[HN Gopher] Google is overhauling search results with AI overvie...
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Google is overhauling search results with AI overviews and Gemini
organization
Author : rntn
Score : 59 points
Date : 2024-05-14 19:18 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theverge.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theverge.com)
| superkuh wrote:
| At least now they'll have an excuse for only ever returning a
| maximum of 400 results.
| mglz wrote:
| > It's using a new specialized Gemini model to summarize the web
| and show you an answer. It's even using Gemini to design and
| populate the results page.
|
| This sounds like a typical overfitting for simple, generic
| searches, at the expense of anybody who needs precise results.
| Since google started ignoring operators in some searches,
| targetted searches have become more and more difficult.
| logicchains wrote:
| It's almost impossible nowadays to search some random error
| message you encounter from an open source library while coding,
| even if the string is present in a relatively popular library
| on GitHub. I've been forced to use Bing for my error message
| searches now.
| donmcronald wrote:
| Targeted searches have become almost impossible anyway. I was
| trying to help my dad fix a fridge a couple of weeks ago and
| searching for info was infuriating.
|
| The problem I had was the I'd enter the fridge's model number
| as part of the search and Google _knows_ it 's a fridge, so
| instead of "exact model disassembly" I'd get results closer to
| "fridge disassembly". It was useless.
|
| And I felt like I was getting crushed by what I call synonym
| syndrome. When searching for info about the condensers, the
| search goes from "exact model condenser not cold" to "fridge
| condenser not cold" to "refrigerator condenser not cold" to
| "refrigeration condenser not cold" and suddenly I'm getting
| results for vehicle air conditioning problems.
|
| It's so frustrating.
| adaptbrian wrote:
| Google will be an easy legal target in the mid term if they are
| too aggressive here
| coldcode wrote:
| Doesn't an AI search engine cost more in terms of energy? I would
| also wonder how it avoids being tainted by a web of other AI
| results of various qualities that it is indexing. It would appear
| to become more expensive to operate, thus requiring more ad
| revenue to support it but providing less useful results over
| time.
| mrkramer wrote:
| >I would also wonder how it avoids being tainted by a web of
| other AI results of various qualities that it is indexing.
|
| I also wonder that....how Gemini and other LLM chat bots decide
| what to index and include in an answer and what to not include.
| I guess good old PageRank[0] would be decent here.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PageRank
| AlexandrB wrote:
| > Doesn't an AI search engine cost more in terms of energy?
|
| I'm pretty sure it does. I'm convinced this AI bubble will pop
| when it turns out that many of these use cases are not actually
| profitable. For now there's still plenty of cash left from zero
| interest era to throw at subsidizing this stuff.
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| > For now there's still plenty of cash left from zero
| interest era to throw at subsidizing this stuff.
|
| For now these press releases push the stock price up. This is
| what matters to those corps in the end
| Beijinger wrote:
| I am considering paying for either ChatGPT or perlexity.
| numbers wrote:
| There's going to be a short and tight window for the non-dominant
| search engine companies out there to seize this opportunity and
| make their search results based on real things. AI search results
| have already shown to be hallucinating on basic queries.
|
| When I look up something as basic as time zones in two different
| regions, I don't want AI to imagine something, I just want the
| results from the thousands of sites available out there to just
| be presented to me.
| romeros wrote:
| Not really. AI overview is a natural progression. It is pretty
| accurate. The hallucinations have decreased significantly over
| the past year. Most people won't mind this.
| pphysch wrote:
| > search results based on real things.
|
| The Internet in 2024 is full of not-real things and the effects
| of financialization. This is the underlying problem, not that
| Google Search is inept.
| Arnt wrote:
| This!
|
| Google is the messenger, and blaming the messenger is fine if
| you want to blame someone but poor if you want a solution.
| downWidOutaFite wrote:
| But Google has shaped the internet to be the way it is. At
| some point over the last 10 years they gave up on fighting
| inorganic seo spam sites and decided to join in and profit
| off of it.
| dingaling wrote:
| Then AI should be directed towards sifting real from unreal.
