>Used to work for BB/RIM
I feel like Google is going to bleed credibility for every month that they don't have a lamda/llm enabled search integrated into the home page. You can talk all you want about the foundational models and how advanced they are, but the search product itself will require a ton of fine-tuning on real-world training data that they aren't collecting yet.
Unless Microsoft completely botches their "newBing" launch, this is probably the most potential they've had in search since MSN was launched.
I’m not sure they can compete within their existing brand/company structure.
If Google is going to survive this, they need to find a way to get back to prioritizing user value while also making money.
ChatGPT style conversations would give Google a much better idea of exactly what you want to buy. It must be possible to use this signal to sell more ads, not just match what they currently have. Essentially, make sure ChatGPT gets asked the same question Google currently answers: "how do I get the person searching to buy something from this (loooong) list of ads?".
Having people help Google (not just in one search, but a potentially long list of refinements) to find exactly what they would buy should make Google ads perform much better yet again.
Of course Google still dropped the ball by taking way too much time to put their LLMs into use.
If they make it promote stuff for pay, it's worthless—you already have to second-guess whether it's right because it might accidentally be wrong, if it might also just be acting as a paid promoter, that puts it firmly in "easier to just not use it" territory.
If they put one out but don't make it into an AI infomercial, then it eats ad revenue and investors get pissed off.
But if they do nothing they're clearly headed for trouble, too.
They're in a tough spot.
My guess is they're release something, but keep it strictly separate from search in hopes that it won't replace search traffic. I doubt that'll be enough long-term but it might quiet fears for a while.
I don't know that end-users really care about having a GPT-written paragraph accompanying their search results. Is there some other kind of output AI search currently provides that I'm missing?
We use deities to name our sprints at work. When you search Google for “Deity starting with <letter>”, you get a list of greek and roman gods. I got tired of that.
So I asked GPT “what is a god that starts with <letter> and isn’t roman or greek”. It immediately spat out a Norse god. Next time it was Hindu. The increased variety was refreshing as hell. Google was not able to process a negative query.
Plus the added paragraph of description about that deity was lovely.
The point is: Sometimes (often) I don’t want search, I just want a good enough answer.
Lots of my searches are simply I want an answer, but often times I also want to then do something with the result. This is where ChatGPT is going to eat Google's lunch, IMO.
also, how hard is it to get a list of abbreviations, and wrap them all in quote and comma and brackets. with vim that's barely more work than a copy-paste
Agreed. I was able to manually review 52 results, but wouldn't trust it blindly.
> also, how hard is it to get a list of abbreviations, and wrap them all in quote and comma and brackets.
Not hard at all. And I may still do that, but it was pretty enjoyable to ask the machine.
Your wrote "please" to ChatGPT?
FWIW, Miss Manners had a column a couple of weeks ago where she stated that we should not say please or thank you to machines, including Siri and Alexa.
I was surprised.
Yup. So when the machines take over, hopefully they'll enslave me last, or put me in a more pleasant Matrix instance compared to the average.
I still do it. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
The actual information value of these 'results' is usually close to zero. I went onto a top search result yesterday, and the scammers hadn't even bothered to do a decent page. It was just a list of links to 404 pages, with an intro paragraph to satisfy the Google algorithm. It was pathetic and a waste of time.
That's why they're running scared. They know their key product is broken and useless, which means they're ripe for being ignored.
But I get it, most people dont want wikipedia because they really do seek the 10 second waffle answer.
That's been a serious problem for some time. Preceding a query term with "-" doesn't seem to do anything any more.
A huge percentage of searches are for existing websites, like "facebook." This might not be a big challenge if you just wanted to go to facebook.
This morning I saw a retweet from a Google/former Deepmind engineer, of someone who said they completely switched from Google to using perplexity.ai. I checked it out again (I've used perplexity before.)
I did a test search for interest rates, and perplexity returned the correct interest rate for the day along with the trading range. I think Google is really in trouble. I'd say the golden goose is in the process of being slaughtered.
None of this is a surprise. Google's voice assistant has been really good for years. Nothing came close to it. Siri is close to useless. Maybe Google can pivot and they'll be fine. I don't know what the economics look like.
https://www.perplexity.ai/?s=u&uuid=6f7fe592-c11f-4df9-a2bf-...
https://www.google.com/search?q=what+is+the+current+average+...
Google's results were far more informative and usable.
