9 ms·

But "search" and "getting an answer to a question" are two different things, aren't they? I realize that the trend has been going this way for a long time - pro

But "search" and "getting an answer to a question" are two different things, aren't they? I realize that the trend has been going this way for a long time - probably since Ask Jeeves started blurring the line - and this is indeed how a lot of people try / want to use search engines, but still... I wish that Google (and competitors) would have separate pages for something like "Ask Google" vs. traditional search (where I want to find a particular document or quality content on a certain topic instead of just getting a specific answer). May I ask how old you are? I'm 38 and I've been trying hard to break my 10 year-old of the habit of just typing questions into search engines (or telling me to "Ask Google" whenever she asks me a question and I say, "Oh, I don't know").

darknavi 2y ago
Yes, they very much are two different things. I loath products like Facebook, Messenger, Google Photos, etc. are turning their traditional "search" page/feature into a one-stop AI slop shop. All I want to do is find a specific photo album by name.
- the_snooze 2y ago
  They're perfectly capable of implementing all the same search operators as 1990s Yahoo and 2000s Google. It's a solved problem. The issue is that they don't want to. They'd rather be a middleman offering you "useful recommendations" (that they or may not sell to the highest bidder) instead of offering you value.
  - Arnt 2y ago
    Are you suggesting that 2000d Google codebase would do a decent job against today's SEO?
    - jgalt212 2y ago
      I think the search and ad code base may not be explicitly co-mingled, but they are implicitly co-mingled. And return worse search results than the early 2000s code base.
      - Arnt 2y ago
        Both are explicitly related to the web at large. Google sells ads on more than two million sites, and those mostly aim to be the kind of sites that feature in search results. I'd say that the two code bases are related, by virtue of operating on the same data structure. You remember the pagerank paper? It described how Google classifies each page on a scale from "something that links to good pages" to "informative page". Google and other search engines produces links to the latter. And since then, web site operators have had strong incentives to be on the "informative page" end of the range. Today I don't think the 2000s code can find a lot of pages of the former kind (well, outside Facebook). It produced very nice results back then. It was/is good code, but good results need more than just good code, it needs good input too.
    - ChocolateGod 2y ago
      Today's SEO isn't the reason, it's simply more profitable for Google to give you terrible search results. It makes no financial sense for Google to give you good search results and get you off Google as soon as possible. Instead, if they make you spend more time on Google due to having to go through more crappy results, they can sell more ads. Most people won't change search engine and will stomach it. Until ChatGPT happened and can save you the pain of having to use Googles search engine.
    - griomnib 2y ago
      The biggest reason SEO is profitable is because low quality sites run display ads. That is the lifeblood, and intrinsic motivation, for these sites to even exist. Google operates the largest display ads network. They literally *pay* websites for SEO spam, and take a very healthy cut off the top. I wish people would stop acting like Google has been in a noble battle against the spam sites, when those sites generate Google billions of dollars a year in revenue. The obvious question is, why would they ruin search for display? The answer is greed combined with hubris. They were able to double dip for years, but they killed the golden goose. Everybody with a brain knew this would happen when they bought Doubleclick, and it took longer than expected, but here we are.
  - jostmey 2y ago
    Agreed. So many times I have to put Wikipedia or Reddit behind my search to get anything useful out of google. So it can work. Google is clearly prioritizing junk over value
