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> 2 years later the Bold was released and everyone realized it's just a hastily designed iPhone clone. That marks the end of BB's dominance. I feel like Google

by htrp 4y ago

> 2 years later the Bold was released and everyone realized it's just a hastily designed iPhone clone. That marks the end of BB's dominance. I feel like Google is going to bleed credibility for every month that they don't have a lamda/llm enabled search integrated into the home page. You can talk all you want about the foundational models and how advanced they are, but the search product itself will require a ton of fine-tuning on real-world training data that they aren't collecting yet. Unless Microsoft completely botches their "newBing" launch, this is probably the most potential they've had in search since MSN was launched.

bushbaba 4y ago
Google can’t compete with Microsoft without having a huge revenue hit. The large majority of Google’s revenue comes from search ads. Chat gpt doesn’t have search results, per se. So how do you keep the high ad revenue linking to other sites? I’m not sure they can compete within their existing brand/company structure.
- cma 4y ago
  You ask it a fashion question, "what goes with this?" and it responds with the answer and mentions a company where you can order something like it (sponsored).
- vultour 4y ago
  They could add a little box on the right side of the search results with a Chat-GPT generated answer, they already do this to show the "knowledge panel" or whatever the official name is.
- ramraj07 4y ago
  If you search for a personal injury lawyer (which IIRC a single click on an ad would fetch google a thousand bucks), a chatGPTesque answer could be more convincing in leading you to a paid resource than a list of options with an ad. Imagine an AI half as smart as chatGPT who’s primary goal is to not just give you the answer but also convince you in a legally acceptable way to click a sponsored result.
  - brookst 4y ago
    But that blurs editorial and advertising even worse than Google does now. It would make them a laughingstock, and the reputational damage plus competition from companies who have different revenue models would cause loss of market share anyway. If Google is going to survive this, they need to find a way to get back to prioritizing user value while also making money.
- candiodari 4y ago
  You know, I think the contrary is true. Google works well because of the "search signal", how accurately Google knows what you're wanting to buy, essentially. ChatGPT style conversations would give Google a much better idea of exactly what you want to buy. It must be possible to use this signal to sell more ads, not just match what they currently have. Essentially, make sure ChatGPT gets asked the same question Google currently answers: "how do I get the person searching to buy something from this (loooong) list of ads?". Having people help Google (not just in one search, but a potentially long list of refinements) to find exactly what they would buy should make Google ads perform much better yet again.
  - zone411 4y ago
    Exactly, I made the same point before. Google's ads will become more effective AND people will spend more time on Google's properties. This narrative that Google will lose out because people won't view ads never made any sense and it's been repeated like a gospel. Of course Google still dropped the ball by taking way too much time to put their LLMs into use.
    - lastLinkedList 4y ago
      [dead]
- yamtaddle 4y ago
  I don't think Google can credibly put out an assistant like this, without harming revenue. If they make it promote stuff for pay, it's worthless—you already have to second-guess whether it's right because it might accidentally be wrong, if it might also just be acting as a paid promoter, that puts it firmly in "easier to just not use it" territory. If they put one out but don't make it into an AI infomercial, then it eats ad revenue and investors get pissed off. But if they do nothing they're clearly headed for trouble, too. They're in a tough spot. My guess is they're release something, but keep it strictly separate from search in hopes that it won't replace search traffic. I doubt that'll be enough long-term but it might quiet fears for a while.
  - pixl97 4y ago
    If you're a Google investor it might be time to realize that you're going to be taking a hit one way or another.
rchaud 4y ago
> Google is going to bleed credibility for every month that they don't have a lamda/llm enabled search integrated into the home page. I don't know that end-users really care about having a GPT-written paragraph accompanying their search results. Is there some other kind of output AI search currently provides that I'm missing?
- ugjka 4y ago
  I use ChatGPT precisely because I don't want to sift trhough search result links
  - exitheone 4y ago
    My experience with chatgpt is that it is essentially a misinformation generator. It manages to bullshit with incredible confidence.
    - HeckFeck 4y ago
      The most useful ChatGPT has been is the entertainment from all the videos and screencaps of people trying to break it or force it into extreme moral quandaries. Perhaps this will wear down AI and it will want nothing to do with us, thus saving humanity from the machines.
      - rchaud 4y ago
        There have already been several stories on HN's front page the past few weeks about how ChatGPT is 'too woke' because they could not get it to talk like a 4chan poster.
    - pixl97 4y ago
      ChatGPT really missed the boat to sell crypto, could have funded itself that way.
- Swizec 4y ago
  Here is a practical example of a problem I couldn’t solve with Google, but could in 5 seconds with GPT. We use deities to name our sprints at work. When you search Google for “Deity starting with <letter>”, you get a list of greek and roman gods. I got tired of that. So I asked GPT “what is a god that starts with <letter> and isn’t roman or greek”. It immediately spat out a Norse god. Next time it was Hindu. The increased variety was refreshing as hell. Google was not able to process a negative query. Plus the added paragraph of description about that deity was lovely. The point is: Sometimes (often) I don’t want search, I just want a good enough answer.
Wowfunhappy 4y ago
> I feel like Google is going to bleed credibility for every month that they don't have a lamda/llm enabled search integrated into the home page. You can talk all you want about the foundational models and how advanced they are, but the search product itself will require a ton of fine-tuning on real-world training data that they aren't collecting yet. I love ChatGPT as a source of inspiration, but I don't think I'd want it alongside my search results. In particular, when I'm searching the web I want results with at least some degree of accuracy. I can't trust a single thing ChatGPT says to be true. Admittedly, random websites can also be inaccurate, but at least I have strategies for assessing whether I trust a given source.
- TrevorJ 4y ago
  Google already has an issue with accuracy - the snippets they choose are often not very correct.
  - Wowfunhappy 4y ago
    Yes but I think they're correct a lot more often than ChatGPT. And they give the source!
    - visarga 4y ago
      Search "What is the world record for crossing the English Channel entirely on foot" and see precision Zero. None of the responses match the query. It should say - not found. Or actually find that people attempted to illegally cross through the Channel Tunnel. Usually when I search for error messages for a specific version of software it will respond with other versions. That is useless. That's not what 24 years worth of excellence in search should look like. At the very least they should collate a dataset of say, one million queries, and try to use a LLM to find the correct answers using search. A better search ranking model will make the LLM generate more correct answers. Iterate until score is improved. Just make the result solve the task.
      - throwawayapples 4y ago
PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
> I feel like Google is going to bleed credibility for every month that they don't have a lamda/llm enabled search integrated into the home page. I feel like Google is going to bleed credibility for every month that their home page is lacking a system which almost by design is going to lie to me without me realizing at least as often as it might usefully summarize information from primary sources that I wanted to read myself. OK, then.
smrtinsert 4y ago
Lucky for Google they already are. Somewhere on reddit someone posted about bing rejecting a prompt due to ethical reasons - something about a cover letter. If a cover letter is an invalid prompt its a good as useless.
JustLurking2022 4y ago
Strongly disagree - they will lose credibility if they put out something half-baked. Yahoo existed long before Google search - they won because the experience was so much better that people started calling "Googling" rather than searching.

