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Search (Google) is dead. Sure, it will live on as a zombie of sorts. AM radio still exists. OTA television still exists. But their key demographics have long l

Search (Google) is dead. Sure, it will live on as a zombie of sorts. AM radio still exists. OTA television still exists. But their key demographics have long left (and in the case of CBS, are being forced to leave even faster). They won't be back. Yahoo still exists but it's so dead that its last act of relevance was to have an ex-Google exec execute what was essentially a pump-and-dump for the board. Similarly, few people say Xerox any more and just say copy instead. I don't even know how to call a taxi. Uber/Lyft is orders of magnitude better than taxis ever were. The author is just a key demographic leaving Google. I left for Perplexity. My brother sent me a ChatGPT conversation which I asked some follow up questions to. AI is really good, now. So I rarely search anymore. Search was always just a component in me trying to find an answer. Today, it's just a noisy inaccurate distraction. The author won't be going back. I won't be going back. But Google has plenty of money. Like AM, OTA and Yahoo, it will continue to exist and you shouldn't feel too sorry for their ex-McKinsey CEO.

mingus88 1y ago
I pay for Kagi and Claude. I feel that the core of this decline in services is simply because nobody want to pay for what is of value. Search is still useful. Claude is not good at citing sources. Search is great for doing my own research. I’m hearing a lot of people just copy and paste LLM output as truth. From students to law clerks. LLMs are designed to output convincing text (not correct text) and for lazy people that’s good enough. There will always be a need for searching raw data and making conclusions without an LLM
- CalChris 1y ago
  If current LLMs were perfect AGI then your lazy students and law clerks, they might even have a point. But you are setting the bar too high; LLMs are not perfect AGI. They hallucinate and you write bad prompts. Think of an LLM as more like a Dremel. Yeah, it isn't a Yamazaki Mazak. OTOH, search is like a screwdriver.
- terribleperson 1y ago
  No one wants to pay for value because we were getting a bunch of value for free for twenty-ish years.
dpassens 1y ago
As opposed to LLMs, which aren't inaccurate or noisy?
MSFT_Edging 1y ago
How can search(the utility, not the business model) possibly be dead? AI models can't possibly contain everything to the depth one might require on a niche topic. Additionally, the less training data available, the more egregious the hallucinations become. I've worked on some pretty niche things where the only way to get actual info is painstaking manual search queries based on a tree of keyword combinations. Those barely come up because search is (practically) dead, but when I'd ask AI the same questions or to find the same queries, it would simply make up confident answers. AI is only truly helpful for the common denominator of very well documented and often discussed topics.
- QuantumGood 1y ago
  "AI with search" needs to be differentiated from "AI not using search". Perplexity is designed around search, which has pros (when searching) and cons (when there are a lot of followup prompts, Perplexity is more likely to lose context)
- CalChris 1y ago
  The business model, not the utility. … it would simply make up confident answers. Dunno if you've used Google recently, but it will very confidently provide simply useless search results, pages and pages and pages of useless search results. I look at using LLMs as like using another programming language. My C++ skills are not going to be directly useful in Rust or OCaml. I need to learn a new paradigm. I'd ask AI the same questions. This is the crux. You really have to learn how to write (engineer) good prompts and you have to check what the LLM wrote. You use 'confidently' as a disparaging word. I think LLMs clear writing is quite useful in the reduction phase. LLMs are perfect? No, just way better than Google. To organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful has become To serve an ad and call it a day.
  - danudey 1y ago
    > it will very confidently provide simply useless search results, pages and pages and pages of useless search results. I had assumed that this degredation of search with useless results was an attempt to drive more people towards its even more useless AI products/results.
carlosjobim 1y ago
If you run any kind of business - online or offline - you will have ten times more customers coming from Google search than from social media. Especially if you make any effort on your website. And those are the organic results, not the ads.

mingus88 1y ago

I pay for Kagi and Claude. I feel that the core of this decline in services is simply because nobody want to pay for what is of value. Search is still useful. Claude is not good at citing sources. Search is great for doing my own research. I’m hearing a lot of people just copy and paste LLM output as truth. From students to law clerks. LLMs are designed to output convincing text (not correct text) and for lazy people that’s good enough. There will always be a need for searching raw data and making conclusions without an LLM

CalChris 1y ago
If current LLMs were perfect AGI then your lazy students and law clerks, they might even have a point. But you are setting the bar too high; LLMs are not perfect AGI. They hallucinate and you write bad prompts. Think of an LLM as more like a Dremel. Yeah, it isn't a Yamazaki Mazak. OTOH, search is like a screwdriver.
terribleperson 1y ago
No one wants to pay for value because we were getting a bunch of value for free for twenty-ish years.

dpassens 1y ago

As opposed to LLMs, which aren't inaccurate or noisy?

MSFT_Edging 1y ago

How can search(the utility, not the business model) possibly be dead? AI models can't possibly contain everything to the depth one might require on a niche topic. Additionally, the less training data available, the more egregious the hallucinations become. I've worked on some pretty niche things where the only way to get actual info is painstaking manual search queries based on a tree of keyword combinations. Those barely come up because search is (practically) dead, but when I'd ask AI the same questions or to find the same queries, it would simply make up confident answers. AI is only truly helpful for the common denominator of very well documented and often discussed topics.

QuantumGood 1y ago
"AI with search" needs to be differentiated from "AI not using search". Perplexity is designed around search, which has pros (when searching) and cons (when there are a lot of followup prompts, Perplexity is more likely to lose context)
CalChris 1y ago
The business model, not the utility. … it would simply make up confident answers. Dunno if you've used Google recently, but it will very confidently provide simply useless search results, pages and pages and pages of useless search results. I look at using LLMs as like using another programming language. My C++ skills are not going to be directly useful in Rust or OCaml. I need to learn a new paradigm. I'd ask AI the same questions. This is the crux. You really have to learn how to write (engineer) good prompts and you have to check what the LLM wrote. You use 'confidently' as a disparaging word. I think LLMs clear writing is quite useful in the reduction phase. LLMs are perfect? No, just way better than Google. To organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful has become To serve an ad and call it a day.
- danudey 1y ago
  > it will very confidently provide simply useless search results, pages and pages and pages of useless search results. I had assumed that this degredation of search with useless results was an attempt to drive more people towards its even more useless AI products/results.

carlosjobim 1y ago

If you run any kind of business - online or offline - you will have ten times more customers coming from Google search than from social media. Especially if you make any effort on your website. And those are the organic results, not the ads.