I wrote about this in this week's newsletter. I seriously believe one of the main reasons ChatGPT grew is that Google Search both failed to meaningfully innovate, especially in how it answered a user's query, and eventually deteriorated into something worse. www.wheresyoured.at/reality-check/ - ThreadSky

edzitron.com • 7 days ago

I wrote about this in this week's newsletter. I seriously believe one of the main reasons ChatGPT grew is that Google Search both failed to meaningfully innovate, especially in how it answered a user's query, and eventually deteriorated into something worse.
https://www.wheresyoured.at/reality-check/

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agraham999.bsky.social•7 days ago

I’ve discovered that about 80% of the time, the types of searches I’m performing are just “give me answer” and don’t require sifting through dozens of results. So “what’s ____ baggage policy” on an LLM is infinitely faster than search click click scroll.

captainsnuggles.bsky.social•7 days ago

Yes - GPT got mildly useful to devs by workably grokking patterns and intent of tools, libs & languages when researching new skills. The fact is it's vaulting over terrible/missing documentation, outdated forum trash, SEO'd tutorials atop Googles results, and info that retreated to youtube vids.

captainsnuggles.bsky.social•7 days ago

Essentially it's a salve on the problem that useful communications on complex things have become obscured by the endless slop of the internet and the slide of information sharing into algorithm mills.

edzitron.com•7 days ago

Wrote this in February 2023 somehow about the problems that happen when people treat generative AI as a search engine. People trust what comes out of a search engine, and out of things that look like search engines, and the results can/will be/have been grim

https://www.wheresyoured.at/degenerative-ai/

filthyjasminetea.bsky.social•7 days ago

NYT Political homeopath Ezra Klein said recently that the LLM research tool he tried delivered “at least the median” relative quality to his team. Search now delivers consistently (far) below average results, it’s no surprise that slightly less smelly trash to comb through is preferred.

filthyjasminetea.bsky.social•7 days ago

To quote @foldablehuman.bsky.social :“We replace bad systems with worse systems all the time…”

doubleunderscore.bsky.social•6 days ago

I'm concerned about how we'll ever get out of this mess.

The "we can't do tech startups without Venture Capital" doomsaying has always been nonsense, but Search Engines are just so big, especially now that they also need to handle all the AI slop. Normal funding barely exists for small business...

doubleunderscore.bsky.social•6 days ago

Were these better times one could make a case for government funding akin to the many other multi-billion-dollar infrastructure and science projects.

But there's so little political will for those right now, nevermind the amount of political meddling going on 🙃

pursuitofleisure.bsky.social•7 days ago

I had a friend recently rave about his ChatGPT results when he asked it a coding question, and when I reminded him that's what Google Search used to return (maybe from a Stack Overflow post where you could discuss with others and improve the answer), he suddenly realized how bad Google Search is now

dfalt.bsky.social•6 days ago

The correct answer to the question, what’s the next big thing? Since 2010 (at least) has been a better search engine, and still is

kylerudy.bsky.social•7 days ago

Best damn opinion piece I've read all year. Thanks for this.

edzitron.com•7 days ago

Thank you for reading!

mmathog.bsky.social•7 days ago

Google has long worked to stop referring traffic to other sites and sadly their internal LLM is their (shittier) final move toward that goal.

benwolfevision.bsky.social•7 days ago

Here, in case you need to spike your blood pressure:

edzitron.com•7 days ago

He definitely has no idea what he waded into lol

benwolfevision.bsky.social•7 days ago

Yup. Just amazingly, embarrassingly wrong. What matters is how the tool is used, not what someone calls it

edzitron.com•7 days ago

I mean he's not factually wrong that ChatGPT has had the ability to do web searches on a user's behalf for some time. It comes down to the definition of what a search engine is - ChatGPT uses RAG and "sources," so I assume there is some kind of index. Is it actively indexing? Who knows

benwolfevision.bsky.social•7 days ago

That, and, of course, LLM-based tools fundamentally have no weighting for truth, and while they can look to the user like a search engine, there's no way to be sure the results are real or fabricated.

benwolfevision.bsky.social•7 days ago

And this is the backstory: using ChatGPT for due diligence search for potential panelists.

I don't think I'd take the bet about the veracity of all the input a human putatively went through. I'd certainly not take the bet as to whether the human *knew* what was false or untrustworthy.

rmoonhill.bsky.social•7 days ago

Later down in the thread he basically asks if anything can be called a search engine if it isn't lying to you about the results, and while that's not what he *means*, it's pretty damn funny considering where he started.

derrickwb.bsky.social•6 days ago

I’ve started trying to use ChatGPT as a shopping search engine. It’s not very good but Google Shopping is a pretty miserable product and getting worse. GPT sometimes points me in the right direction in terms of finding obscure sizes for clothing items. Google could easily do this well if they tried.

posadistache.bsky.social•6 days ago

I am literally unable to read Prabhakar Raghavan without mentally inserting "this shithead" somewhere into the sentence.

Thank you for your service

withloveperiod.bsky.social•6 days ago

Google, but now you pay for it and it's bad at all of it.
AND they make money off product placement and ads.

Basically, money grab and a crap product that is no better than google but users pay money to use it.

panchocolatine.bsky.social•6 days ago

I just can't wait for the day when ChatGPT will spew out ads in the middle of their answers, because we have to monetize these searches, goddammit.

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