ChatGPT-style search represents a 10x cost increase for Google, Microsoft

Google hints that an AI chatbot search engine will really cut into its profits.

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[jdale]

Another Reuters report says that Microsoft has already met with advertisers to detail its plan of "inserting [ads] into responses generated by the Bing chatbot," but it's unclear how awkward that would be or if consumers will react when a chatbot suddenly kicks over into an ad break.

The problem with chat-interface search is going to be trusting the results. That's two-fold, one side is that some people won't trust the results, a problem which will be magnified by including ads which indicate the answer is biased. The other side is that some people will trust the results even when they shouldn't, and presenting ads as facts could easily drift over towards fraud -- especially if the ads are driven through an automated system where no human is checking their appropriateness.

 

[jdale]

They'll probably solve this the same way they solved the YouTube problem, with bespoke hardware. Neurally-designed silicon is a thing and Google can afford to spin up a fab.

That reduces but does not eliminate the extra cost. It still requires unique processing per user. And in the case of YouTube, the extra costs are handled by adding extra advertising, something which it is not clear how it will work.

 

[jdale]

I think search is one of the least interesting use cases for LLM. Because the input/output via chat has higher throughput than via voice, it opens of whole new classes of use cases that weren't possible before. Like, i told chatgpt to generate 30 random names, with names, life stage, and to group them. yes, I could have done it via a script, but it was so much faster, as well as being accessible for those w/o a coding background. the next step is adding more APIs, i think.

Chat isn't a very good match for search, especially because getting it right matters. But search is something that a very large number of people do. Generating a list of random names etc is a perfect use, but it's also a niche case. Are there really enough GMs and writers to make that a business case for something as expensive as the training for these systems? I doubt it.

 

[jdale]

This must be the Joke of the Day:
"Google has spent 20 years honing their search model"

Those days are Long Gone, Google search has degraded over the last 7 years to almost worst available search engine.

Google has spent 20 years honing their search model... to be a more effective way of delivering ads. Actual search is secondary.

Edit: The only thing worse is Amazon Store Search which is a Disaster of Junk and results that have got nothing to do with your search phrase.

That's because Amazon doesn't have search. They have a recommendation engine that is seeded by the keywords you type in the box. It may have a little magnifying glass icon but that doesn't mean anything. Their recommendation engine routinely tosses in items that don't meet your search criteria, because they estimate there is a chance you'll buy those things. Also, it's half paid advertisements.

 

[jdale]

Google needs to realise that search is a solved problem, and has been for 20 years. Not a single person on the planet who doesn't work for Google wants Google search to be any "better", except for removing the ads. It works perfectly. Just give me Wikipedia, StackOverflow, YouTube... maybe IMDB... etc. It works fine. Just forget about it. The fact that it makes so much money has misled them into thinking that continuing to "improve" it is the way forward.

Online search is crappy. It prioritizes producing lots of hits over the right hits. It turns up pages that lack search terms, or even any relation to the search terms. There is still a lot that can be improved.

Actually I would like them to blacklist cplusplus.com, because that's the bad one that's always wrong/out of date. cppreference.com is the correct one. Sometimes I'm not paying attention and end up at the wrong site. But that and the ads are literally my only problems with Google search.

And as you mention, online search has a problem in that it includes a lot of results that are automatically generated spam content (a problem which AI will make worse) rather than original content. I don't need to see a site that ran Wikipedia's article through some filters to make it look like their own content.

I do NOT want to have to have a "conversation" with a computer. Ever. Avoiding conversations is probably a significant part of the reason why I'm using a computer in the first place.

While I'm not on board with your second sentence here, I agree that having a conversation is not my goal. If I do a search, I just want a quick and correct answer.