The same AI search results that recommend that their users eat glue or kill themselves.

I don't believe this is a right move for Google, but Google does not care about that. Google cares about showing ads, and I'd love to know how they plan on doing that, when everybody will google a term, read the (terrible) AI description and close the tab. Will the ads be injected directly into the responses? Will this be fairly and transparently disclosed?

There was a running theory that google results have detoriated in quality because google wants you to scroll down, to look at more ads. This runs contrary to this expected behavior, so I don't know what to think. I might have to start looking for an alternative.

I really like Ecosia, but if anybody has any recommendations, do tell.

I've had some very funny results with Google AI.

Yesterday I searched google for more information on the common house centipede, in my current location.

The AI summary was helpful, but the image it chose was of a centipede with a woman's head. https://howanimalsdoit.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2011...

So I think maybe they need to let it sit in the oven a little bit longer.

This is the wrong move. People are starting to get used to their AI results even that many times inaccurate. I get wrong out dated results all the time, when I look for coding and documentation questions I’d the same thing.

Related "Expanding AI Overviews and Introducing AI Mode" 62 comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43269332

And here I am still waiting for AI-less search results.

>Currently, the predominant business model for commercial search engines is advertising. The goals of the advertising business model do not always correspond to providing quality search to users. For example, in our prototype search engine one of the top results for cellular phone is "The Effect of Cellular Phone Use Upon Driver Attention", a study which explains in great detail the distractions and risk associated with conversing on a cell phone while driving. This search result came up first because of its high importance as judged by the PageRank algorithm, an approximation of citation importance on the web [Page, 98]. It is clear that a search engine which was taking money for showing cellular phone ads would have difficulty justifying the page that our system returned to its paying advertisers. *For this type of reason and historical experience with other media [Bagdikian 83], we expect that advertising funded search engines will be inherently biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of the consumers.*

>[...]

>In general, it could be argued from the consumer point of view that the better the search engine is, the fewer advertisements will be needed for the consumer to find what they want. This of course erodes the advertising supported business model of the existing search engines. However, there will always be money from advertisers who want a customer to switch products, or have something that is genuinely new. But we believe the issue of advertising causes enough mixed incentives that it is crucial to have a competitive search engine that is transparent and in the academic realm.

God, I wish Google would stop assaulting us with this crap.

Can anyone explain Google's moves here? Pre-2024, it made sense. LLMs seem like a game changer technology that could threaten Google Search. But in 2024 and onwards, we know that's not the case as we are past peak LLM. Adding LLMs unreliability to their main money maker seems awfully misguided. Are they under investor pressure to add LLMs everywhere?

The whole new iteration of attempts to game this are going to be fascinating. The adversarial nature of AIs trying to produce content better able to fool the AI judging the content sounds like the perfect Petri dish to quickly increase sophistication.

Official source: https://blog.google/products/search/ai-mode-search/

Whatever you think about the quality of the response, this is an end of an era right here. The 30-year reign of 10-link SERPs is on life support.

I can't remember what I used for search before AltaVista? I know I had a notepad on my desk. A lot of web sites I used didn't even have domains so you had to just note down all the IPs.

Pretty excited for this but looks like the testing program is still behind a waitlist - even for Google One subscribers

I predict we’ll end up going full circle.

AI is hot now and there’s perceived value in having answers just spoon-fed.

But eventually, at least some people will want to explore contrasting takes, dig deeper to understand context, and so there will be a desire to have access to the source material (ie: lists of links like we have now).

And it will catch on. Everyone here knows LLMs are not a search engine, yet the average Joe treats chatgpt et al like it is. Just a few days ago I was talking to a relative (70yo) and we were arguing about whether the pool at a bathhouse in a smaller town nearby was 25 or 50m. Their website didn't say, and some quick googling didn't reveal anything. So he quickly opened the chatgpt app and a second later told me proudly that it was 50m so he was right. I didn't even try to explain to him how it can't possibly know.

Now, Google would obviously not just run a plain old LLM that was trained on their index but give it access to live data, but the same thing will still happen. People won't even be able to think they have a chance to check multiple results and question the validity. Whatever the AI spits out is the truth.

It is patiently obvious that not all "searches" are questions. Google would be crazy to drop that capability. Otherwise if I type in IKEA I would get an article about a store, which is not what anyone would want.

Google has caught a serious case of FOMO. Every major/minor player is scrambling to blend search with LLMs.

When it comes to search Google needs to do something. Asking LLM chat questions + asking for sources of information works better for me then Google search responses, cluttered with sponsored links/infomercial/spam blogs, etc.

We are at the moment Google search was introduced, Lycos, Alta Vista, Yahoo Search, etc. had to give the ground to the new player, now we are at the beginning of the next cycle.

One more thing that kills Google is social media and European GDPR regulation - those two factors are connected, as they destroyed "the old Internet". Nobody blogs anymore because it is much easier to get attention by posting on social media (slight exaggeration, but still...). GDPR made having an independent forum a nightmare. Right to be forgotten, data export on demand, data accuracy requirement. Big players can afford all this stuff (and it is not easy, I've been through that), hobbyist forum rather not, besides, it is easier to create Facebook (Meta) group or Twitter (X) community.

As a result Google crawler does not have too much value content to read. Yes, there are niches, like StackOverflow, so Google is a nice search engine on top of SO content. Until SO people will decide that free lunch is over, they will train their own AI to make some bucks.

This further pushes us into walled gardens. Facebook, Google, ChatGPT, so on.

why would anyone advertise in an llm chat box? isn't Google's whole business model generating clicks to websites?

time to select my new search engine

Another Ars [dupe]

Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43269332

So, I have to use another search engine to verify the results?