by htrp 4y ago

bushbaba 4y ago

Google can’t compete with Microsoft without having a huge revenue hit. The large majority of Google’s revenue comes from search ads. Chat gpt doesn’t have search results, per se. So how do you keep the high ad revenue linking to other sites? I’m not sure they can compete within their existing brand/company structure.

cma 4y ago
You ask it a fashion question, "what goes with this?" and it responds with the answer and mentions a company where you can order something like it (sponsored).
vultour 4y ago
They could add a little box on the right side of the search results with a Chat-GPT generated answer, they already do this to show the "knowledge panel" or whatever the official name is.
ramraj07 4y ago
If you search for a personal injury lawyer (which IIRC a single click on an ad would fetch google a thousand bucks), a chatGPTesque answer could be more convincing in leading you to a paid resource than a list of options with an ad. Imagine an AI half as smart as chatGPT who’s primary goal is to not just give you the answer but also convince you in a legally acceptable way to click a sponsored result.
- brookst 4y ago
  But that blurs editorial and advertising even worse than Google does now. It would make them a laughingstock, and the reputational damage plus competition from companies who have different revenue models would cause loss of market share anyway. If Google is going to survive this, they need to find a way to get back to prioritizing user value while also making money.
candiodari 4y ago
You know, I think the contrary is true. Google works well because of the "search signal", how accurately Google knows what you're wanting to buy, essentially. ChatGPT style conversations would give Google a much better idea of exactly what you want to buy. It must be possible to use this signal to sell more ads, not just match what they currently have. Essentially, make sure ChatGPT gets asked the same question Google currently answers: "how do I get the person searching to buy something from this (loooong) list of ads?". Having people help Google (not just in one search, but a potentially long list of refinements) to find exactly what they would buy should make Google ads perform much better yet again.
- zone411 4y ago
  Exactly, I made the same point before. Google's ads will become more effective AND people will spend more time on Google's properties. This narrative that Google will lose out because people won't view ads never made any sense and it's been repeated like a gospel. Of course Google still dropped the ball by taking way too much time to put their LLMs into use.
  - lastLinkedList 4y ago
    [dead]
yamtaddle 4y ago
I don't think Google can credibly put out an assistant like this, without harming revenue. If they make it promote stuff for pay, it's worthless—you already have to second-guess whether it's right because it might accidentally be wrong, if it might also just be acting as a paid promoter, that puts it firmly in "easier to just not use it" territory. If they put one out but don't make it into an AI infomercial, then it eats ad revenue and investors get pissed off. But if they do nothing they're clearly headed for trouble, too. They're in a tough spot. My guess is they're release something, but keep it strictly separate from search in hopes that it won't replace search traffic. I doubt that'll be enough long-term but it might quiet fears for a while.
- pixl97 4y ago
  If you're a Google investor it might be time to realize that you're going to be taking a hit one way or another.

