4 ms·

The future of Google search is clouded by generative AI

19 points by keywordian 2y ago

keywordian 2y ago
I used to think Google was a giant that couldn't be toppled. With more and more articles coming out like this, I'm less certain. Now is a pivotal moment in Google's history. If they can truly weed out spam, reward good content, and match or exceed ChatGPT and Perplexity in the AI department (in the very near future), their iron grip on the search engine market will remain. I'm uncertain they can do any of those things. Thoughts?
- vimax 2y ago
  They make too much easy ad money off the spam content farms to want to improve search. They'll ride it out until it implodes.
  - barfbagginus 2y ago
    Yup, this is Google's AOL moment. The execs can't do anything at this point besides throw tantrums and demand more shit be put on the dumpster fire. More ads. More seo spam.
- lancesells 2y ago
  Google just had an income of $23B in the last three months (7.6B a month). Whether their results are good or bad, this is their goal. Whatever billions OpenAI makes they are from paying customers and I would guess it's revenue and not income. Google is making $23B off of mainly FREE products. There is a very long road to Google losing dominance. It will happen because everything dies but I would bet that's a long way away.
  - r0ze-at-hn 2y ago
    I have a special interest in the post-mortem story of tech companies from the 70's, 80's, 90's, 00's. The HP, DEC, IBM, WordStar, RIM. I love the stories and the patterns they provide. Most companies reach a size and tenure where they are still trying to grow by a certain percentage every year. They had grown year after year, but as they saturate the market or the market starts to shift they can't grow at the same rate they once did. As they turn into a stable dividend type company ideally growth should more match general market growth, but still growing. Google makes a lot of its money from showing ads to those using search. They are facing your classic innovator's dilemma. The upstart that can't do 1/100th of what you can, but that one thing it can do it does so much better and they start taking customers and they start climbing that classic S curve of growth. Many of these companies built themselves internally for growth, not for sustainability. Internal incentives cause them to bleed the smartest and brightest & outsource whole departments rather than simplifying. Layers of bureaucracy slow down everything further letting those scrappy startups go after opportunities that the old guard couldn't. No one thinks Google will go from 23B to 0 by next quarter, no the thing they are talking about is when companies like this don't go from 23B to 25B, but instead to 22.9B. Y Combinator teaches startups all about the beginning of the diffusion of innovation because that is what is most important. I could probably give a little class on the other side of it, call it the missing lesson or something fun. The value isn't in learning how to not get into the same trap, but to understand your competition better and how to learn what is most likely going on internally and how to exploit it.
    - lancesells 2y ago
      > The value isn't in learning how to not get into the same trap, but to understand your competition better and how to learn what is most likely going on internally and how to exploit it. Yeah, this is why things get shitty.
- greenavocado 2y ago
  I only use Yandex.com for organic search results for the last 6-9 months. Every few hundred queries I use Google. 90% of the time I am cross referencing several LLMs to get a general understanding of a topic or problem I want to learn more about before searching for dedicated discussions using Yandex. Google search results are a huge waste of time for me. If Yandex fails me I switch between Bing and Yahoo search.
- pjmlp 2y ago
  We used to think the same of other industry giants. Even Apple had quite a portion of luck, getting the right decisions with NeXT acquisition, with the remaining money they had left.
- arresin 2y ago
  Google a lot more than just search. And they have their parent alphabet which is massive.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
JKCalhoun 2y ago
Someones going to have to enshitify (kind of hate that word) all of AI then. After a week of using Claude, I am so done with Google searches. When I ran out of my allotted Claude queries and had to return to Google searches I was bombarded with SEO crap that put up cookies notifications, complained about my ad blocker, wanted me to receive notifications and then often didn't even answer the question I had. With ChatGPT and Claude now I should be able to keep from having to use search. In fact if I had "Claude-offline", internet traffic in this home would drop considerably.
- greenavocado 2y ago
  My thoughts exactly
mococa 2y ago
Remember: Google is an advertising company. They do not care about their users as long as they continue to use the search to click on any of the four or five advertisements.
- keywordian 2y ago
  But how long until users get tired of that and move to something else? We're already seeing it happen. Just check out Jack Forge's viral tweet and the comments: https://x.com/TheJackForge/status/1786463653874778229 https://x.com/TheJackForge/status/1786463653874778229 Even Elon agrees Google's a mess: https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1781100981037494538 https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1781100981037494538
  - mococa 2y ago
    There is nothing "better"; I have been using Kagi, which offers far superior results. As far as I know, it uses Google as a backend.
    - sieabahlpark 2y ago
      [dead]
j45 2y ago
In a way a lot of seo optimization is generative for search results to get clicks and authority. In another way, maybe it's possible generative AI will evolve in that way.
retskrad 2y ago
Google is the world’s most beloved brand by consumers. If not #1 then #2 (Apple being #1). Google is too entrenched in people’s lives to lose any market share to openAI or other competitors.
- makeitdouble 2y ago
  They're paying Apple 20 billions to stay the default search engine on iOS, that's not "we'd be #1 anyway" money, any way we look at it.
- pquki4 2y ago
  Really would like some metrics or survey results for that.