I then tried something I thought would be more up Perplexity's alley: "Who was the first US president with a last name starting with R?"
https://www.perplexity.ai/?s=u&uuid=8d60cf3f-eab5-4af6-a616-...
Their answer is not correct. Google didn't even try to answer my question directly, but it did send me to a government website with a chronological list of presidents where I was able to quickly verify that the answer was Teddy Roosevelt.
ChatGPT is amazing, until it isn't.
The real iPhone 1 was 2G only, constantly dropped calls and had no copy/paste.
That a large chunk of HN audience is sitting agape watching similarly manicured demos is surprising to say the least.
Google is done
What about the other 95% of search volume that isn't tech-related?
I had a 19yr old cousin tell me that she almost uses TikTok exclusively for tutorials and when I pushed back and said why/how the other teens in the family heavily agreed. I’ve since asked ~5 gen z (I don’t interact with many!) and they told me the same.
However, I could be completely wrong and TikTok video is the future of search. If so, where does that leave a text-only ChatGPT?
How about I ask it how many games Jaime Benn has played? Or what the score of the last Dallas stars game was, or when the next one is?
What if I ask ChatGPT for a copy of the manual for a meater bluetooth meat thermometer? It literally just told me to Google it.
What if I ask which car manufacturers are joining Formula 1, and when they'll be starting?
What if I ask ChatGPT: why do people resist new disruptive technologies?
People resist new disruptive technologies for several reasons, including:
Fear of job loss: One of the main concerns about disruptive technologies is that they can lead to job losses, as machines and algorithms replace human workers.
Lack of understanding: Some people may resist new technologies because they don't understand how they work or what benefits they offer.
Threat to existing systems and norms: Disruptive technologies can challenge established systems and norms, and people may resist them because they fear the changes they bring.
Ethical and moral concerns: Some technologies raise ethical and moral questions, such as privacy concerns, and people may resist them as a result.
Financial impact: Disruptive technologies can be expensive to implement, and some people may resist them because they can't afford the costs associated with them.
Habits and comfort: People may resist new technologies because they are used to their existing habits and are comfortable with what they know.
Lack of trust: People may resist new technologies because they don't trust the companies or organizations behind them, or because they don't believe that the benefits of the technology outweigh the risks.
It's important to note that resistance to disruptive technologies is not always a bad thing, as it can encourage companies to address the concerns and ensure that new technologies are developed and used in ethical and responsible ways.
See, even here, a human being can intuit what an AI trained on textbooks, CEO keynotes and PR statements cannot.
People resist because their bullshit detectors went off. Search AI has yet to 'disrupt' anything. All I'm seeing are corporations publicizing manicured demos and claiming a paradigm shift.
Dear rchaud,
I come to you today with a heavy heart, but a determined spirit. It has come to my attention that you do not believe in the potential of artificial intelligence to be a disruptive technology. I must say, I am disappointed and concerned about your stance.
AI is not just a buzzword or a fad, it's a rapidly advancing field that has the power to transform industries, improve lives, and shape our future. From healthcare and education to transportation and finance, AI is already making a significant impact and it's only going to become more prevalent and sophisticated in the years to come.
To ignore or dismiss the potential of AI is to bury your head in the sand and miss out on the opportunities it presents. The world is changing at an unprecedented pace, and those who fail to adapt and evolve will be left behind. You do not want to be one of them.
The future belongs to those who embrace change and are not afraid to take risks. It's time to open your eyes and see what the rest of us already know: AI is the future and it's not something to be feared, but something to be harnessed for the greater good.
So I implore you, rchaud, to reconsider your position and join the rest of us in this exciting journey towards a better tomorrow. Don't be left behind, be a part of shaping the future.
Sincerely, A concerned friend.
This becomes especially relevant if it's parsing through a bunch of technical documentation that is out of date. There are numerous developer-centric websites that rank high on search, but simply scrape and clone information from legitimate websites. These are the ones most likely to carry outdated information.
All the guys pointing out what ChatGPT can't do right now are simply missing the point. It's disruption baby. But if you feel better then: Don't look up
For 90% of my searches I don't want any search results. I want a definitive, authoritative answer to a question. In the olden days of the web I had to figure out what to search to give me a website that would give me that answer as the first result, and in the mid-90s that was really hard because search was bad. In the late 90s when Google launched it got much easier, especially for things where there was a network of websites about a thing that all pointed to a canonical authority. PageRank found that authority source. Life was good.