    - masa331 2y ago
      Why don't you use Kagi?
      - fl0id 2y ago
        Probably because it costs money and it also likely also will quickly succumb to sloppification by experimenting with their own ai and having an unstable founder…
        freediver 2y ago
        > having an unstable founder I can assure you that force is strong with me.
        masa331 2y ago
        I'm using it for about two years and i haven't seen any sloppification. I see it as a feature that it is a paid service because i hope it will be a sustainable model for them to keep it as it is. I think it's a no brainer to pay for it instead of all the suffering people describe here. The founder remark i don't get
        NBJack 2y ago
        Not to discourage you, but note it took a while before Google succumbed. Hopefully Kagi will hold out.
        masa331 2y ago
        Right now Kagi is a better search engine than Google. Why should some eventual demise in the future discourage anyone? There is no cost of switching and you can start using it right away
- TehCorwiz 2y ago
  If they provided what you're asking for you'd leave the site and look at fewer ads.
echelon 2y ago
I get very wrong and dangerous answers from AI frequently. I just searched "what's the ld50 of caffeine" and it says: > 367.7 mg/kg bw This is the ld50 of rats from this paper: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27461039/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27461039/ This is higher than the ld50 estimated for humans: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caffeinism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caffeinism > The LD50 of caffeine in humans is dependent on individual sensitivity, but is estimated to be 150–200 milligrams per kilogram of body mass (75–100 cups of coffee for a 70 kilogram adult). Good stuff, Google.
- chimpanzee 2y ago
  For whatever it’s worth, in response to the same question posed by me (“what is the ld50 of caffeine”), Google’s AI properly reported it as 150-200 mg/kg. I asked this about 1 minute after you posted your comment. Perhaps it learned of and corrected its mistake in that short span of time, perhaps it reports differently on every occasion, or perhaps it thought you were a rat :)
  - pests 2y ago
    I also got similar and just tried, we are posting within minutes. -- The median lethal dose (LD50) of caffeine in humans is estimated to be 150–200 milligrams per kilogram of body mass. However, the lethal dose can vary depending on a person's sensitivity to caffeine, and can be as low as 57 milligrams per kilogram. Route of administration LD50 Oral 367.7 mg/kg bw Dermal 2000 mg/kg bw Inhalation LC50 combined: ca. 4.94 mg/L The FDA estimates that toxic effects, such as seizures, can occur after consuming around 1,200 milligrams of caffeine. There was a table in the middle there.
  - raincole 2y ago
    Perhaps Google AI reads HN at work just like us.
  - WarOnPrivacy 2y ago
    The median lethal dose (LD50) of caffeine in humans is estimated to be 150–200 milligrams per kilogram of body mass. However, the lethal dose can vary depending on a person's sensitivity to caffeine, and can be as low as 57 milligrams per kilogram. Route of administration Oral 367.7 mg/kg bw Dermal >2000 mg/kg bw Inhalation LC50 combined: ca. 4.94 mg/L ref: https://i.imghippo.com/files/yeKK3113pE.png https://i.imghippo.com/files/yeKK3113pE.png 13:25EST (by a Kagi shill ftr)
vidarh 2y ago
Getting an answer to a question is a superset - the answer can be a page. Sometimes the answer we want is a specific page containing some term, but for most people, most of the time, I'd argue that getting a narrower piece of information is more likely to be valuable and helpful.
croes 2y ago
It want stay long. You are now in the pre ad phase. As soon as the ads are integrated the answers will become worse.
- griomnib 2y ago
  They have something Google never had: a paid tier. There are plenty of revenue models aside from ads.
  - sobellian 2y ago
    The excluded middle here is a paid tier that nevertheless serves you ads :(
    - griomnib 2y ago
