> because obviously HN crowd is much further ahead in the curve
Do you actually think this or is this just a polite way of saying lots of HNers are out of touch?
Do you actually think this or is this just a polite way of saying lots of HNers are out of touch?
Michael Burry: I may have been early but I'm not wrong
some exec: It's the same thing!
I believe that a lot of HN posts are probably "right", but they are so far in the future and so non-applicable to day-to-day life, that it's indistinguishable from wrong. For example, everyone predicting Google is going to end - yeah all great companies eventually come to an end - if you want to be insightful, you actually have to be on time with it.
Or in another case, there's a political scientist, whose name I don't currently remember, who's made fun of for predicting 9 out of the last 5 recessions. Sure, he may have predicted the ones that happened, but a broken clock is also right twice a day. Your predictions aren't worth much if you can't avoid false positives.
EDIT: [https://quoteinvestigator.com/2023/11/01/predict-nine/]
People hate change, and absent a catalyzing event or order of magnitude advantage, it will take a decade for usage patterns to shift.
E.g. Kagi over Google
Kagi could hypothetically be 25% superior in all searches.
Most people don't know and don't care. Search is the thing that pops up and they type into. You can even change that? To what? There are others?
Firefox had tabs.
Chrome had faster javascript. (Although moreso substantial free marketing on highly-visited webpages)
That's the sort of thing it actually takes to shift users.
Yet. Time is the enemy of ad-supported business models.
Time is literally the enemy of everything. The universe will experience heat death. The sun burns out. Nations will fall. You’ll die of old age.
The assertion you made is actually the most milquetoast safest prediction that anyone can make about the ad business and it’s obvious to everyone.
The thing that actually matters is “when?”
"When?"
So we’re all still using Yahoo and Altavista?
Google eclipsed their capabilities >25 years ago and yet some of them are still kicking around. Inertia is a very strong thing.
The difference is the business model. Except for a small minority of people in tech and with disposable incomes, the majority aren't willing to pay for Search.
So if Kagi wants to increase their adoption they would need another business model. Advertising (in one form or another) is the easiest one.
Google is a verb, it’s the default, it’s the internet. Two whole generations grew up with it being their portal to information.
There’s nothing Kagi can do to dethrone Google, unfortunately. Its only hope is to carve a niche for itself and cultivate it.
Hence, the lawsuit ;)
To the specific topic: Even if users predominantly switch to AI assistants for search (and there will always be search because users want to find stuff), the search will still be based on an index over third-party data, and the third parties will still be trying hard to optimize that data to be more prominent in applicable searches.
In this case, HN posts may be predicting the portion of the exponential curve further to the right, but in fact, we probably still have a long ways to go in the trough before we reach the point the lines cross.
For trading, obviously if Michael was 2 days early, that may have not been enough time to arrange the contracts he did. 2 years early means paying premiums while explaining to investors why you are doing this weird thing that everyone else in the world disagrees with.
That said, a lot of different thinking ends up not going anywhere. Only time will sort out the difference.
I will say I agree with the above comment about the current viability of SEO. It’s still very effective. Google is still very heavily used.
One thing to keep in mind is that while organic search might be slipping, other things are slipping at least as much. The slow death of 3rd party cookies is eating away at ad network efficiency. Organic social media reach depends increasingly on influencers, which is a highly fractured and opaque marketplace (inefficient at scale). Email is effective but getting email addresses remains difficult. Trust in press and institutions (aka earned media) is way down. It’s hard out there for marketing!