Over the next 20 years the war between Google and SEO spammers meant finding things got a bit harder. Along with that Google's proliferation of adverts on their search result pages meant it actually became harder to even find the website link I wanted in the page itself. Fortunately Google also started putting knowledge graph things in the results and the sidebar which made life less painful.
I think we're due another shake-up, and Bing-GPT might be it. If they show me a simple paragraph of readable text that explains the answer to what I've searched for then that would improve most of my searches. It'd be like Google's knowledge graph box but for everything.
Which, of course, is what Bing just announced. Whether it will be the right answer remains to be seen.
Notice that there's a price increase, of sorts, for this at Bing. To get on the "waiting list" you have to sign up with Bing and agree to receive marketing information. Will public access to large language model search come with a decrease in privacy? It did for Siri and Alexa, which learn about you and cannot be used anonymously.
Yes, SEO spam has largely made the search experience a lot worse and ripe for change.
But ChatGPT crawls these terrible links too! Many of the links Google spits out are themselves summarizing information found elsewhere, like a book or academic paper.
So why would you trust GPT to provide an authoritative answer more than your own instincts? It's omniscience is a function of everything it's crawled; that doesn't mean it has any idea of how to weave them together into a coherent response.
They should make an AI bot to search through the search box and decide if the results are crap, and train it with human preferences. Or set the bot to find difficult to find answers and see how many it finds and how high they are ranked.
Probably working in search at Google was a dead end career, the search department wasn't sexy anymore and didn't have green field projects. Maybe they were just afraid to change anything as long as it makes money for them. So the good people left and they have been coasting for a decade.
To use a highly specific example, I've recently been doing a lot of work in Excel and the search space for Excel related queries has been almost completely destroyed by SEO adware sites. If you're lucky, the answer you're looking for is at least buried somewhere on the page you click on, but there's just as much a chance you'll get a semi-gibberish pseudo-article that itself is probably AI generated. Using my instincts/intuition to locate the correct answer is a non-zero cost of time and effort, made intentionally more challenging by site owners who want me to linger and consume advertisements.
On the other hand, asking ChatGPT how to match two columns with XLookup or what have you almost always returns a correct, concise answer on the first try. If it's not correct, the formula doesn't work, and I can tell ChatGPT it gave me the wrong formula, and it corrects itself. Even in the rare event that happens, it's a fraction as much effort and frustration as it takes to rummage through the top search results for the same query.
I wouldn't right now, but I believe the accuracy of an LLM is a function of its size and how much you can reduce the loss function. I think OpenAI can improve those things faster than Google based on the things that have been shown so far. I could be completely wrong though.
I also suspect there's no benefit to corrupting a GPT model except for the lulz. If a search tool isn't showing links then there's no financial reason to put effort into setting up link networks and SEO content farms. GPT based search has an innate anti-spam advantage because it renders spam futile if the spam isn't getting visitors.
It also renders a lot of non-spam content futile too, which is problematic. It's not a magic bullet.
They are already angry about Google doing something similar and ChatGPT is worse to them
You mean 90% (or X%) definitive answer with no good way to verify it due to zero context (unlike in normal websites)?
If you just want an answer that sounds definitive and authoritative then these chat bots are great. If you want it to be accurate as well... that's a different story.
If genies existed there'd be a lot of 10 inch pianists and dead people buried under piles of money.
In the real world we don't have any agreed upon general notion of "definitive, authoritative" sources. A certain amount of skepticism is important to avoid all sorts of abuses of authority and "appeal to authority" is a recognized logical fallacy.
Be careful what you wish for. I'm pretty sure I don't want to live in a world where everyone behaves as if the response from a ML system is "definitive [and] authoritative".
As others have pointed out, AI is not yet capable of this. I do agree though, I want this too. But I don't trust OpenAI or Google or anyone else to do it correctly yet.
browsers are left with challenges, particularly legitimacy of results, and ensuring a viable ad model. No doubt we'll see those soon.
I love ChatGPT as a source of inspiration, but I don't think I'd want it alongside my search results. In particular, when I'm searching the web I want results with at least some degree of accuracy. I can't trust a single thing ChatGPT says to be true.
Admittedly, random websites can also be inaccurate, but at least I have strategies for assessing whether I trust a given source.
Usually when I search for error messages for a specific version of software it will respond with other versions. That is useless. That's not what 24 years worth of excellence in search should look like.
