Comment by Hasu | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Hasu | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

> This forced, radical change motivated only by fear feels like Google+ all over again. Or New Coke.

A year ago everyone was trashing Google for being ahead for years on the science of AI, but completely failing to productize it. "OpenAI is going to eat Google's search business for lunch", was the prevailing narrative. This is what people said they wanted!

I'm sure it's clear to everyone now[0] that genAI is not a search solution, and Google's former approach of quietly putting AI into phones and products without it being flashy and in-your-face was actually a better strategy.

[0] Just kidding, I'm certain that the industry and especially the people running Google will learn all the wrong lessons from this.

Idk, Perplexity sometimes gives me very good results compared to Google. Their AI also provides links to where the information is coming from.

The problem is that Google effectively destroyed its classic search and is playing catch-up with AI. AI is the only lunch out there to be had in the first place. There is nothing else.

> "OpenAI is going to eat Google's search business for lunch", was the prevailing narrative. This is what people said they wanted

One thing isn't related to the other. Actually most people noticing OpenAI/LLMs gonna displace Google enjoy the idea. Nobody is asking Google to give LLM results.

> A year ago everyone was trashing Google for being ahead for years on the science of AI, but completely failing to productize it. "OpenAI is going to eat Google's search business for lunch", was the prevailing narrative. This is what people said they wanted!

People say a lot of shit. Doesn't mean you should put your poorly performing Q&A AI to provide people with outright false answers, I'm pretty sure no one asked for that.

After all, Google is running their own products, and when they make shitty choices, I think it's perfectly fair to question how they can make so bad decisions, no matter if I personally might have said "Google is failing to productize LLMs properly" or whatever.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com