7 ms·

Just sharing an anecdote: I was searching for a quote that I'd heard in an audiobook the other day. I just had the general paraphrase, and didn't feel like sca

Just sharing an anecdote: I was searching for a quote that I'd heard in an audiobook the other day. I just had the general paraphrase, and didn't feel like scanning through the chapters to go find it. This was a somewhat obscure source. Google had just straight garbage for me. The quote was political in nature, and I felt like the results were fighting general tone-policing filters and were tuned for recent events. o1 on the other hand, found the author of the quote, summarized the general idea of what i might be searching for and then cited potential sources. It's just patently obvious to me that google has failed in delivering the core value prop of their product, they're begging to be replaced.

michaelcampbell 2y ago
> google has failed in delivering the core value prop of their product They have long since been riding the downhill slope of the enshittification curve, so the 'core value prop' is advertising now, which I submit they've been delivering. Google isn't for you or me, it's for Google.
illiac786 2y ago
Doesn’t Gemini perform just as well? Google enshitified one product to require more money for the new one, while delivering zero added value overall. I would say, well done.
1980phipsi 2y ago
I couldn’t remember the phrase “oral history” and Google was terrible at figuring out what I wanted to search for, but ChatGpt got it for me after a few back and forths.
morkalork 2y ago
That's where I'm at too, I wanted to find the origin a quote and couldn't remember the exact words. Google was just pulling up random shit related to the words in the query and nothing related to the quote itself. ChatGPT figured it out in a minute. Same goes for looking stuff up in books, just ask what chapter something happens in.
geertj 2y ago
Piling on, but I wanted to find a song I had once heard when I was a kid. I did not know the exact lyrics, just that it was woman talking about her husband leaving for space. I had tried to find the song using regular search engines multiple times over the years. Eerily (a little over a year ago, using GPT3.5), I was able to find the song within about 15 minutes of prompting with various pieces of information including tone, topic, and rough year I heard the song. (The song was "Clouds across the moon" from the Rah band.)
imperialdrive 2y ago
I had a similar experience last week. Searched and searched for a blurb from Middlemarch, without luck. o1 returned exactly what I was hoping for in one fell swoop.
Lewton 2y ago
A week ago, I was looking for the name of a semi obscure late 90ies computer game. Google could not help me given the description i gave Described it to ChatGPT, and we had a back and forth where I explained why the games it suggested me weren’t right, it eventually found the correct game (Nocturne) and was able to explain to me that half of the things I remembered from the game were just plain wrong, and that’s why Google couldn’t find it ChatGPT helping me with my hallucinations, go figure
- KetoManx64 2y ago
  I've done the same thing with movies quite a few times now. I'd mention a scene or two from the movie and approximately what decade it came out in and some of the themes of the movie and after a couple of back and forths it was able to return the name that I had forgotten.
- nox101 2y ago
  I have tried the same, and had ChatGPT utterly fail. > me: what's the relatively recent movie with a pig on the movie poster > gpt: The movie you're referring to is likely "Pig," a 2021 American drama film. It stars Nicolas Cage as a truffle hunter who lives alone in the Oregon wilderness. He embarks on a quest to find his beloved foraging pig after she is kidnapped. The film was directed by Michael Sarnoski . > me: no, that movie does not have a pig on the poster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pig_(2021_film)#/media/File:Pig_poster.jpeg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pig_(2021_film)#/media/File:Pi... > gpt: My mistake, let's correct that. Given your description, another film that fits the criteria of having a pig on its movie poster and is relatively recent is "The Menu" (2022). This film features a darkly comedic and thrilling story set against the backdrop of an exclusive restaurant on a remote island, where a young couple experiences a very unusual dining experience. The pig on the poster is part of the film's intriguing promotional material, hinting at the film's critique of culinary culture and excess. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Menu_(2022_film)#/media/File:The_Menu_(2022_film).jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Menu_(2022_film)#/media/Fi... > me: No, that move does not have a pig poster > gpt: It seems I misunderstood your initial request. After a more detailed search, I couldn't find a recent movie specifically featuring a pig prominently on its movie poster beyond the titles we've discussed. Could there be any other details about the movie you're thinking of that might help narrow it down? For instance, any specific elements of the plot, actors involved, or even the genre might provide more clues to identify the correct film. movie I was looking for was "The Hunt": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hunt_%282020_film%29#/media/File:The_Hunt_2020_poster.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hunt_%282020_film%29#/medi...
pembrook 2y ago