      Google was originally fairly egalitarian, OpenAI never was, and never will be. For better or worse.
  - croes 2y ago
    MS already talks about ads for Copilot
    - BarryMilo 2y ago
      Obviously the future is to train the model with the ads, so that they're indistinguishable from the core of the answer. I kid, but also hope I'm wrong.
    - griomnib 2y ago
      Hm, m$ also runs a few giant adtech platforms, maybe they can just inject tracking code at the source.
  - layer8 2y ago
    Streaming services have been introducing ads in their lower paid tiers. It will come eventually.
ajross 2y ago
> But "search" and "getting an answer to a question" are two different things, aren't they? Google exists, as both a successful enterprise and as a verb, precisely because to most people they are exactly the same thing. No, this is wrong. People ask what they want to know. Sometimes the best answer is a link. Sometimes it's just an answer. The ability to intuit which is best is what makes products in this space worth making.
gr4vityWall 2y ago
> I've been trying hard to break my 10 year-old of the habit of just typing questions into search engines Honest question: why? I understand not wanting to use Google (the search engine) or not wanting to support Google (the company). But I don't see with the issue with just looking up questions. I'm 10 years younger than you, and I've been reaching for search engines first since I was 7, I think. Basically since I learned how to turn the computer on and open a web browser.
- warner25 2y ago
  Because I want her to find authoritative sources, read, learn, understand, think critically, etc. rather than taking a given answer at face value.
- fl0id 2y ago
  For me: because that‘s exactly what Google and/or seo optimize for, but with no regard for accuracy and quality.
webspinner 2y ago
Right, A lot of times I'm searching for a filing. Or a site link. I do not ask questions when I'm doing so, that's ridiculous. I don't ask questions if I'm searching for a recipe, or something in my local area either. Actually, I very rarely do this.
sagarm 2y ago
Like you, I thought typing questions into Google was wrong for a long time. The times have changed; this is how most people interact with Google, and it really does convey intent to the system better now that we have sufficiently powerful NLP.
- warner25 2y ago
  I absolutely agree that it handles natural language questions much better now than when I started using search engines in the late 1990s - in fact it's optimized for this task now, meeting demand where it's at - but a direct answer to a question is often not what I want. For example, I often want to find a page that I remember reading in the past, so that I can re-read or cite it. Or I want more reading material to get a deeper, more nuanced understanding of some topic; things that will provide more context around answers or lead me to generating new questions.
- layer8 2y ago
  That’s okay if your goal is to get an answer to a straightforward question. If, however, your goal is to research a topic, or to find sources for something, or any other scenario where your aim is to read actual web pages, then you want web search, not AI answers. These are two different use cases.
masa331 2y ago
Kagi has better search and you can tweak it however you like. So the product you are wishing for exists.
mrkramer 2y ago
>But "search" and "getting an answer to a question" are two different things, aren't they? First conceptualization of the "search" were web directories then AltaVista and Google drove the complexity down for the users by providing the actual system which crawls, index and ranks web information. Now cycle will repeat again and we will get Answer Machines aka chat bots which drive the UX complexity for users even more down. Why would I skim search results links and websites if the "AI" can do it for me. The only reason would be if you don't trust the "AI" and you want the actual links of websites so you can look for useful information by yourself but the majority of people want an instant answer/result to their search query hence Google's old school button "I'm feeling lucky".