19 points by keywordian 2y ago

I used to think Google was a giant that couldn't be toppled. With more and more articles coming out like this, I'm less certain. Now is a pivotal moment in Google's history. If they can truly weed out spam, reward good content, and match or exceed ChatGPT and Perplexity in the AI department (in the very near future), their iron grip on the search engine market will remain. I'm uncertain they can do any of those things. Thoughts?

vimax 2y ago
They make too much easy ad money off the spam content farms to want to improve search. They'll ride it out until it implodes.
- barfbagginus 2y ago
  Yup, this is Google's AOL moment. The execs can't do anything at this point besides throw tantrums and demand more shit be put on the dumpster fire. More ads. More seo spam.
lancesells 2y ago
Google just had an income of $23B in the last three months (7.6B a month). Whether their results are good or bad, this is their goal. Whatever billions OpenAI makes they are from paying customers and I would guess it's revenue and not income. Google is making $23B off of mainly FREE products. There is a very long road to Google losing dominance. It will happen because everything dies but I would bet that's a long way away.
- r0ze-at-hn 2y ago
  I have a special interest in the post-mortem story of tech companies from the 70's, 80's, 90's, 00's. The HP, DEC, IBM, WordStar, RIM. I love the stories and the patterns they provide. Most companies reach a size and tenure where they are still trying to grow by a certain percentage every year. They had grown year after year, but as they saturate the market or the market starts to shift they can't grow at the same rate they once did. As they turn into a stable dividend type company ideally growth should more match general market growth, but still growing. Google makes a lot of its money from showing ads to those using search. They are facing your classic innovator's dilemma. The upstart that can't do 1/100th of what you can, but that one thing it can do it does so much better and they start taking customers and they start climbing that classic S curve of growth. Many of these companies built themselves internally for growth, not for sustainability. Internal incentives cause them to bleed the smartest and brightest & outsource whole departments rather than simplifying. Layers of bureaucracy slow down everything further letting those scrappy startups go after opportunities that the old guard couldn't. No one thinks Google will go from 23B to 0 by next quarter, no the thing they are talking about is when companies like this don't go from 23B to 25B, but instead to 22.9B. Y Combinator teaches startups all about the beginning of the diffusion of innovation because that is what is most important. I could probably give a little class on the other side of it, call it the missing lesson or something fun. The value isn't in learning how to not get into the same trap, but to understand your competition better and how to learn what is most likely going on internally and how to exploit it.
  - lancesells 2y ago
    > The value isn't in learning how to not get into the same trap, but to understand your competition better and how to learn what is most likely going on internally and how to exploit it. Yeah, this is why things get shitty.
greenavocado 2y ago
I only use Yandex.com for organic search results for the last 6-9 months. Every few hundred queries I use Google. 90% of the time I am cross referencing several LLMs to get a general understanding of a topic or problem I want to learn more about before searching for dedicated discussions using Yandex. Google search results are a huge waste of time for me. If Yandex fails me I switch between Bing and Yahoo search.
pjmlp 2y ago
We used to think the same of other industry giants. Even Apple had quite a portion of luck, getting the right decisions with NeXT acquisition, with the remaining money they had left.
arresin 2y ago
Google a lot more than just search. And they have their parent alphabet which is massive.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

JKCalhoun 2y ago

Someones going to have to enshitify (kind of hate that word) all of AI then. After a week of using Claude, I am so done with Google searches. When I ran out of my allotted Claude queries and had to return to Google searches I was bombarded with SEO crap that put up cookies notifications, complained about my ad blocker, wanted me to receive notifications and then often didn't even answer the question I had. With ChatGPT and Claude now I should be able to keep from having to use search. In fact if I had "Claude-offline", internet traffic in this home would drop considerably.

greenavocado 2y ago
My thoughts exactly

mococa 2y ago

Remember: Google is an advertising company. They do not care about their users as long as they continue to use the search to click on any of the four or five advertisements.

keywordian 2y ago
But how long until users get tired of that and move to something else? We're already seeing it happen. Just check out Jack Forge's viral tweet and the comments: https://x.com/TheJackForge/status/1786463653874778229 https://x.com/TheJackForge/status/1786463653874778229 Even Elon agrees Google's a mess: https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1781100981037494538 https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1781100981037494538
- mococa 2y ago
  There is nothing "better"; I have been using Kagi, which offers far superior results. As far as I know, it uses Google as a backend.
  - sieabahlpark 2y ago
    [dead]

j45 2y ago

In a way a lot of seo optimization is generative for search results to get clicks and authority. In another way, maybe it's possible generative AI will evolve in that way.

retskrad 2y ago

Google is the world’s most beloved brand by consumers. If not #1 then #2 (Apple being #1). Google is too entrenched in people’s lives to lose any market share to openAI or other competitors.

makeitdouble 2y ago
They're paying Apple 20 billions to stay the default search engine on iOS, that's not "we'd be #1 anyway" money, any way we look at it.
pquki4 2y ago
Really would like some metrics or survey results for that.