There’s so much low effort, low hanging fruit that Google could do to improve results, that I just assume they've realized those things are unprofitable for them. I mean just de-ranking any article with an affiliate link alone would skyrocket the relevance of what content you surface on search. The problem for Google is, they’re incentivized to make the results worse than the SERP ads. If the organic results are too good, nobody would ever click the ads. And they basically gutted the 3rd party Adsense ecosystem, so they no longer monetize off third party sites. That to me, was the dumbest decision in company history — basically leading to the dilemma they’re in now. They squeezed all the profit in the short term while killing the open web in the long term. You can’t have a product that purports to help people search the open web…while simultaneously trying to sabotage people from organically clicking on the open web. It’s pure idiocy. The answer is staring them right in the face with Youtube, who faces zero threat to their dominance. Turns out if you just surface the best stuff and rev-share the ad money with the content creators (like they used to do with blogs via Adsense) then 1) the creators keep producing good stuff 2) the product stays useful and 3) importantly the monopoly profits continue minting!
- ToucanLoucan 2y ago
  It's more IMO the logical conclusion when you have a company that was built by engineers to solve problems than then changed out all their leadership over time to business executives who don't do anything besides line-go-up.
- paradox460 2y ago
  It's intentional. https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-men-who-killed-google/ https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-men-who-killed-google/ Traditional search still works. Ask anyone who uses kagi. Google makes more money (for now) with garbage search, so they're optimizing for garbage. Thing is, garbage in, garage out, and it will eventually catch up with them (might already have given the disparity between Gemini and Claude/cgpt)
  - sersi 2y ago
    As an aside, I tried to love ddg before using kagi but I'd always revert to google with !g and end up not finding anything because google has sucked for the past 5 years I've been using kagi and I've noticed that the only time I ever switch to google is for things that are truly local to where I am at the moment (restaurants, etc..). Kagi is really great. I've also been testing perplexity and I'm not that convinced yet. The only thing it's been decent at is finding relevant studies.
silisili 2y ago
Interesting that worked. My experience with what I consider a similar type thing has been dismal. Perhaps not similar enough? One thing I wish either was better at is finding things from fuzzy or minimal descriptions. My memory is pretty bad but I often want to find a movie I'd watched in the past. I often remember little bits and pieces or themes from a movie or show and curious what it was from, and both Google and ChatGPT are absolutely terrible at this. Compared to say, r/tipofmytongue, which is absolutely fantastic at such things. Sure, it's AI vs humans, but the difference in ability between the two on such queries is pretty staggering.
smallmancontrov 2y ago
Google can't even find exact matches most of the time and its heuristic matches are just not as good as the transformers.
t0mas88 2y ago
Same experience for me for a small plastic car part. Tried to find it via Google using multiple queries but nothing worked, ended up at generic SEO car part sites trying to sell me anything but the part I needed. Asked Bing Copilot by describing the thing I wanted and got the exact part number and a link to a schematic on how it fits. Ordered it for just a few euros. But recently it looks like Microsoft has been dialing back the AI answers on Bing. Maybe it got too expensive?
Abishek_Muthian 2y ago
I didn't paraphrase, I put the exact quote[1] I had copied earlier from goodreads in google and got garbage. I use only local LLM's, So if anyone has Open AI's search tools give it a shot. [1] "Few hundred years of Western society that we have lost the ability to memorise vast amounts of information." ― Lynne Kelly, Memory Craft: Improve your memory using the most powerful methods from around the world
- BeefWellington 2y ago
  Interestingly: - Bing: Goodreads is third result - DDG: Paywalled NZ Herald article appears to be the only result. Of course what you've really uncovered is that Google search is the only thing that respects robots.txt: https://www.goodreads.com/robots.txt https://www.goodreads.com/robots.txt
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - Abishek_Muthian 2y ago
    No, you've uncovered that. I gave a thought on whether this could be some copyright issue with Amazon but didn't bother to check the robots.txt file, nicely done!
  - atombender 2y ago
    The robots.txt does not prevent Google from scraping the quote page, which is the one that matches for me: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/11541816-few-hundred-years-of-western-society-that-we-have-lost https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/11541816-few-hundred-years-... The robots.txt seems to exclude things which are genuinely useful to exclude, like RSS feeds.
    - BeefWellington 2y ago
      While true, it seems like every individual quote page also includes: <meta content='noindex' name='robots'> Worth noting as well, their sitemaps all 404.
robertlagrant 2y ago
We did some Christmas quiz and as asked ChatGPT one of the answers, as the magazine had missed printing some of the answers by accident. It was to do with a song used as a theme to a sitcom, and it changed the name of the song in the first answer, then it changed the name of the song and the sitcom on the second, and I forget what the third one did. Then I Googled it and got my answer straight away.
- bhhaskin 2y ago
  That's the biggest issue with LLM searching. I cannot trust the answers. Search engines aren't much better, but at least I can check different sources. And to be fair search engines where never meant to be answer machines.
powtain-gen1 2y ago
Please refer to the thoughts of Google's former CEO: AI can create deadly viruses! https://powtain.com/pow/Ox2zJL https://powtain.com/pow/Ox2zJL

michaelcampbell 2y ago

> google has failed in delivering the core value prop of their product They have long since been riding the downhill slope of the enshittification curve, so the 'core value prop' is advertising now, which I submit they've been delivering. Google isn't for you or me, it's for Google.

