unscathed. When their identity is at stake, they'll have no troubles executing.

excerionsforte 4y ago

ChatGPT is amazing. It can do things that Web/Location/etc. search cannot do. I love that it can do Q/A, summarize and assist in tasks that have to do with writing. BUT, web search will always be needed and ChatGPT will co-exist with Search. If ChatGPT ever makes inroads into real time information then queries like "restaurants in my area" and "latest news" and other similar queries then Google Search will be destroyed. At that point, I don't know what else Google Search will be useful for other than to search for web sites which is useful for me. ChatGPT is a long time away from that though.

linkjuice4all 4y ago

If people are able to run ChatGPT (or similar) locally and can either buy access to large training datasets or generate them on their own then Google and others are probably in trouble - there's no business opportunity to jam paid messages in there. So how will they (OpenAI/Microsoft/whoever else comes up with something similar) monetize this? They can charge for access or turn ChatGPT into SalesGPT. I've worked with a lot of great sales people and they're a lot of fun to hang out with when they're not working - but I think users would eventually get tired of their Chatbot trying to convince them to buy something when they just wanted answers.

temp00345 4y ago

Funny how in making this prediction, the author of gmail seems to forget that google also has.. gmail and a gazillion other products which bring in revenue. ChatGPT can't find videos or images or company home pages or the tax office website or the electrical utilities, etc. It could, but that would turn it into a search engine and I think it's reasonable to assume that Google would come up with its own version of ChatGPT sooner than OpenAI would build a search engine.

pxue 4y ago

How do you integrate chatgpt with actual up-to-date search results? Don't you need to retrain the model all the time? Isn't that the most prohibitive part? Am I missing something?

bambax 4y ago

I'm very curious about this. I'm starting to develop an irrational hatred of all things AI which obviously clouds my judgement, so I'm not sure if I see it failing because I want it to fail so much, or because it actually cannot work. But there is a fundamental difference between Google search and ChatGPT. Google search (or any search, so far) just point to sources of information, and we can then evaluate those for reputation, reliability, accuracy, and in the end form an opinion. ChatGPT speaks in its own name and affirms things, without ever sourcing them, that are sometimes wildly incorrect. The sourcing problem is itself huge, because it makes it so easy to poison the well without a trace.

DueDilligence 4y ago

.. to which I will raise a celebratory pint.

dang 4y ago

Google may be only a year or two away from total disruption - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33826577 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33826577 - Dec 2022 (13 comments)

onewheeltom 4y ago

How much more of this work will ChatGPT continue to do? Clean training data is expensive. https://www.businessinsider.com/openai-kenyan-contract-workers-label-toxic-content-chatgpt-training-report-2023-1 https://www.businessinsider.com/openai-kenyan-contract-worke...

sacnoradhq 4y ago

That's a John McAfee-level proclamation.