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I'm skeptical about this, mostly based on my experience trying Perplexity recently, which is I assume roughly what OpenAI's future product will be like. My impr

I'm skeptical about this, mostly based on my experience trying Perplexity recently, which is I assume roughly what OpenAI's future product will be like. My impression was that it essentially does a web search and then uses an LLM to summarize the top few results. It's useful for certain types of general knowledge questions, but for anything involving finding something specific, which is probably 90% of my Google usage (for example, finding the URL of some particular project on Github), it tends to fall flat.

prng2021 2y ago
Completely agree. Google has the upper hand because you still need a great traditional search engine to weight/rank the content the LLM should summarize. Otherwise you end up spending a lot of extra time sending follow up questions. Here's an example asking perplexity something I've already researched a lot. I asked what's the best PC monitor for work. It cited several sites including Rtings and Forbes. It then told me the best was a Dell monitor based on the Forbes site. Rtings is definitely the better site for monitor reviews and didn't even rank that monitor as one of the best. I then asked Perplexity, what's the best website for pc monitor reviews. It responded Rtings was the best, listed a few others, and didn't even mention Forbes.
- hedora 2y ago
  Kagi’s ”?” operator (I’d expect openai to do better than it) suggests RTings, then Display Ninja, PC Magazine, and finally, reddit. I don’t think Google has much of an advantage in this fight. Presumably, OpenAI will be able to partner with bing if they want. Thanks to the antitrust suit, we know for sure that Google has been intentionally tanking search relevance in order to prop up their ad display numbers. I’m guessing none of the smaller search engines do that (since they all desperately want to grow their market share).
  - prng2021 2y ago
    I think Google has 3 huge advantages. 1. They're the incumbent with almost monopolistic market share. People aren't going to switch to a new product that's just roughly as good. It has to be way better. 2. Their search algorithm is straight up better than their next biggest competitor, Bing. The latter has tried for years to overtake google and failed. 3. They have copious amounts of user specific data across their products/services. That enables tailored AI responses. You have a fair point about google propping up ad buyers. That is their Achilles heel.
    - ColinHayhurst 2y ago
      4. Default search on Chrome, Android... 5. Default deals with Apple, Samsung...
- glimshe 2y ago
  Is Google a "great traditional search engine" nowadays? It's a great SEO search engine, but it has been taking me longer and longer to find relevant results on the rare instances I use it.
- librasteve 2y ago
  fair point - but i suspect satya gave the keys to bing to his buddy sam
kolinko 2y ago
I expect it would be something entirely different - OpenAI with their resources could build a new search from scratch using dedicated llms/embeddings. Otherwise it would be not much better than the current bing+gpt4
ColinHayhurst 2y ago
> My impression was that it essentially does a web search and then uses an LLM to summarize the top few results. Yes that's a good short summary. More details on how we do it here: https://blog.mojeek.com/2024/04/mojeek-search-summary.html https://blog.mojeek.com/2024/04/mojeek-search-summary.html

prng2021 2y ago

Completely agree. Google has the upper hand because you still need a great traditional search engine to weight/rank the content the LLM should summarize. Otherwise you end up spending a lot of extra time sending follow up questions. Here's an example asking perplexity something I've already researched a lot. I asked what's the best PC monitor for work. It cited several sites including Rtings and Forbes. It then told me the best was a Dell monitor based on the Forbes site. Rtings is definitely the better site for monitor reviews and didn't even rank that monitor as one of the best. I then asked Perplexity, what's the best website for pc monitor reviews. It responded Rtings was the best, listed a few others, and didn't even mention Forbes.

hedora 2y ago
Kagi’s ”?” operator (I’d expect openai to do better than it) suggests RTings, then Display Ninja, PC Magazine, and finally, reddit. I don’t think Google has much of an advantage in this fight. Presumably, OpenAI will be able to partner with bing if they want. Thanks to the antitrust suit, we know for sure that Google has been intentionally tanking search relevance in order to prop up their ad display numbers. I’m guessing none of the smaller search engines do that (since they all desperately want to grow their market share).
- prng2021 2y ago
  I think Google has 3 huge advantages. 1. They're the incumbent with almost monopolistic market share. People aren't going to switch to a new product that's just roughly as good. It has to be way better. 2. Their search algorithm is straight up better than their next biggest competitor, Bing. The latter has tried for years to overtake google and failed. 3. They have copious amounts of user specific data across their products/services. That enables tailored AI responses. You have a fair point about google propping up ad buyers. That is their Achilles heel.
  - ColinHayhurst 2y ago
    4. Default search on Chrome, Android... 5. Default deals with Apple, Samsung...
glimshe 2y ago
Is Google a "great traditional search engine" nowadays? It's a great SEO search engine, but it has been taking me longer and longer to find relevant results on the rare instances I use it.
librasteve 2y ago
fair point - but i suspect satya gave the keys to bing to his buddy sam

kolinko 2y ago

I expect it would be something entirely different - OpenAI with their resources could build a new search from scratch using dedicated llms/embeddings. Otherwise it would be not much better than the current bing+gpt4

ColinHayhurst 2y ago

> My impression was that it essentially does a web search and then uses an LLM to summarize the top few results. Yes that's a good short summary. More details on how we do it here: https://blog.mojeek.com/2024/04/mojeek-search-summary.html https://blog.mojeek.com/2024/04/mojeek-search-summary.html