At the very least they should collate a dataset of say, one million queries, and try to use a LLM to find the correct answers using search. A better search ranking model will make the LLM generate more correct answers. Iterate until score is improved. Just make the result solve the task.
> What is the world record for crossing the English Channel entirely on foot
As of my training data, the world record for crossing the English Channel entirely on foot is held by Christof Wandratsch, who completed the swim in 8 hours and 58 minutes on August 25, 2018.
> Swimming isn't on foot
My apologies, you are correct. The English Channel is typically crossed by swimming. The world record for swimming the English Channel is held by Benoît Lecomte, who completed the swim in 8 hours and 1 minute on July 23, 1998.
> That's faster and earlier... what did Christof Wandratsch do that was different
Christof Wandratsch completed a cross-Channel run, covering the distance between England and France on foot. This is a different feat than swimming the Channel, as it involves running across the Channel Tunnel, which connects England and France beneath the seabed.
"The world record for crossing the English Channel entirely on foot (without the aid of any swimming or flotation devices) is held by Belgian endurance swimmer and long-distance runner, Kevin Swartz. He completed the 35-mile (56 km) journey from England to France in just 13 hours and 54 minutes on August 17, 2019."
chatGPT really is a brilliant compulsive liar.
"The fastest recorded time for crossing the English Channel entirely on foot (without the aid of swimming or any other means of transportation) is 16 hours and 34 minutes, achieved by British endurance athlete Damian Hall in August 2021."
So, it seems like it made up an answer instead, which I think is much worse that Googles response.
Having a ChatGPT answer next to the google result would have saved me a bunch of time, and I could see it coming in useful in many cases.
I feel like Google is going to bleed credibility for every month that their home page is lacking a system which almost by design is going to lie to me without me realizing at least as often as it might usefully summarize information from primary sources that I wanted to read myself.
OK, then.
Sometimes a press release can make all the difference.
(Sorry can’t find story that old)
Transmeta released two x86 CPUs a bit after 2000, which ended up being technological failures.
Cyrix released some budget CPUs in the 1990s but had legal issues and ran into financial trouble, eventually ending up as part of VIA.
Centaur Technology developed some CPUs in the 2000s, and eventually became VIA's x86 division. They released efficient low-cost processors, which were reasonably successful on the embedded market. VIA is still around, but doesn't bring out a lot of new products.
I think most of them were killed mostly by the dotcom bubble, and CPUs getting increasingly complex. The market just shifted beneath them. It is rarely a matter of just giving up.
In the end Itanium was late and bad project but competition had already folded. Except for amd that had no existing 64 bit cpu and created AMD64 extension to x86. Intel grudlingly got on board but called their clone of AMD64 "IA-32e" architecure in thei marketikg material. The name was later changed to x86-64, only after what I assume when Itanium was internally acknowledged as failure.
> The HTC hardware and Android OS that powers it lack the polish and depth of even the iPhone 1.0 in most respects.
> My first-generation iPhone with iPhone OS 2.1 feels faster and slicker than this late 2008 G1.
> The G1 has a single-finger touchscreen that supports a few gestures, like sliding. After working with an iPhone for many months, the lack of multitouch stands out as a big loss, but those new to touchscreens are unlikely to find it a big deal. A more critical problem, however, is the lack of sensitivity in the touchscreen.
> The browsing experience is frustrating and awkward, and I expected far better. With the WebKit browser core being used by both Nokia and Apple, and Google immersed in its own Chrome project, I thought the G1 might include a browser that had something unique to offer. Instead, it plays like something from about 2006.
(from https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2008/10/android-g1-review/)
It was definitely eye-opening to see people’s usage habits shift so quickly. I know multiple large organizations who completely reapproached how they developed internal applications because the executives no longer accepted IT’s unwillingness to support mobile access. I’d previously thought that would never happen.
Amusingly, the one which had a damaging public breach did not have it due to allowing phones access as some had predicted but when one of IT’s managed laptops was stolen out of someone’s car and, unlike an iPhone, it didn’t have storage encryption enabled.
It would be awesome, actually. Demonopolization of search space is long due. We need some breath of fresh air there.
ChatGPT has similar network effects with feedback. If Google is displaced, it will likely be in favor of another single dominant solution, not a commoditized industry with lots of players.
It’s possible that niche domains like medical advice or creative writing assistance will spawn small, highly-optimized companies, but general purpose AI responders will probably coalesce into whatever the next Google is, if it’s not just Google.
