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This isn't even about "happy users", though; it's about money. Where does Google's ad revenue come from if users give up on waiting for their searches to compl

by derefr 2y ago

This isn't even about "happy users", though; it's about money. Where does Google's ad revenue come from if users give up on waiting for their searches to complete before they're ever shown any revenue-generating sponsored links? Actually, thinking about this more, I fundamentally don't understand Google's search experience strategy over the last 10 years. Even before AI answers, they were heuristic-ing answers into a little box that pushed sponsored ad placements below the fold. Why push sponsored results below the fold? How does Google make money from a search engine that just answers people's questions directly, rather than doing lead-gen for the rest of the Internet (with much of the Internet willing to pay for that)?

zitterbewegung 2y ago
I think they just want to have your captured on their platform . If you get all of your answers then why pick a competitor?
- theolivenbaum 2y ago
  They probably also know that some types of queries are not ad-worth (like age of an actor, etc), while others would never show a box
  - derefr 2y ago
    That's a really good point. Google has likely decided that some query categories are unprofitable-enough already that they can just drop the rest of the expected revenue from them, and instead use them as loss-leaders — aiming to give the customer a better (but zero-revenue) experience today, to increase retention, so they'll come back with positive-revenue-generating queries later. They've just done a rather braindead job of it, with the experience of these loss-leader queries feeling perceptually† worse than a regular SERP page would. It's like a grocery store running a sale on e.g. milk, selling it for below-cost — but then making you have to wait in a line for five minutes in front of the milk cooler to get it. It feels like so much friction that not only wouldn't lure people in; it would push people to avoid that grocer when its milk sales are happening, and shop at other stores instead! --- † I emphasize perceptually here. Even if the total time spent waiting for an AI answer is shorter than the time it would take to load a SERP page, read and select a link that looks like it'll have your answer, click it, load the resulting page, and read it — the AI experience could still feel longer, in large part because "the ball is in your court" for a lot of the self-navigated query, with you being given things to look at and click on; while "the ball is in their court" for the entirety of the AI response, with just a spinner and no indication of what's happening. As such, I wonder if this could be solved by just running a cute little animation under the AI prompt window: make it look like it's automating the loading of a [blurred to non-identifiability] SERP page, scrolling down, clicking a result, loading an [again blurred] page, highlighting a few random fragments of it, and then transposing them together to form the paragraphs of the answer — before the answer actually snaps into place on top of that animation. If you can predict how long before the AI answers, you can even use that to determine how long the animation should spend dicking around on the pretend SERP page and answer page.
JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> Where does Google's ad revenue come from if users give up on waiting for their searches You serve the ads while the answers spin up.
- voiceblue 2y ago
  I don’t think that comment was in regards to AI, I think it was about the blurb that appears instantaneously from Google’s knowledge engine (e.g. when searching a celebrity’s age).
- mrweasel 2y ago
  That would be kinda sad, given that Google would previously forgo showing ads, if they didn't arrive on time. This is actually a problem I currently have with Ecosia on mobile. I search, get the result, and then the ads pop in, pushing the search results down, causing me to click the ad and not the result that previously occupied that part of the screen.
otabdeveloper4 2y ago
Google works because it is a monopoly. All human eyeball traffic goes through Google. It is in their interest to keep destroying the open information marketplace because then advertisers are forced to buy through Google. (Much easier and more profitable than trying to make a good adtech product.)
- panarky 2y ago
  Competition is just one click away. As others in this thread already point out, it's extremely easy to use DDG or Bing if you want.
  - doublerabbit 2y ago
    > Competition is just one click away. As an illusion sure, in practice not really. I use Kagi, I bought the family plan so I could try convining my family to use it, did they? No. Did my family want to use Signal for messaging? No. Do my friends want to use something else than Discord for communicating with me? No. Competition exists and in plenty but folk are too mind sucked to want to move platform. If its not broke, why change? People don't want to change. And until such platforms close their gates or whereby something new comes along that isn't a clone; there will be no shift.
    - thegrimmest 2y ago
      Doesn't this just mean that the vast majority of users don't care enough about these sorts of things? Doesn't that mean that the market is working? If switching cost > perceived benefit why should we expect anything other than status quo? When a truly innovative platform that offers benefit > switching cost, users will naturally flock to it. We're already starting to see that with ChatGPT.
      - MereInterest 2y ago
        > Doesn't this just mean that the vast majority of users don't care enough about these sorts of things? Doesn't that mean that the market is working? No. Network effects mean that there's not only a high cost of switching away from the largest network, but there's a high cost to use anything other than the largest network. When that bias exists, you cannot infer any preferences from market outcomes.
bilekas 2y ago
> How does Google make money from a search engine that just answers people's questions directly It did what it needed to do to realise the same thing and get their fingers in all the other pies.
holonsphere 2y ago
Everything they do is about projecting power and silencing(i.e. drowning out) the "opposition" https://english.almayadeen.net/articles/blog/genocide-in-the-4th-industrial-revolution---how-the-us-is-us https://english.almayadeen.net/articles/blog/genocide-in-the...
- genman 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - forgetfreeman 2y ago
    Admittedly I didn't read the whole page but a quick skim of the first several paragraphs didn't produce anything with obvious ties to national socialism, what am I missing?
    - wahnfrieden 2y ago
      genman is saying that critical evaluation of Israel’s automated targeting AI system (used for selecting bombing targets without human verification) is equivalent to supporting Hitler. Their logic is that Palestinians represent a credible existential threat to Jewish people internationally in the same way that Hitler’s military did, so that criticism of IDF bombing campaigns is equivalent to Naziism, and Palestinian resistance is identified as genocide against Israel.
      - genman 2y ago
        It is calling Israel "the so-called Jewish state" and 'Israel' what effectively means a claim that Jewish people do not have right for the state on their ancestors land and genocide against them (like genocide on 7th October, or earlier intifadas) is somehow justified.
        CatWChainsaw 2y ago
        The Palestinians currently living there had their own ancestors that also lived there. Do they not count?
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

by derefr 2y ago

zitterbewegung 2y ago

I think they just want to have your captured on their platform . If you get all of your answers then why pick a competitor?

