AI Answers over Search: Is Google Digging Its Own Grave? | Hacker News Reader

AI Answers over Search: Is Google Digging Its Own Grave?

semking.com

1 pointsemking13 comments

Elon posted "Grok it" — instead of "Google it".

I paid attention to what the users shared under his X post and I wrote this short article showing how disappointed users are with Google Search.

As usual, I have no problem with people who strongly disagree.

Your comments are all appreciated! :)

SEO Strategist sounds like "Prompt Engineer" i.e not involved in the foundational creation of the tools and their back-end, understanding their internal mechanics, what is really to create a "Search" engine and how it works but you're rather reverse engineering and heuristically guessing how they work on surface. In essence you're optimizing keywords to improve a resource reach for a search engine, until the said search engine changes its ranking algorithm. Because of this I cant really give credit to what you are stating. Plus this really felt like hyping Grok out of nowhere with those cringe screenshots of tweets as if they were made up, until you hype something else weeks later and post about how Perplexity AI will kill OpenAI (They won't, they are a ChatGPT wrapper). Google is presumed dead multiple times per month. Read their financial statement, Search is literally their Life insurance, don't you think they have their best guys on it?

Why do you think SEO Strategist sounds like "Prompt Engineer"?

Why do you feel I'm hyping Grok and predict "...until you hype something else weeks later"?

I just wrote a draft concluding that Grok might be an idiot after all after a stupid answer.

I don't know how well you understand crawling, rendering, indexing and ranking in organic search but I'm not sure you know what I do on a daily basis.

I'd love to be involved in the creation of tools, and I would love to try to understand their back-end.

I'm the opposite of hype. If you want to roast me, here's a video that should give you some inspiration:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4zEadYJYIU

Hi, Elie! I read the article, then read your case study, then visited you on LinkedIn. I was amused by your custom LinkedIn URL!

A few hours ago, I was replying to a post about "Gradual Disempowerment" from generative AI. My theory (just a guess, not researched like your case study!) is that Google and Apple (and maybe Microsoft and Amazon) are diverting CAPEX away from their core businesses to chase after AI chimeras. And as a result, the quality of their services (e.g. Google Search) is static or degrading. So, in order to improve Gemini, is Alphabet diverting resources from Google Search?

Over at Tyler Cowen's blog, this guy said Gemini got irritated when he cursed at it. https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2025/02/gr... My comment is right after his (as Ellie Kesselman). Maybe you'll lol about Siri.

Hey, thank you so much for this comment that I'm only discovering now!

First, I'm glad you were amused by my Linkedin trolling! :D

Next, I think we all wish the quality of Google Search were "static" but it is degrading instead.

What you mentioned is probably the reason and this is a quick observation I made at the beginning of this hiking video yesterday:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4zEadYJYIU

If the Google name is on it, privacy invasion is in it.

This and the declining quality of results explain why I haven't used Google search in years.

Now, explain why Grok will not be more of the same? Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

Isn't it necessary to be on the Twitter platform in order to use Grok? Unlike lots of other people, I still use Twitter, but for those who don't, I would think it is an obstacle to using Grok.

The advantage of using Grok (or any alternative to Google Search!) is that there isn't an entire ecosystem of pervasive prying Alphabet services to go along with it: Gmail, Youtube, Google Play, Google SMS (Verizon terminated its SMS for text and recommended all users use Google instead, in November 2024), Google Meet or whatever they call it, and probably more. It can track you everywhere, and a deliberate effort is required to evade it with alternative providers.

I can use grok.com without Twitter.

But this doesn't explain how/why Musk/X/xGrok isn't just more of the same.

Just like Google, Musk is driven by greed. What he really wants is some of Google's money for himself. And the easy way to achieve this is by doing what Google does --- or perhaps even working in cooperation with them.

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

Yes, jqp is right: you can sign-up using X / Google / Apple accounts or email...

Regarding jqp's conclusion: I hope he is wrong.

And I hoped Google wouldn't be evil.

But it should come as no real surprise that hope proved to be an ineffective antidote to greed.

Any company with such a slogan (don't be evil) is a little sus if you ask me. B

But the LOVE of money (not money itself), is the root of all evil.

And this applies to everyone, everywhere, at anytime...

No, you can use Grok[.]com without using X.

You can sign-up using X / Google / Apple accounts or email so you are not forced to be locked in an ecosystem but you are benefiting from answers coming from and index made up of scapped web pages and an index of X posts (+others)

I agree that there's no privacy with G.

What have you used instead? Other search engines? LLMs?

Any centralized eco-system with interconnected products/services = privacy invasion by design.

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