| donmcronald wrote:
| It's like talking to a drunk person that thinks they know
| everything.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| I guess I might give it a try, haven't used Google search in a
| long time though. It used to be great, now just seems to show
| keyword matches that have the most ads.
| swozey wrote:
| I had their AI thing on for a few weeks and it was the most
| annoying thing. I want a quick google search and response, not
| waiting on a block of text to be written then the entire page of
| results shifting down.
|
| And now I can't even use google images without their "highlight
| something in the image" thing getting in the way.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| Hooray, now we'll get blogspam in streaming text form
| dgroshev wrote:
| I think people haven't fully clocked yet how foundational this
| shift is for the wider internet.
|
| For decades now, we had a social contract: Google scrapes our
| websites and surfaces some of our content, we make it easier for
| them, Google gets people on our websites, and in exchange Google
| gets content (links) to stuff with ads (plus they get some
| tracking on top).
|
| This created an ecosystem where people are incentivised to create
| better websites. You create good content, Google surfaces it, you
| get eyeballs, and it's a decent deal overall.
|
| Sure, this dynamic is contingent on Google fighting SEO spam,
| which they seemingly stopped doing lately, but still there was
| hope that it's temporary. There was hope that if search gets bad
| enough they'll start bleeding users to competitors and get their
| stuff together.
|
| Now Google throws the contract out of the window. Whatever you
| write or record or snap or shoot, they ingest everything (because
| we have no choice) and feed it into their Moloch, and out goes
| unattributed, unverifiable, ad-ridden slop. There is no
| compensation, no recompense.
|
| Google is midjourneying the entire internet.
| walterbell wrote:
| _> Google throws the contract out of the window_
|
| History shows what happens after one party defects on a
| contract.
|
| Will new human-authored content move beyond the reach of search
| engines, outside of expensive licensing of social media feeds?
| donmcronald wrote:
| I think it's even worse than that. I think we'll see a shift in
| incentives for writing content. If websites are used as the
| source for AI engines that people rely on, those websites are
| effectively becoming the source of truth for everything.
|
| Right now I can tell if a website is blog spam SEO garbage, but
| I'm not sure if that'll be possible once everything is
| "laundered" into a homogeneous looking result.
|
| I think there's going to be incentive to create huge quantities
| of "data" because having the highest volume makes you the
| source of truth for a topic. So, rich companies and people will
| be buying compute like crazy so they can generate tons of AI
| spam so another AI surfaces their viewpoint as "fact".
|
| The future is going to suck.
| rurp wrote:
| Ugh yeah, I hadn't even realized what a serious vulnerability
| it will be when large corporations and foreign governments
| start to flood the web with their preferred "facts". Google
| and Microsoft will gladly slurp up all of that training data.
| Modern Google doesn't even bother to exclude blatant spam
| domains from SERPs, there's no way they are going to combat
| this problem effectively.
|
| This really is looking more and more like the death of the
| open web. Curated and closed communities will be the only
| places left to get authentic information online.
| dageshi wrote:
| I have felt for about six months that the web as we've known it
| is dead. The contract you speak of is on its last legs.
|
| The problem is, with GPT style AI I think this was inevitable,
| Google has just decided to ride the wave rather than falling
| into obscurity.
|
| Also, google has youtube, which should not be underestimated as
| a source of information. There is a lot of good, credible
| information on youtube, with even better signals (sub counts)
| than the traditional web.
|
| This is Googles ace in the hole so to speak, the web can die,
| they can still feed their AI's with youtube, who else can?
| stevenwliao wrote:
| > unattributed
|
| Plenty of AI models cite their sources.