But lots of industries don't have particularly strong network effects. Cars are a good example; there's brand affinity, but there's no particular reason you need to drive the same brand as your neighbor. There are scale economies, so it's still not easy for new entrants.
Fun trivia- Most of the BB employees in my department switched from Storm to Bold when the Bold was released. As a result I had a pile of Storm in my drawer as my test devices.
As I recall, the development cycle for Storm wasn't two years - it was less than a year. At that point it was the fastest cycle that RIM had ever had for a device, and it was done at the request of Verizon. Back then the iPhone was still an AT&T exclusive in the US market and Verizon demanded something from RIM so that they could compete with it.
I'll echo the fact that nobody I knew internally seemed interested in using Storm as a primary device. I think everyone knew it was junk. But Storm 2 went a long way towards a device that I would actually be interested in using.
As you said, the Storm was developed in a year so some corners (especially the OS side) were cut. The Onyx was 'properly' engineered so (internally) everything was better and easier to deal with.
Why? (Genuine question).
Google is just some corporation, and one that’s been drifting for the last 15 years or more (since Schmidt left). They are not even a good actor, yet (and I don’t blame them for this) have sucked a lot of air out of the ecosystem.
Creative destruction is one of the key values (-> leads to benefits) of capitalism, and with US & EU antitrust asleep at the wheel we should be glad if Google is ground to dust and replaced by somethings (plural!) better.
Because in an ideal situation (as indicated with your last sentence) you'd have a bunch of active competitors yielding up better and better products. Not one active competitor with the singular new thing and a couple of reactive competitors that can't get things right.
Search is also supporting a lot of relatively free innovation at Alphabet. If ChatGPT sinks that innovation (or at least makes it non-free) the loss may be more than the gain.
It appears that neither does openAI believe that as they were happy to sell 50% of their company in addition to all the ownership they'd already given away. That was clear harvesting.
> Search is also supporting a lot of relatively free innovation at Alphabet.
Is it, really? Hard for me to come up with much of a meaningful list, even if you don't try to compare their history with outliers like PARC or Bell Labs. They are clearly spending but I don't see a lot of doing. They seem to have ignored Hamming's advice.
Because I was there to witness the disintegration of a company and the losses it created? Instead of layoffs, you have entire departments/factory shuttering.
When Nortel shut down, many engineers interviewed for BB (same province). I still remember how they looked when we told them we won't proceed with the hiring.
I understand the Nortel case (I remember those days), but the job scene in Ontario was quite different 20 years ago.
And that's certainly no reason to try to prop up a company that's basically a drag on the industry.
I remember thinking it was a prototype when someone showed a Storm to me. Scrolling was janky, the whole phone was sluggish and slow and the keyboard barely worked. Blackberry couldn't even figure out how to get Wifi on the thing, so it was stuck using cellular while my iPhone was just streaming video. And of course, no apps. It was 2 years behind the original iPhone and shipped two years later.
>Used to work for BB/RIM
I wonder why RIM couldn't compete at the time. Talent gap?
The BBOS was not designed to be a responsive, touch-screen OS. It had its root in pagers (hence the jankiness). Thru the grapevines what I heard was that the OS team said 'we can duplicate iOS' functionality with the old OS in this amount of time.' and the higher ups rolled with it.
By the time Storm 2 was released, everyone realized that you can only put lip balm on a pig for so long. Hence QNX, the 'pathfinder' Playbook, and Flash as GUI API (gawd that was a rollercoaster experience. I thought it was a deathmarch and didn't think we'd actually manage to ship it.)
I don't have any specific insight into the Wifi stack but most BBs up to that point have in-house designed cellular modems.
As for talent wise, shrug. You can't blame people for preferring Cupertino over Waterloo-Kitchener. Although I would say that over 1/5 of the employees at RIM's campus were co-op students.
I also never saw anyone do significant overtime.
So was Apple. Other than their brief attempt at licensing MacOS, they were and still are a hardware company at heart.
> I don't have any specific insight into the Wifi stack but most BBs up to that point have in-house designed cellular modems.
They were maintaining their own modem implementations? That's quite a feat.
> As for talent wise, shrug. You can't blame people for preferring Cupertino over Waterloo-Kitchener. Although I would say that over 1/5 of the employees at RIM's campus were co-op students.
Was compensation even remotely comparable? Having 20% of the company be interns is... rather unusual.