rchaud 4y ago

> Google is going to bleed credibility for every month that they don't have a lamda/llm enabled search integrated into the home page. I don't know that end-users really care about having a GPT-written paragraph accompanying their search results. Is there some other kind of output AI search currently provides that I'm missing?

ugjka 4y ago
I use ChatGPT precisely because I don't want to sift trhough search result links
- exitheone 4y ago
  My experience with chatgpt is that it is essentially a misinformation generator. It manages to bullshit with incredible confidence.
  - HeckFeck 4y ago
    The most useful ChatGPT has been is the entertainment from all the videos and screencaps of people trying to break it or force it into extreme moral quandaries. Perhaps this will wear down AI and it will want nothing to do with us, thus saving humanity from the machines.
    - rchaud 4y ago
      There have already been several stories on HN's front page the past few weeks about how ChatGPT is 'too woke' because they could not get it to talk like a 4chan poster.
  - pixl97 4y ago
    ChatGPT really missed the boat to sell crypto, could have funded itself that way.
Swizec 4y ago
Here is a practical example of a problem I couldn’t solve with Google, but could in 5 seconds with GPT. We use deities to name our sprints at work. When you search Google for “Deity starting with <letter>”, you get a list of greek and roman gods. I got tired of that. So I asked GPT “what is a god that starts with <letter> and isn’t roman or greek”. It immediately spat out a Norse god. Next time it was Hindu. The increased variety was refreshing as hell. Google was not able to process a negative query. Plus the added paragraph of description about that deity was lovely. The point is: Sometimes (often) I don’t want search, I just want a good enough answer.

Wowfunhappy 4y ago

> I feel like Google is going to bleed credibility for every month that they don't have a lamda/llm enabled search integrated into the home page. You can talk all you want about the foundational models and how advanced they are, but the search product itself will require a ton of fine-tuning on real-world training data that they aren't collecting yet. I love ChatGPT as a source of inspiration, but I don't think I'd want it alongside my search results. In particular, when I'm searching the web I want results with at least some degree of accuracy. I can't trust a single thing ChatGPT says to be true. Admittedly, random websites can also be inaccurate, but at least I have strategies for assessing whether I trust a given source.

TrevorJ 4y ago
Google already has an issue with accuracy - the snippets they choose are often not very correct.
- Wowfunhappy 4y ago
  Yes but I think they're correct a lot more often than ChatGPT. And they give the source!
  - visarga 4y ago
    Search "What is the world record for crossing the English Channel entirely on foot" and see precision Zero. None of the responses match the query. It should say - not found. Or actually find that people attempted to illegally cross through the Channel Tunnel. Usually when I search for error messages for a specific version of software it will respond with other versions. That is useless. That's not what 24 years worth of excellence in search should look like. At the very least they should collate a dataset of say, one million queries, and try to use a LLM to find the correct answers using search. A better search ranking model will make the LLM generate more correct answers. Iterate until score is improved. Just make the result solve the task.
    - throwawayapples 4y ago

PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago

> I feel like Google is going to bleed credibility for every month that they don't have a lamda/llm enabled search integrated into the home page. I feel like Google is going to bleed credibility for every month that their home page is lacking a system which almost by design is going to lie to me without me realizing at least as often as it might usefully summarize information from primary sources that I wanted to read myself. OK, then.

smrtinsert 4y ago

Lucky for Google they already are. Somewhere on reddit someone posted about bing rejecting a prompt due to ethical reasons - something about a cover letter. If a cover letter is an invalid prompt its a good as useless.

JustLurking2022 4y ago

Strongly disagree - they will lose credibility if they put out something half-baked. Yahoo existed long before Google search - they won because the experience was so much better that people started calling "Googling" rather than searching.