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| I've had access to this in beta for a few weeks now and contrary
| to a lot of the very vocal opposition here in this comments, I
| have had good results.
|
| If you're searching for a specific site, obviously this won't
| help, but I would imagine that an increasing percentage, if not
| the majority, of searches are people just typing questions into
| the search box. I certainly do that a lot.
|
| This gives you an answer right at the top, and I haven't seen any
| obvious problems with hallucination yet.
|
| My only fear is how they will monetize this.
| strictnein wrote:
| The monetization is that you won't leave Google.com as much.
| This has been what they've been trending to for quite a while
| now.
| bilbo0s wrote:
| AdWords and AdSense revenue goes to them instead of going to
| "content creators". Which is pretty good for google.
|
| If you think that's bad, just wait until they can use
| generative video to create reviews of new tech products. (Come
| to think of it, just wait until they can AI generate video
| reviews of _any_ products.) A whole swath of people and
| organizations relying on youtube revenue are going to be taking
| a 95% chop in pay as Google, or whoever wins generative video,
| takes all of the youtube payouts.
| dageshi wrote:
| We come to the inevitable problem, the problem that has been
| obvious to everyone from day one. If you cut out the content
| creators, what feeds the AI? Where does it get its
| information from?
| motoxpro wrote:
| News will never stop being published, if nothing else by
| people who were there in the moment on social media
|
| Knowledge will still be published through papers
|
| People will still write blogs and share ideas for free (As
| they do on substack which can already paywalled)
|
| IG, TikTok, and YouTube will still be lucrative for
| creators (live or robot), so how-to videos will continue to
| exist.
|
| I don't see content going anywhere. Maybe the "10 best
| restaurants in dallas" but that's fine with me.
| rurp wrote:
| I think we know exactly how Google will monetize this, assuming
| they keep their search monopoly. Over time the answers will get
| increasingly skewed towards their paying customers. Eventually
| Google's endless need to increase revenue at the expense of
| their product will render the results quite bad and everyone
| will start looking forward to the next paradigm shift.
| _cs2017_ wrote:
| Can you point to any evidence that Google intentionally skews
| organic results towards paying customers (as opposed to,
| Google's paying customers have the money to afford expensive
| SEO to get themselves a higher ranking)?
| jsemrau wrote:
| Compared to Bing CoPilot, Google feels dated now. I know it
| sounds like a crazy thing to say, but being able to chat with
| your search results and refine what you are looking for. Get
| summarized explanations with sources is just wow.
| donmcronald wrote:
| I've tried CoPilot a few times and it _sucked_ for me. The last
| attempt was when I was trying to find a text document where I
| documented a bunch of SMART data. I asked it if it could help
| me find a document with SMART data in it and of course it says
| "yes!" Then it proceeded to give me the dumbest suggestions
| I've ever seen in my life. The dumbest was to use
| CrystalDiskInfo to search for documents containing SMART data.
|
| The only innovation AI is making from what I see is that it can
| replace people and doesn't cost anything. It's dumb as bricks
| and can't say "I don't know."
| tmaly wrote:
| > A year ago, Google said that it believed AI was the future of
| search.
|
| It seems similar to Meta's bet on the metaverse.
|
| I guess only time till tell if they made the right call or not.
|
| Personally I think it would be better to keep the search they
| have and A/B test the new feature to see if people like it or
| not.
| xnx wrote:
| Official announcement:
| https://blog.google/products/search/generative-ai-google-sea...
| alangibson wrote:
| 90+% of "AI" use by the general public is going to happen via
| Google and Microsoft products. It was always going to be a
| feature of established, scaled businesses with cloud offerings.
|
| People that think OpenAI is going to replace, or even
| meaningfully effect, Google are ignoring basic laws of economic
| gravity.
| bilbo0s wrote:
| You realize when you say, "Microsoft", you're basically talking
| about OpenAI tech right?
|
| But I think you're right. The big winners here will be Big
| Tech. Microsoft/OpenAI and Google basically.
| alangibson wrote:
| > You realize when you say, "Microsoft", you're basically
| talking about OpenAI tech right?
|
| I own MSFT stock because of it, so yea. I only wish they
| owned more because OpenAI will be a monster acquisition
| target.
|
| I'm curious what this will all mean for AWS. Amazon is
| notoriously behind, so I wonder if we'll see then lose
| customers because of it.
| rurp wrote:
| Oh good, now I can get AI generated spam results directly rather
| than having to click through to the SEO spam pages that Google
| loves to serve.
