Is Google Search Cooked? | Hacker News Reader

Is Google Search Cooked?

8 pointsiamsahaj10 comments

ChatGPT launched search, Anthropic launched computer-use. Opinions about Google Search have been turning negative with its aggressive sponsor placement and its own AI cannibalising organic content. Not to mention the deep sh*thole that we call SEO

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Google has been alternating between neglecting and actively making search worse for years. Tacking on some hastily cobbled together AI product certainly hasn't helped them.

How much does search really matter to Google? I mean, it's just another channel for ads the way YouTube and GMail are, not to mention a whole network that runs ads on other people's web sites.

Because it's still their main cash cow, which they'll eventually enshittify it to the point where users move elsewhere.

Is that still true?

20 years ago when a video game came out you would find walkthroughs on the web. Now you get senseless spam on Fandom and if you want a walkthrough you might need to seek through 50 hours of video to find the 20 seconds you need and hope they didn’t edit the important bit out.

That is, enshittification has already damaged the web enough that people aren’t making content for it, the platform has been in decline a long time.

The cash cow part is, in that search is still around 60%.

Most of the world has grown accustomed to the web being a cesspool, so whether enshittification will lead to the end of Google is an open question.

https://www.abc.xyz/assets/91/b3/3f9213d14ce3ae27e1038e01a0e...

They are playing both sides. For the users, they are giving AI search, which takes up prime real-estate where content could be.

And for the businesses, they are forcing them to pay more and more to get their result on that very prime real-estate

Depends on how narrow they can stretch the gap

Yup, if I owned a decent amount of Google stocks, I'd be worried. What is odd to me is that Google is not doing anything substantial to adapt or fix its problems.

The optimist in me says they are trying, but the ship is just too big to steer fast enough to notice it

The pessimist in me says that Google is now just a large corporate that cares about pleasing its investors and showing good numbers.

Well every Google search I do now brings up a, I assume an AI distilled, summary of the answer. Sometimes it's useful, often not, because I wanted to see the actual facts. AI has it's uses, but it would be frustrating if that's all you get.

>ChatGPT launched search

Probably about the best use for it IMO.

>Opinions about Google Search have been turning negative... Not to mention the deep sh*thole that we call SEO

This is not at all new.

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