darknavi 2y ago

Yes, they very much are two different things. I loath products like Facebook, Messenger, Google Photos, etc. are turning their traditional "search" page/feature into a one-stop AI slop shop. All I want to do is find a specific photo album by name.

the_snooze 2y ago
They're perfectly capable of implementing all the same search operators as 1990s Yahoo and 2000s Google. It's a solved problem. The issue is that they don't want to. They'd rather be a middleman offering you "useful recommendations" (that they or may not sell to the highest bidder) instead of offering you value.
- Arnt 2y ago
  Are you suggesting that 2000d Google codebase would do a decent job against today's SEO?
  - jgalt212 2y ago
    I think the search and ad code base may not be explicitly co-mingled, but they are implicitly co-mingled. And return worse search results than the early 2000s code base.
    - Arnt 2y ago
      Both are explicitly related to the web at large. Google sells ads on more than two million sites, and those mostly aim to be the kind of sites that feature in search results. I'd say that the two code bases are related, by virtue of operating on the same data structure. You remember the pagerank paper? It described how Google classifies each page on a scale from "something that links to good pages" to "informative page". Google and other search engines produces links to the latter. And since then, web site operators have had strong incentives to be on the "informative page" end of the range. Today I don't think the 2000s code can find a lot of pages of the former kind (well, outside Facebook). It produced very nice results back then. It was/is good code, but good results need more than just good code, it needs good input too.
  - ChocolateGod 2y ago
    Today's SEO isn't the reason, it's simply more profitable for Google to give you terrible search results. It makes no financial sense for Google to give you good search results and get you off Google as soon as possible. Instead, if they make you spend more time on Google due to having to go through more crappy results, they can sell more ads. Most people won't change search engine and will stomach it. Until ChatGPT happened and can save you the pain of having to use Googles search engine.
  - griomnib 2y ago
    The biggest reason SEO is profitable is because low quality sites run display ads. That is the lifeblood, and intrinsic motivation, for these sites to even exist. Google operates the largest display ads network. They literally *pay* websites for SEO spam, and take a very healthy cut off the top. I wish people would stop acting like Google has been in a noble battle against the spam sites, when those sites generate Google billions of dollars a year in revenue. The obvious question is, why would they ruin search for display? The answer is greed combined with hubris. They were able to double dip for years, but they killed the golden goose. Everybody with a brain knew this would happen when they bought Doubleclick, and it took longer than expected, but here we are.
- jostmey 2y ago
  Agreed. So many times I have to put Wikipedia or Reddit behind my search to get anything useful out of google. So it can work. Google is clearly prioritizing junk over value
  - masa331 2y ago
    Why don't you use Kagi?
    - fl0id 2y ago
      Probably because it costs money and it also likely also will quickly succumb to sloppification by experimenting with their own ai and having an unstable founder…
      - freediver 2y ago
        > having an unstable founder I can assure you that force is strong with me.
      - masa331 2y ago
        I'm using it for about two years and i haven't seen any sloppification. I see it as a feature that it is a paid service because i hope it will be a sustainable model for them to keep it as it is. I think it's a no brainer to pay for it instead of all the suffering people describe here. The founder remark i don't get
        NBJack 2y ago
        Not to discourage you, but note it took a while before Google succumbed. Hopefully Kagi will hold out.
        masa331 2y ago
        Right now Kagi is a better search engine than Google. Why should some eventual demise in the future discourage anyone? There is no cost of switching and you can start using it right away
TehCorwiz 2y ago
If they provided what you're asking for you'd leave the site and look at fewer ads.

echelon 2y ago

I get very wrong and dangerous answers from AI frequently. I just searched "what's the ld50 of caffeine" and it says: > 367.7 mg/kg bw This is the ld50 of rats from this paper: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27461039/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27461039/ This is higher than the ld50 estimated for humans: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caffeinism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caffeinism > The LD50 of caffeine in humans is dependent on individual sensitivity, but is estimated to be 150–200 milligrams per kilogram of body mass (75–100 cups of coffee for a 70 kilogram adult). Good stuff, Google.

chimpanzee 2y ago
For whatever it’s worth, in response to the same question posed by me (“what is the ld50 of caffeine”), Google’s AI properly reported it as 150-200 mg/kg. I asked this about 1 minute after you posted your comment. Perhaps it learned of and corrected its mistake in that short span of time, perhaps it reports differently on every occasion, or perhaps it thought you were a rat :)
- pests 2y ago
  I also got similar and just tried, we are posting within minutes. -- The median lethal dose (LD50) of caffeine in humans is estimated to be 150–200 milligrams per kilogram of body mass. However, the lethal dose can vary depending on a person's sensitivity to caffeine, and can be as low as 57 milligrams per kilogram. Route of administration LD50 Oral 367.7 mg/kg bw Dermal 2000 mg/kg bw Inhalation LC50 combined: ca. 4.94 mg/L The FDA estimates that toxic effects, such as seizures, can occur after consuming around 1,200 milligrams of caffeine. There was a table in the middle there.
- raincole 2y ago
  Perhaps Google AI reads HN at work just like us.
- WarOnPrivacy 2y ago
  The median lethal dose (LD50) of caffeine in humans is estimated to be 150–200 milligrams per kilogram of body mass. However, the lethal dose can vary depending on a person's sensitivity to caffeine, and can be as low as 57 milligrams per kilogram. Route of administration Oral 367.7 mg/kg bw Dermal >2000 mg/kg bw Inhalation LC50 combined: ca. 4.94 mg/L ref: https://i.imghippo.com/files/yeKK3113pE.png https://i.imghippo.com/files/yeKK3113pE.png 13:25EST (by a Kagi shill ftr)

vidarh 2y ago

Getting an answer to a question is a superset - the answer can be a page. Sometimes the answer we want is a specific page containing some term, but for most people, most of the time, I'd argue that getting a narrower piece of information is more likely to be valuable and helpful.

