6 ms·

> Our long-term investments in deep computer science make us extremely well-positioned as AI reaches an inflection point, and I’m excited by the AI-driven leaps

by jstx1 4y ago

> Our long-term investments in deep computer science make us extremely well-positioned as AI reaches an inflection point, and I’m excited by the AI-driven leaps we’re about to unveil in Search and beyond. translation: "Investors, please chill about ChatGPT already"

Invictus0 4y ago
They still sold off
topicseed 4y ago
SEOs (like me) are terrified of Google releasing a proper public Search chat — as people would not really need to visit websites. But the space is incredibly exciting as a user/searcher/average joe.
- shmatt 4y ago
  LLMs need to consume websites to give answers. No websites = no LLM. If your websites add no value to the LLM (hence to the searcher, to the world, how deep should we get?), well then thats a good side effect
  - fragmede 4y ago
    what? the web page throws has good info that gets fed into the LLM. it's that users no longer visit the web page and see ads which pays for the sites operation
  - graeme 4y ago
    Yes, the question is how do the websites get a return. If it’s like a featured snippet, should work great. “Here’s an answer, read more here” If the LLM Hoovers up all the knowledge and doesn’t show where it got it, then there is no incentive to produce the knowledge I imagine Google is acutely aware of this, they have a symbiotic relationship with site owners. But we’ll see. There is some sort of issue here not well addressed by copyright
    - sounds 4y ago
      Really I think the question is around "symbiotic relationship." Google has failed to win decisively in the search result ranking arms race. Concrete example: sites that rip from stackoverflow have been ranking higher than stackoverflow in google search results. Other search engines fare worse. If Google trained a discriminator that penalized these practices I think their search product would dramatically improve and the web as a whole might benefit - although tabloid article farms might sue.
      - sounds 4y ago
        Can't edit my comment, but to add to it: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/02/until-further-notice-think-twice-before-using-google-to-download-software/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/02/until...
      - jstx1 4y ago
        > Google has failed to win decisively in the search result ranking arms race. They have 84% market share which seems like winning in all the ways businesses care about, regardless of how it ranks your stackoverflow searches.
        luckylion 4y ago
        The ranking arms race isn't against competitors, it's against SEOs.
        soiler 4y ago
        That's just applying a completely different and irrelevant metric to dismiss the point of the previous poster. The arms race of "fast trash" websites vs quality search results is not being won by Google or anyone else as of today. Google having a business model that doesn't even incentivize them to win that race =/= Google not losing that race. It's closer to them giving up in defeat, which is a loss for all of us (many times over).
      - jonathankoren 4y ago
        They can sue all they want, but they don’t have a leg to stand on. There is no right to demand be ranked highly or even at all.
  - 6gvONxR4sf7o 4y ago
    What if the website does add value to the LLM, but only in the training/indexing stage? Like, if I create a website that painstakingly measures and lists the weights of thousands of widgets, then the LLM ingests that knowledge and then never sends the user to my page. Maybe it's more convenient for the user to pay the LLM for the info (paid via ad attention or whatever), but if I'm the one who made the measurements, then shouldn't I be paid too? If the user never "pays" me, then I'm going to stop publishing measurements, and the whole LLM falls apart. Likewise for generative art. The people who made the training data are a critical part of the ecosystem. Cutting them out seems like cutting out some critical part of a food chain.
    - topicseed 4y ago
      And that will be a tough problem to solve but Google may do something similar to what they do with YouTube Premium and paying creators an amount that is based on how much of their content the subscribers of Premium have watched. Google Search could pay some small percentage back when they use their work. But it would be a weird one so not sure that's really going to happen.
      - 6gvONxR4sf7o 4y ago
        How is google going to know where to send the check? And who negotiates the rate? We aren't talking about people uploading content to google search. We're talking about information google might take from other people's sites.
- hooande 4y ago
  do you find that ChatGPT is useful for the search terms that are most valuable to your customers?
  - topicseed 4y ago
    Not there yet, but if google manages to nail it and make it have always current knowledge, it could definitely be.
- scarface74 4y ago
  You just made me more hopeful that Google gets it right then. Anything that helps out an end to SEO is a good thing.
cmarschner 4y ago
It‘s somehow relieving to see Google not be in a leader position for one. I‘ve spent a good chunk of my career chasing their tail
mrtksn 4y ago
Should they chill though? I'm sure Google has the talent to match ChatGPT but their fundamental business model relies on sending people to the highest bidder and this maybe works when everything else is spam and ad infested hellhole but ChatGPT style AIs value comes from the high quality user experience which is not driven by the highest bidder. What if answering machine business is just a few billion dollars business and completely removed the need of search? What if it is a kind of business that makes hundreds of billions but makes it through selling the product itself? This is fundamentally different from what Google offers.
- onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
  Any FANNG company has the talent to match ChatGPT several times over. The idea that maybe Microsoft or Apple or Google or FB doesn't have enough good engineers to code a best-in-class language model is absurd. They all have orders of magnitude more data than OpenAI to build a better model, though.
  - thomas_ma 4y ago
    I think most people agree with you that Google can beat OpenAI on the eng/tech. Scary part for Google is: how do you monetize it? They might “beat” OpenAI with a better chat AI, but if that cannibalizes their $100bn search ad business…they are in trouble
    - midasuni 4y ago
      Better google cannibaliser it than someone else. Apple released an iPhone, cannibalising their iPod market. Google built a great search engine long before they worked out how to monetise it properly. If they can’t get AI working in their products someone else will, and google will go the way of zune.
      - pharmakom 4y ago
        Zune wasn’t the incumbent though.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

by jstx1 4y ago

Invictus0 4y ago

They still sold off

topicseed 4y ago

SEOs (like me) are terrified of Google releasing a proper public Search chat — as people would not really need to visit websites. But the space is incredibly exciting as a user/searcher/average joe.

