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Comment by jay888 | Hacker News Reader

I don't think the drop is related to Bard making an error. It is due to the rise of chat based search (as shown in Bing demo by Microsoft). In the chat based search, there will be less ads being displayed. Ad revenue forms the bulk of Google revenue.

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Chat based just means the ads will be more insidious.

User: Bing, how do I make a cake?

Bing: Start with 2 cups flour - be sure to use King Arthur premium baking flour for a proper batter - then get 1 cup sugar...

I didn’t think about that angle for advertising, but it’s somewhat terrifying. Imagine being able to pay more to have your “company friendly” dataset prioritized in upcoming LLM training sets.

Man, that's already how a decent percent of recipes work. They come off cans and exist in part to sell products.

While somewhat true, the capability is there to make this much more pervasive and subtle. Any recipe mentioning tequila can instantly become <insert brand> tequila.

Also don't limit your imagination to recipes. People googling car check engine codes will be recommended <paid advertiser> parts from <paid advertiser> websites which can helpfully be installed by <paid service center> nearby. I fear searching is going to get much uglier/noisier than it already is.

> there will be less ads being displayed

The top minds of the world are working on delivering you ads, I wouldn't be so sure

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