|
| More broadly though, it feels like this is going to accelerate
| the decline of the open web. Fewer and fewer people are going to
| create quality content as Google steers more traffic towards
| their own generated content derived from other's original works.
| pphysch wrote:
| The open web is already dead, killed off by Facebook, reddit,
| discord, etc.
| eitland wrote:
| Try https://search.marginalia.nu
|
| Become happy.
| espinielli wrote:
| For sure Google is not great at AI given the lower and lower
| quality of their results in the last months. I hope not to be the
| only one to have noticed this...
| lIIllIIllIIllII wrote:
| Search will be dead in a year or two. Nobody wants to double
| check information, they just want fast and easy answers, unless
| they're intentionally navigating to a specific website (facebook,
| electricity provider, etc)
| burningChrome wrote:
| To some degree it already is.
|
| I recently built a pretty simple static site. I wanted to know
| how bad the search engines were out to lunch. I chose an
| industry and domain, then built something simple using a
| template. Then I did what you should never do with SEO. Keyword
| stuffing, geo tagging and stuffing, using duplicate content and
| then copying material directly from high ranking sites in the
| same industry.
|
| NONE of it was penalized and the site within a week or so was
| on the top two pages for dozens of specific searches I very
| deliberately abused SEO in order to achieve.
|
| Nobody is awake right now at wheel. Not long ago, my site
| would've been buried in a matter of hours. Now? I'm rewarded
| when I purposefully manipulate the SERPS for some research and
| get listed on the front page.
|
| If people think AI is going to make this better, they're in for
| a rude awakening. Its only going to get worse as more people
| realize how easy it is to manipulate the search engines to get
| your stuff ranked higher and take advantage of it. There
| doesn't seem to be any checks on the validity of what the AI is
| serving up - making it ripe for abuse.
| rurp wrote:
| That's a really interesting experiment. I've been pretty down
| on Google for a while now but that result is even worse than
| I would have expected. It's shocking how little Google cares
| about their core product. Same for Microsoft/Bing, but at
| least for them it's not a core competency.
| eitland wrote:
| Not only that but even for topics not abused to death by SEO,
| Google still manages to include absolutely irrelevant pages.
|
| It seems like they have had some system for years already
| which includes an absolutely unhealthy amount of pages that
| in their algorithms view are similar to the thing I ask for
| without being the thing I ask for.
|
| My go-to example is when I search for a construct from a JS
| framework that a previous dev used and Google gives me lots
| of results that seem superficially relevant but when I open
| them I think half or more of the results at the first page
| are about other, similar frameworks.
|
| This is extremely annoying because they manage to hit a spot
| were the results are close enough that I often have to read a
| bit before I realize it.
| itronitron wrote:
| Google has a search engine?
| delduca wrote:
| Great, now you're going to eat a bunch of AI-generated junk,
| digest it, and spout a lot of nonsense.
| JonChesterfield wrote:
| I miss being able to search for information with Google. It's
| just not a thing any more. Yandex seems to work but the
| association with Russia is off-putting given Ukraine.
|
| Any recommendations for a replacement, especially one that
| considers AI generated plausible looking noise to be spam?
| eitland wrote:
| As far as my observations go Google search results has been
| manipulated by something AI like for a decade already and part of
| the reason why I pay for another search engine is to get away
| from that.
|
| No, I am not talking only about external SEO where some company
| pays to create links to their page using specific keywords:
|
| This also happens with articles about minor Javascript frameworks
| that definitely doesn't pay for SEO.
|
| What happens is I search for some less popular (today) framework
| that a previous dev included, and I get s what seems like
| interesting results, but when I look into them it turns out many
| of them are about a completely different, more popular(today)
| framework.
|
| Undoubtedly someone has put their soul into creating such a
| system and it is somewhat impressive - but also absolutely
| terrible when I try to find something and I end up doing unpaid
| QA work for one of the worlds biggest corporations.
|
| Which is why I pay for Kagi. Yes they use Google and Bing behind
| the scenes but somehow they have managed to get rid of these
| massively annoyingly false positives that has destroyed my
| relationship with Google over the last decade.
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