theolivenbaum 2y ago
They probably also know that some types of queries are not ad-worth (like age of an actor, etc), while others would never show a box
- derefr 2y ago
  That's a really good point. Google has likely decided that some query categories are unprofitable-enough already that they can just drop the rest of the expected revenue from them, and instead use them as loss-leaders — aiming to give the customer a better (but zero-revenue) experience today, to increase retention, so they'll come back with positive-revenue-generating queries later. They've just done a rather braindead job of it, with the experience of these loss-leader queries feeling perceptually† worse than a regular SERP page would. It's like a grocery store running a sale on e.g. milk, selling it for below-cost — but then making you have to wait in a line for five minutes in front of the milk cooler to get it. It feels like so much friction that not only wouldn't lure people in; it would push people to avoid that grocer when its milk sales are happening, and shop at other stores instead! --- † I emphasize perceptually here. Even if the total time spent waiting for an AI answer is shorter than the time it would take to load a SERP page, read and select a link that looks like it'll have your answer, click it, load the resulting page, and read it — the AI experience could still feel longer, in large part because "the ball is in your court" for a lot of the self-navigated query, with you being given things to look at and click on; while "the ball is in their court" for the entirety of the AI response, with just a spinner and no indication of what's happening. As such, I wonder if this could be solved by just running a cute little animation under the AI prompt window: make it look like it's automating the loading of a [blurred to non-identifiability] SERP page, scrolling down, clicking a result, loading an [again blurred] page, highlighting a few random fragments of it, and then transposing them together to form the paragraphs of the answer — before the answer actually snaps into place on top of that animation. If you can predict how long before the AI answers, you can even use that to determine how long the animation should spend dicking around on the pretend SERP page and answer page.

JumpCrisscross 2y ago

> Where does Google's ad revenue come from if users give up on waiting for their searches You serve the ads while the answers spin up.

voiceblue 2y ago
I don’t think that comment was in regards to AI, I think it was about the blurb that appears instantaneously from Google’s knowledge engine (e.g. when searching a celebrity’s age).
mrweasel 2y ago
That would be kinda sad, given that Google would previously forgo showing ads, if they didn't arrive on time. This is actually a problem I currently have with Ecosia on mobile. I search, get the result, and then the ads pop in, pushing the search results down, causing me to click the ad and not the result that previously occupied that part of the screen.

otabdeveloper4 2y ago

Google works because it is a monopoly. All human eyeball traffic goes through Google. It is in their interest to keep destroying the open information marketplace because then advertisers are forced to buy through Google. (Much easier and more profitable than trying to make a good adtech product.)

panarky 2y ago
Competition is just one click away. As others in this thread already point out, it's extremely easy to use DDG or Bing if you want.
- doublerabbit 2y ago
  > Competition is just one click away. As an illusion sure, in practice not really. I use Kagi, I bought the family plan so I could try convining my family to use it, did they? No. Did my family want to use Signal for messaging? No. Do my friends want to use something else than Discord for communicating with me? No. Competition exists and in plenty but folk are too mind sucked to want to move platform. If its not broke, why change? People don't want to change. And until such platforms close their gates or whereby something new comes along that isn't a clone; there will be no shift.
  - thegrimmest 2y ago
    Doesn't this just mean that the vast majority of users don't care enough about these sorts of things? Doesn't that mean that the market is working? If switching cost > perceived benefit why should we expect anything other than status quo? When a truly innovative platform that offers benefit > switching cost, users will naturally flock to it. We're already starting to see that with ChatGPT.
    - MereInterest 2y ago
      > Doesn't this just mean that the vast majority of users don't care enough about these sorts of things? Doesn't that mean that the market is working? No. Network effects mean that there's not only a high cost of switching away from the largest network, but there's a high cost to use anything other than the largest network. When that bias exists, you cannot infer any preferences from market outcomes.

bilekas 2y ago

> How does Google make money from a search engine that just answers people's questions directly It did what it needed to do to realise the same thing and get their fingers in all the other pies.

holonsphere 2y ago

Everything they do is about projecting power and silencing(i.e. drowning out) the "opposition" https://english.almayadeen.net/articles/blog/genocide-in-the-4th-industrial-revolution---how-the-us-is-us https://english.almayadeen.net/articles/blog/genocide-in-the...

genman 2y ago
[flagged]
- forgetfreeman 2y ago
  Admittedly I didn't read the whole page but a quick skim of the first several paragraphs didn't produce anything with obvious ties to national socialism, what am I missing?
  - wahnfrieden 2y ago
    genman is saying that critical evaluation of Israel’s automated targeting AI system (used for selecting bombing targets without human verification) is equivalent to supporting Hitler. Their logic is that Palestinians represent a credible existential threat to Jewish people internationally in the same way that Hitler’s military did, so that criticism of IDF bombing campaigns is equivalent to Naziism, and Palestinian resistance is identified as genocide against Israel.
    - genman 2y ago
      It is calling Israel "the so-called Jewish state" and 'Israel' what effectively means a claim that Jewish people do not have right for the state on their ancestors land and genocide against them (like genocide on 7th October, or earlier intifadas) is somehow justified.
      - CatWChainsaw 2y ago
        The Palestinians currently living there had their own ancestors that also lived there. Do they not count?

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]