illiac786 2y ago

Doesn’t Gemini perform just as well? Google enshitified one product to require more money for the new one, while delivering zero added value overall. I would say, well done.

1980phipsi 2y ago

I couldn’t remember the phrase “oral history” and Google was terrible at figuring out what I wanted to search for, but ChatGpt got it for me after a few back and forths.

morkalork 2y ago

That's where I'm at too, I wanted to find the origin a quote and couldn't remember the exact words. Google was just pulling up random shit related to the words in the query and nothing related to the quote itself. ChatGPT figured it out in a minute. Same goes for looking stuff up in books, just ask what chapter something happens in.

geertj 2y ago

Piling on, but I wanted to find a song I had once heard when I was a kid. I did not know the exact lyrics, just that it was woman talking about her husband leaving for space. I had tried to find the song using regular search engines multiple times over the years. Eerily (a little over a year ago, using GPT3.5), I was able to find the song within about 15 minutes of prompting with various pieces of information including tone, topic, and rough year I heard the song. (The song was "Clouds across the moon" from the Rah band.)

imperialdrive 2y ago

I had a similar experience last week. Searched and searched for a blurb from Middlemarch, without luck. o1 returned exactly what I was hoping for in one fell swoop.

Lewton 2y ago

A week ago, I was looking for the name of a semi obscure late 90ies computer game. Google could not help me given the description i gave Described it to ChatGPT, and we had a back and forth where I explained why the games it suggested me weren’t right, it eventually found the correct game (Nocturne) and was able to explain to me that half of the things I remembered from the game were just plain wrong, and that’s why Google couldn’t find it ChatGPT helping me with my hallucinations, go figure

KetoManx64 2y ago
I've done the same thing with movies quite a few times now. I'd mention a scene or two from the movie and approximately what decade it came out in and some of the themes of the movie and after a couple of back and forths it was able to return the name that I had forgotten.
nox101 2y ago
I have tried the same, and had ChatGPT utterly fail. > me: what's the relatively recent movie with a pig on the movie poster > gpt: The movie you're referring to is likely "Pig," a 2021 American drama film. It stars Nicolas Cage as a truffle hunter who lives alone in the Oregon wilderness. He embarks on a quest to find his beloved foraging pig after she is kidnapped. The film was directed by Michael Sarnoski . > me: no, that movie does not have a pig on the poster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pig_(2021_film)#/media/File:Pig_poster.jpeg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pig_(2021_film)#/media/File:Pi... > gpt: My mistake, let's correct that. Given your description, another film that fits the criteria of having a pig on its movie poster and is relatively recent is "The Menu" (2022). This film features a darkly comedic and thrilling story set against the backdrop of an exclusive restaurant on a remote island, where a young couple experiences a very unusual dining experience. The pig on the poster is part of the film's intriguing promotional material, hinting at the film's critique of culinary culture and excess. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Menu_(2022_film)#/media/File:The_Menu_(2022_film).jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Menu_(2022_film)#/media/Fi... > me: No, that move does not have a pig poster > gpt: It seems I misunderstood your initial request. After a more detailed search, I couldn't find a recent movie specifically featuring a pig prominently on its movie poster beyond the titles we've discussed. Could there be any other details about the movie you're thinking of that might help narrow it down? For instance, any specific elements of the plot, actors involved, or even the genre might provide more clues to identify the correct film. movie I was looking for was "The Hunt": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hunt_%282020_film%29#/media/File:The_Hunt_2020_poster.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hunt_%282020_film%29#/medi...

pembrook 2y ago

There’s so much low effort, low hanging fruit that Google could do to improve results, that I just assume they've realized those things are unprofitable for them. I mean just de-ranking any article with an affiliate link alone would skyrocket the relevance of what content you surface on search. The problem for Google is, they’re incentivized to make the results worse than the SERP ads. If the organic results are too good, nobody would ever click the ads. And they basically gutted the 3rd party Adsense ecosystem, so they no longer monetize off third party sites. That to me, was the dumbest decision in company history — basically leading to the dilemma they’re in now. They squeezed all the profit in the short term while killing the open web in the long term. You can’t have a product that purports to help people search the open web…while simultaneously trying to sabotage people from organically clicking on the open web. It’s pure idiocy. The answer is staring them right in the face with Youtube, who faces zero threat to their dominance. Turns out if you just surface the best stuff and rev-share the ad money with the content creators (like they used to do with blogs via Adsense) then 1) the creators keep producing good stuff 2) the product stays useful and 3) importantly the monopoly profits continue minting!