shmatt 4y ago
LLMs need to consume websites to give answers. No websites = no LLM. If your websites add no value to the LLM (hence to the searcher, to the world, how deep should we get?), well then thats a good side effect
- fragmede 4y ago
  what? the web page throws has good info that gets fed into the LLM. it's that users no longer visit the web page and see ads which pays for the sites operation
- graeme 4y ago
  Yes, the question is how do the websites get a return. If it’s like a featured snippet, should work great. “Here’s an answer, read more here” If the LLM Hoovers up all the knowledge and doesn’t show where it got it, then there is no incentive to produce the knowledge I imagine Google is acutely aware of this, they have a symbiotic relationship with site owners. But we’ll see. There is some sort of issue here not well addressed by copyright
  - sounds 4y ago
    Really I think the question is around "symbiotic relationship." Google has failed to win decisively in the search result ranking arms race. Concrete example: sites that rip from stackoverflow have been ranking higher than stackoverflow in google search results. Other search engines fare worse. If Google trained a discriminator that penalized these practices I think their search product would dramatically improve and the web as a whole might benefit - although tabloid article farms might sue.
    - sounds 4y ago
      Can't edit my comment, but to add to it: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/02/until-further-notice-think-twice-before-using-google-to-download-software/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/02/until...
    - jstx1 4y ago
      > Google has failed to win decisively in the search result ranking arms race. They have 84% market share which seems like winning in all the ways businesses care about, regardless of how it ranks your stackoverflow searches.
      - luckylion 4y ago
        The ranking arms race isn't against competitors, it's against SEOs.
      - soiler 4y ago
        That's just applying a completely different and irrelevant metric to dismiss the point of the previous poster. The arms race of "fast trash" websites vs quality search results is not being won by Google or anyone else as of today. Google having a business model that doesn't even incentivize them to win that race =/= Google not losing that race. It's closer to them giving up in defeat, which is a loss for all of us (many times over).
    - jonathankoren 4y ago
      They can sue all they want, but they don’t have a leg to stand on. There is no right to demand be ranked highly or even at all.
- 6gvONxR4sf7o 4y ago
  What if the website does add value to the LLM, but only in the training/indexing stage? Like, if I create a website that painstakingly measures and lists the weights of thousands of widgets, then the LLM ingests that knowledge and then never sends the user to my page. Maybe it's more convenient for the user to pay the LLM for the info (paid via ad attention or whatever), but if I'm the one who made the measurements, then shouldn't I be paid too? If the user never "pays" me, then I'm going to stop publishing measurements, and the whole LLM falls apart. Likewise for generative art. The people who made the training data are a critical part of the ecosystem. Cutting them out seems like cutting out some critical part of a food chain.
  - topicseed 4y ago
    And that will be a tough problem to solve but Google may do something similar to what they do with YouTube Premium and paying creators an amount that is based on how much of their content the subscribers of Premium have watched. Google Search could pay some small percentage back when they use their work. But it would be a weird one so not sure that's really going to happen.
    - 6gvONxR4sf7o 4y ago
      How is google going to know where to send the check? And who negotiates the rate? We aren't talking about people uploading content to google search. We're talking about information google might take from other people's sites.
hooande 4y ago
do you find that ChatGPT is useful for the search terms that are most valuable to your customers?
- topicseed 4y ago
  Not there yet, but if google manages to nail it and make it have always current knowledge, it could definitely be.
scarface74 4y ago
You just made me more hopeful that Google gets it right then. Anything that helps out an end to SEO is a good thing.

cmarschner 4y ago

It‘s somehow relieving to see Google not be in a leader position for one. I‘ve spent a good chunk of my career chasing their tail

mrtksn 4y ago

Should they chill though? I'm sure Google has the talent to match ChatGPT but their fundamental business model relies on sending people to the highest bidder and this maybe works when everything else is spam and ad infested hellhole but ChatGPT style AIs value comes from the high quality user experience which is not driven by the highest bidder. What if answering machine business is just a few billion dollars business and completely removed the need of search? What if it is a kind of business that makes hundreds of billions but makes it through selling the product itself? This is fundamentally different from what Google offers.

onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
Any FANNG company has the talent to match ChatGPT several times over. The idea that maybe Microsoft or Apple or Google or FB doesn't have enough good engineers to code a best-in-class language model is absurd. They all have orders of magnitude more data than OpenAI to build a better model, though.
- thomas_ma 4y ago
  I think most people agree with you that Google can beat OpenAI on the eng/tech. Scary part for Google is: how do you monetize it? They might “beat” OpenAI with a better chat AI, but if that cannibalizes their $100bn search ad business…they are in trouble
  - midasuni 4y ago
    Better google cannibaliser it than someone else. Apple released an iPhone, cannibalising their iPod market. Google built a great search engine long before they worked out how to monetise it properly. If they can’t get AI working in their products someone else will, and google will go the way of zune.
    - pharmakom 4y ago
      Zune wasn’t the incumbent though.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]