croes 2y ago

It want stay long. You are now in the pre ad phase. As soon as the ads are integrated the answers will become worse.

griomnib 2y ago
They have something Google never had: a paid tier. There are plenty of revenue models aside from ads.
- sobellian 2y ago
  The excluded middle here is a paid tier that nevertheless serves you ads :(
  - griomnib 2y ago
    Google was originally fairly egalitarian, OpenAI never was, and never will be. For better or worse.
- croes 2y ago
  MS already talks about ads for Copilot
  - BarryMilo 2y ago
    Obviously the future is to train the model with the ads, so that they're indistinguishable from the core of the answer. I kid, but also hope I'm wrong.
  - griomnib 2y ago
    Hm, m$ also runs a few giant adtech platforms, maybe they can just inject tracking code at the source.
- layer8 2y ago
  Streaming services have been introducing ads in their lower paid tiers. It will come eventually.

ajross 2y ago

> But "search" and "getting an answer to a question" are two different things, aren't they? Google exists, as both a successful enterprise and as a verb, precisely because to most people they are exactly the same thing. No, this is wrong. People ask what they want to know. Sometimes the best answer is a link. Sometimes it's just an answer. The ability to intuit which is best is what makes products in this space worth making.

gr4vityWall 2y ago

> I've been trying hard to break my 10 year-old of the habit of just typing questions into search engines Honest question: why? I understand not wanting to use Google (the search engine) or not wanting to support Google (the company). But I don't see with the issue with just looking up questions. I'm 10 years younger than you, and I've been reaching for search engines first since I was 7, I think. Basically since I learned how to turn the computer on and open a web browser.

warner25 2y ago
Because I want her to find authoritative sources, read, learn, understand, think critically, etc. rather than taking a given answer at face value.
fl0id 2y ago
For me: because that‘s exactly what Google and/or seo optimize for, but with no regard for accuracy and quality.

webspinner 2y ago

Right, A lot of times I'm searching for a filing. Or a site link. I do not ask questions when I'm doing so, that's ridiculous. I don't ask questions if I'm searching for a recipe, or something in my local area either. Actually, I very rarely do this.

sagarm 2y ago

Like you, I thought typing questions into Google was wrong for a long time. The times have changed; this is how most people interact with Google, and it really does convey intent to the system better now that we have sufficiently powerful NLP.

warner25 2y ago
I absolutely agree that it handles natural language questions much better now than when I started using search engines in the late 1990s - in fact it's optimized for this task now, meeting demand where it's at - but a direct answer to a question is often not what I want. For example, I often want to find a page that I remember reading in the past, so that I can re-read or cite it. Or I want more reading material to get a deeper, more nuanced understanding of some topic; things that will provide more context around answers or lead me to generating new questions.
layer8 2y ago
That’s okay if your goal is to get an answer to a straightforward question. If, however, your goal is to research a topic, or to find sources for something, or any other scenario where your aim is to read actual web pages, then you want web search, not AI answers. These are two different use cases.

masa331 2y ago

Kagi has better search and you can tweak it however you like. So the product you are wishing for exists.

mrkramer 2y ago

>But "search" and "getting an answer to a question" are two different things, aren't they? First conceptualization of the "search" were web directories then AltaVista and Google drove the complexity down for the users by providing the actual system which crawls, index and ranks web information. Now cycle will repeat again and we will get Answer Machines aka chat bots which drive the UX complexity for users even more down. Why would I skim search results links and websites if the "AI" can do it for me. The only reason would be if you don't trust the "AI" and you want the actual links of websites so you can look for useful information by yourself but the majority of people want an instant answer/result to their search query hence Google's old school button "I'm feeling lucky".