ToucanLoucan 2y ago
It's more IMO the logical conclusion when you have a company that was built by engineers to solve problems than then changed out all their leadership over time to business executives who don't do anything besides line-go-up.
paradox460 2y ago
It's intentional. https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-men-who-killed-google/ https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-men-who-killed-google/ Traditional search still works. Ask anyone who uses kagi. Google makes more money (for now) with garbage search, so they're optimizing for garbage. Thing is, garbage in, garage out, and it will eventually catch up with them (might already have given the disparity between Gemini and Claude/cgpt)
- sersi 2y ago
  As an aside, I tried to love ddg before using kagi but I'd always revert to google with !g and end up not finding anything because google has sucked for the past 5 years I've been using kagi and I've noticed that the only time I ever switch to google is for things that are truly local to where I am at the moment (restaurants, etc..). Kagi is really great. I've also been testing perplexity and I'm not that convinced yet. The only thing it's been decent at is finding relevant studies.

silisili 2y ago

Interesting that worked. My experience with what I consider a similar type thing has been dismal. Perhaps not similar enough? One thing I wish either was better at is finding things from fuzzy or minimal descriptions. My memory is pretty bad but I often want to find a movie I'd watched in the past. I often remember little bits and pieces or themes from a movie or show and curious what it was from, and both Google and ChatGPT are absolutely terrible at this. Compared to say, r/tipofmytongue, which is absolutely fantastic at such things. Sure, it's AI vs humans, but the difference in ability between the two on such queries is pretty staggering.

smallmancontrov 2y ago

Google can't even find exact matches most of the time and its heuristic matches are just not as good as the transformers.

t0mas88 2y ago

Same experience for me for a small plastic car part. Tried to find it via Google using multiple queries but nothing worked, ended up at generic SEO car part sites trying to sell me anything but the part I needed. Asked Bing Copilot by describing the thing I wanted and got the exact part number and a link to a schematic on how it fits. Ordered it for just a few euros. But recently it looks like Microsoft has been dialing back the AI answers on Bing. Maybe it got too expensive?

Abishek_Muthian 2y ago

I didn't paraphrase, I put the exact quote[1] I had copied earlier from goodreads in google and got garbage. I use only local LLM's, So if anyone has Open AI's search tools give it a shot. [1] "Few hundred years of Western society that we have lost the ability to memorise vast amounts of information." ― Lynne Kelly, Memory Craft: Improve your memory using the most powerful methods from around the world

BeefWellington 2y ago
Interestingly: - Bing: Goodreads is third result - DDG: Paywalled NZ Herald article appears to be the only result. Of course what you've really uncovered is that Google search is the only thing that respects robots.txt: https://www.goodreads.com/robots.txt https://www.goodreads.com/robots.txt
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- Abishek_Muthian 2y ago
  No, you've uncovered that. I gave a thought on whether this could be some copyright issue with Amazon but didn't bother to check the robots.txt file, nicely done!
- atombender 2y ago
  The robots.txt does not prevent Google from scraping the quote page, which is the one that matches for me: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/11541816-few-hundred-years-of-western-society-that-we-have-lost https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/11541816-few-hundred-years-... The robots.txt seems to exclude things which are genuinely useful to exclude, like RSS feeds.
  - BeefWellington 2y ago
    While true, it seems like every individual quote page also includes: <meta content='noindex' name='robots'> Worth noting as well, their sitemaps all 404.

robertlagrant 2y ago

We did some Christmas quiz and as asked ChatGPT one of the answers, as the magazine had missed printing some of the answers by accident. It was to do with a song used as a theme to a sitcom, and it changed the name of the song in the first answer, then it changed the name of the song and the sitcom on the second, and I forget what the third one did. Then I Googled it and got my answer straight away.

bhhaskin 2y ago
That's the biggest issue with LLM searching. I cannot trust the answers. Search engines aren't much better, but at least I can check different sources. And to be fair search engines where never meant to be answer machines.

powtain-gen1 2y ago

Please refer to the thoughts of Google's former CEO: AI can create deadly viruses! https://powtain.com/pow/Ox2zJL https://powtain.com/pow/Ox2zJL