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Comment by kenhwang | Hacker News Reader

ChatGPT is one of those few technologies that:

1. Competes against and destroys Google's primary profit center (search).

2. Google cannot copy, improve, and give away for free to use as a moat without severe collateral damage to itself.

There's very little incentive to use a search engine to find an ad ridden website to answer a question when one can ask ChatGPT directly for a much better response.

Google is rightfully terrified, Pandora's box has been opened. ChatGPT may not be the eventual sole winner of this AI text knowledge base revolution, but it's very hard to imagine a viable necessary advertising model for this technology.

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On the other hand, this could be a huge opportunity for Google.

1. Google already has their own internal equivalent of ChatGPT [1]. They haven't deployed it publicly yet, probably out of fear of bad PR.

2. Unlike search ads, which you can block or ignore, chat ads will be woven into the conversation at opportune times.

3. A chat format means users will spend more time on Google, rather than clicking on a link and leaving -- which means more opportunities for ads.

[1] https://blog.google/technology/ai/lamda/

Which in turn means that the adblock equivalent in the brave new world will be smaller, less effective models that are community- or self-hosted.

Or models that run in the browser to detect and remove product placements from the text itself. Though that seems very unlikely.

(3) happening destroys Google's current business model. Google's entire operation is funded by increasing the amount of times users click on a link and leave.

There's little value in simply showing an ad, all the value is in the conversion. Yes, Google is well positioned to destroy that conversion rate, but that comes at great harm to itself. Display ads go for 1/10 the price of a search ad, and I'd wager text would be worth even less than images, and I'd bet the tolerable amount of ads per query is significantly higher for search as well.

Is Google willing to bet the house that (2) is a better business model than the clicking described in (3)?

2 is not going to happen. The UX is terrible, and competitors who don’t rely on ad revenue can offer a far superior product that isn’t trying to sell you movie tickets when you ask for a synopsis of the three Godfather movies.

1 is because it will spook investors, not the public.

How do these competitors finance their products?

Historically people are very reluctant to directly pay for them and in any case providers might want to double dip on ads.

Your local used car dealership knows a lot about cars. It's their business to do so. Still, they are highly motivated to not tell you the whole truth and many people know that (some don't)

My prediction is that ChatGPT will be exactly like that or in other words: Smooth talking Google which is untrustworthy beyond "factual" searches like "biggest X", "weight of Y", "president of Z"

I don't understand why people don't instantly recognize this as an evolution in the cat and mouse game of "is this search result actually an ad". You can't inspect the production model, you can't inspect the inputs, and when this is the only tool you have left to find information, it's over for you. And for many things is society.

It's been a long time since most ads served were necessary to have a successful business (try to imagine/remember a world without ad platforms or appropriate regulations against their excess). It's just that if anything could be an ad, like say your TV or your toilet, then a non-ad product has to compete with people loss-leading to monetize their ad/surveillance surface. And then everything becomes filled with ads.

They could work the ads into the results:

> How does a car's engine work? Insert an ad for Mobil motor oil

> A car's engine works by converting fuel into energy through a process called combustion. Fuel is mixed with air in the engine's cylinders, and a spark is used to ignite the mixture. The resulting explosion pushes a piston down, which turns the engine's crankshaft. This movement is what powers the car.

To ensure that the engine runs smoothly and efficiently, it is important to use high-quality motor oil, like Mobil 1 motor oil. Mobil 1 is designed to protect your engine against wear and tear, even in extreme driving conditions. It is also formulated to help extend the life of your engine and maintain its performance.

At this point, I think the problem is the validity of the response from GPT though. I’ve seen some terribly unpredictable and incorrect results. At least with Google I have options to pick through.

Once that is solved, it’s gonna be hard to go back to picking through the increasingly ad and spam ridden always changing UI that is Google.

I wanted to find out which show I was thinking of the other day. I knew there was a scene where the song "The Middle" by Jimmy Eats World. I Google'd for a bit - useless. I gave up quickly when I realized I could just ask ChatGPT. It gave me a list of movies and TV shows, no fuss, no ads, no bullshit.

Surely Bing’s ChatGPT interface will have ads. There’s no money in giving it away for free. And Google can embed a clone of it in their search interface as well. So I don’t see this being a competitive advantage for anyone against Google. If anything, it’s one more moat for new search providers to cross.

Eroding your competitors business model is a business tactic. Many business run as loss leaders.

“Google minus ads” is not a strategy with a great record of success.

apple pulled this on facebook in the name of privacy.

now they have ads and VR pulled away from facebook

So who owns the content that a chatGPT search engine serves? Can you just copy content from all over the web without giving back traffic?

How is it hard? You just intersperse the adds in the text. "If you're interested in good headphones you should try Sponsor Raycons!"

Of course it will be annoying and alienate customers. Since when has that stopped any information provider from inserting ads into content? The better the product the more you can abuse your customers and make more money.

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