Ask HN: Is ChatGPT + Plugins a Google Killer? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Is ChatGPT + Plugins a Google Killer?

11 pointsbehnamoh19 comments

Now that it can access the internet, why on earth would anyone Google anything and then go through all the SEO-optimized spam to finally find what they searched for?

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Sometimes getting what you want quickly is a double edged sword. I used Google a lot in grad school, which brought up many relevant and helpful results. I switched to using books as much as possible. While slower, I learned lots of things I didn't know I didn't know, because I had to read through enough of the book to find what I needed. In the process, I learned things I would not have with a search engine.

While that's true when you would like a meaningful learning experience, a lot of times search is aimed to obtain a factual answer (especially if it exists). I'm of the opinion that for a lot of questions with no deep answer required, Google would have to struggle against ChatGPT as per the current state of things.

It doesn't have to kill Google. If it can force google to integrate expensive LLMs (compared to current search), it will impact search margins which is what all of Google depends on. If search stops printing money, it will have a drastic impact on Google, since Search subsidises tons of other not profitable ventures (even GCP is not profitable)

A company this size doesn't die easily though. Even IBM is still alive and making money.

That's a valuable point. Impact on margins is what I'm curious to see. Given the current rate of competition, I don't think we could ever see the current margins again for Google, how many ever years down the line.

I wonder if the market is discounting this point of view already.

When the new bing launched, I decided to switch from Firefox/Google to a predominately Edge/Bing flow. It it is mostly fine, The Edge browser is a good web browser. But Bing just doesn't display results in the right order, where as Google does. They still have the sauce.

That being said, The progress that Bing is making is wonderful. Bing works great on granular searches though.

There are extensions that allow you to use bing chat from any browser! If you want to go back to firefox and use the chat you still can, just a heads up

For the vast majority of people in the world Bard is, at the moment, superior. ChatGPT's responses are TOO detailed, and it also has no clue about current events. Imagine how many people just search Google for what's going on in the world lately.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35290982

That said for technical folks, ChatGPT is much more useful.

Bard is terrible at parsing in my short time with it.

I asked if it could answer a riddle, and it responded by asking me riddles. When I said no, I'll ask the riddle, it asked me another one.

I think it'll be interesting to see the afterparty for search, so to speak. Can search compete or complement? Who Are You is a good demo of some possibilities in that area and I like it so far.[1]

Sometimes it's nice to get an answer + web results.

1. https://you.com/search?q=who+are+you&tbm=youchat&cfr=chat

Google won't die, Android is hard tied to Google.

In terms of desktop search, Microsoft is going to have to sort out all the bugs to build trust.

Bing works fine on Android

For now. If Bing starts replacing all the search on android and touching android revenue, im sure Google will do the same thing that Apple did. Google literally lives and dies by their ads.

Die doesn’t matter - that takes decades maybe a century. Shrink/grow is the question.

I think for me personally, it will be. Someone will figure out how to keep it reading until it corroborates its source a couple times, then report back.

I don't see why this can't be done right now, although perhaps it's not cost effective, who knows.

When ChatGPT starts providing accurate answers to queries and gets opened to be used for free. I think Google will be at huge risk. Unless google surprises us.

I wonder how this will pan out in the long term, sooner or later SEO targeting AI models might ruin that too.

I doubt it. It's funny to think about, but the moment this becomes a real issue, people will revert back to a hashed/archived version of "The Pile" and cherry pick all the updated training material.

I hate to be the cyberpunk party pooper, but it just doesn't seem like a threatening outcome to me.

> why on earth would anyone Google anything

Because it's easier, faster, cheaper, and gives me qualified results from people I trust. You can pry my search engine from my cold, dead hands.

ChatGPT is a nice tool but utterly useless for many things people use search for. If you trust ChatGPT to read you a recipe from the internet, I prescribe you to 30 minutes of browsing an AI fearmongering subreddit.

Google is gonna have to sort out search ads otherwise yeah, when this tech improves and is more widely adopted then they're in serious trouble

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