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Comment by jeffbee | Hacker News Reader

The double standard here is hilarious. The ChatGPT result you got is better largely because you typed in a longer search doc. The illusion of superiority that surrounds ChatGPT is significantly due to the human factors curiosity that people are willing to type in a long-ass search string in the conversational context. They will type "best pants" into Google then complain about the futility of it, then switch tabs and spend ten minutes writing a short essay on pants for ChatGPT, and rave about the results.

If you take the entire quoted search sentence from your third paragraph, then Google also presents a complete solution.

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I feel like Google has trained this behaviour into its long time users

Previously writing human like sentences would not yield good results

Now its more like <key word> <key word> reddit

Google and the companies that litter the results page only have themselves to blame. When I was trying to find some boiler plate for pulling something from AWS parameter store I got total nonsense docs that weren't even what I wanted but it was mostly AWS docs or online tech diploma mill nonsense. Then I used chatgpt and it did 90% of the work in 20 seconds. Sometimes Google should just show me the code on GitHub but instead Google wastes my time.

But think the amount of ads (err "sponsored results") you got to see and click on!

This is by design.

truth. I formulate Google queries like phrases in a hypothetical document I hope exists.

its* https://youryoure.com/?its

Google used to do keyword based search only; now, it’s a hybrid of keywords and semantics, and they seem to be upweighting the latter more and more. This can be good if you don’t care about precision (“pasta recipes” -> “penne alla vodka”), but frustrating if you know exactly what you are wanting to match.

100% this.

> If you take the entire quoted search sentence from your third paragraph, then Google also presents a complete solution.

Which one is the complete solution you're seeing here? https://www.google.com/search?q=how+can+I+create+f-strings+i...

Google generated an answer for me.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/2gvMEMxszs1R5rWMA

Oh cool! Thanks for the screenshot.

I mean, that’s just completely wrong though! (1) It attempts to wrap and then substitute, which is nonsense (2) it doesn’t even expand the string you give it! That f-string in there is basically a no-op and (3) it truncates to only the first line, and throws away the rest.

I had an answer similar to chstgpts that was generated as the first result.

I...think you may be misreading them?

They said that they put exactly the same queries into Google as ChatGPT.

The way GP worded it is a bit confusing and ambiguous but it doesn't seem like they typed the same question into both, rather they typed what they thought each wanted to know about the same question. In one sentence they say they typed an exact quote into Google but in the very next sentence they clarify they actually typed a bunch of keywords about that quote instead.

I believe they mean that's how Google interpreted the query?

> Except, for Google, I did not use the "how do I" etc. and just threw some keywords at it: "python f-string wrapping", "python f-string folding", etc.

Here's the thing. For the longest time (since circa 1999) I've been a Google user. Google trained me to not use superfluous words like "how do I .... " etc. Just put down the keywords, and spare me the babble, Google said.

With LLMs, on the other hand, it feels like I'm dealing with a human being on the other end: so I have to add stuff like "how can I"... and "please" and "thank you" (and sometimes "no yapping" ;-D ). So I queried Google just like I normally do.

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