zlacker

Is Google’s 20-year search dominance about to end?

submitted by i13e+(OP) on 2023-02-08 20:57:27 | 334 points 525 comments
[view article] [source] [go to bottom]

NOTE: showing posts with links only show all posts
◧◩
2. cwilby+N8[view] [source] [discussion] 2023-02-08 21:33:29
>>dontre+S7
Good odds: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...
11. marcop+1a[view] [source] 2023-02-08 21:38:46
>>i13e+(OP)
It's been a while since they stopped innovating.

Although Google, Maps, Youtube are of daily use they are monetized exclusively by advertising which is annoying and hated by many. It has been many years since Google has launched an innovative new product.

I don't think ChatGPT will gain daily traction after this hype. Anyway we could say that MSFT and AMZN have demostrated more power to innovate with different business models (not only adv) and products.

The GOOG stock has a PE (Price/earning) of 23, while Coca cola 26. So the stock market expect higher growth from CocaCola than Google. Quite surprising.

- GOOGLE PE (23): https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/GOOGL/alphabet/pe-...

- COCA COLA PE (26): https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/KO/cocacola/pe-rat...

62. acqbu+me[view] [source] 2023-02-08 21:55:35
>>i13e+(OP)
https://archive.is/0ULyU
◧◩◪
83. wcoene+zf[view] [source] [discussion] 2023-02-08 21:59:34
>>mattwa+Xc
"The new Bing also cites all its sources". That's a quote from the microsoft announcement.

https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2023/02/07/reinventing-sear...

◧◩◪◨
120. massys+Eh[view] [source] [discussion] 2023-02-08 22:09:03
>>rich_s+Te
OK, I searched "chinese embassy" and the top link is "Embassy of the People's Republic of China" at http://us.china-embassy.gov.cn.

I'm willing to accept that maybe you are exaggerating to make a point. Maybe you have a better example that is actually illustrative?

◧◩◪
127. amatix+6i[view] [source] [discussion] 2023-02-08 22:11:00
>>weaksa+Be
https://kagi.com ?
◧◩◪◨⬒⬓⬔
166. basch+Ek[view] [source] [discussion] 2023-02-08 22:19:51
>>bbor+ei
Some form of paralysis. They dont have a single leader who has taken responsibility for it and corrected it. CEO/SVP has too many pots on the stove.

Im legitimately asking, who is responsible for Search at Google? Prabhakar Raghavan is SVP, Search, Assistant & Ads, and I click under him, he has 8 product groups reporting to him, and none of the people are responsible for Search. Yossi Matias is responsible for Search Engineering.

https://theorg.com/org/google

It may at first come off as a laughable answer, but Google Search has been in a directionless spiral since Marissa Mayer left. Her Yahoo tenure was not well received, but at Google she cared about the end quality of the product. Her title was Search Products and User Experience. Notice how we have gone from User Experience to Search Engineering, forgetting about the people who actually use the product.

◧◩
172. someth+3l[view] [source] [discussion] 2023-02-08 22:22:00
>>marcop+1a
Some have postulated that this might be Google's Blackberry moment. On the flip side I wonder if its actually more like its Dropbox moment.

The press loves a David and Goliath story; the young disruptor versus the stodgy disrupted.[1] At that time, Dropbox was David, coming out of nowhere in a hurry and had a product that seemingly should be so obvious for Google to launch but hadn't - making Google seem antiquated and slow.

Fast forward a couple of years (aka a decade) and Dropbox is still going ok but Google Drive is by far more ubiquitous.

I guess only time will tell.

[1] Dropbox Versus The World https://www.fastcompany.com/3042436/dropbox-versus-the-world

◧◩◪
200. dilap+ho[view] [source] [discussion] 2023-02-08 22:35:05
>>mattwa+Xc
Yes, it's a good point -- in its current form it's a bit hit or miss, since it can completely lie to you.

At least one person is working on this:

https://twitter.com/hsu_steve/status/1623388682454732801

While something like this would of course be incredible, even just current ChatGPT + the ability to web search for you would be quite amazing.

If MS isn't ready to completely replace Bing, then they should've made it an entirely separate page: bchat.com or something.

◧◩
208. jsnell+ep[view] [source] [discussion] 2023-02-08 22:38:41
>>paulpa+Ef
> Google still derives about half of its income from Youtube and 3rd party publisher ads

Their Q4 2022 revenue was $76B [0]. YouTube + 3p ads were a combined $16.5B. That's about 20%, not about half.

[0] https://abc.xyz/investor/static/pdf/2022Q4_alphabet_earnings...

◧◩◪◨
213. dahdum+jq[view] [source] [discussion] 2023-02-08 22:43:42
>>sidewn+Wl
It's buried near the bottom of the page, but here's your huckleberry: https://www.seriouseats.com/the-food-lab-best-chocolate-chip...

Lots of trash out there but Serious Eats is good quality.

◧◩◪◨
231. massys+Vs[view] [source] [discussion] 2023-02-08 22:56:25
>>sidewn+Wl
These two are at the very top of the page. They both are chocolate chip cookie recipes. One has instructional videos. I really don't understand what is wrong with these.

https://www.verybestbaking.com/toll-house/recipes/original-n...

https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/10813/best-chocolate-chip-...

◧◩◪◨
242. emoden+zv[view] [source] [discussion] 2023-02-08 23:09:13
>>danShu+lu
CPedia was an attempted pivot by doomed search startup Cuil that would more or less build a Wikipedia-like page out of random text on the Web about whatever you searched for. This article describes it a bit. https://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2010/06/09/cpedia-a-spam-blo...
◧◩
244. Someon+Iv[view] [source] [discussion] 2023-02-08 23:10:08
>>marcop+1a
Google stopped being innovative the second their "20% Time" got gutted:

> Employees were encouraged to spend up to twenty-percent of their paid work time pursuing personal projects. The objective of the program was to inspire innovation in participating employees and ultimately increase company potential. For Google's part, Gmail and AdSense both arose out of side projects. In 2013, Google discontinued 20 percent time.

What has Google released since 2013[0]? Stadia?

Then you tack on that Google Search as of today is basically unusable/broken with people needing to append site:, double-quoting everything, or enabling verbatim search to get high quality results. Heck, on top of that, I also have a uBlock configuration that removes 280 domains from Google Results because they're all auto-generated spam of Stackoverflow answers.

There is something deeply wrong with the culture inside Google.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google#2012_onward

◧◩
307. snake_+SR[view] [source] [discussion] 2023-02-09 01:12:40
>>marcop+1a
Looking P/E without sector context is a bit strange. The entire comm services sector is down, it’s not just GOOGL…

Since I can’t paste screenshots from my terminal, you can see the sector P/Es on page 6:

https://www.spglobal.com/spdji/en/documents/performance-repo...

◧◩◪
319. e4e5+YZ[view] [source] [discussion] 2023-02-09 02:07:23
>>mattwa+Xc
Based on data? Watch it completely misinterpret someone elses text here: https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=who+took+...
◧◩◪◨
346. Someon+Lf1[view] [source] [discussion] 2023-02-09 04:41:19
>>tonigh+Fd1
There's a github repo, it contains other blocklists too:

https://github.com/quenhus/uBlock-Origin-dev-filter

In particular look at: dist/google/ and stackoverflow_copycats.txt

◧◩◪◨
350. Someon+fg1[view] [source] [discussion] 2023-02-09 04:45:14
>>regist+GW
That's exactly what it is. See this repo:

https://github.com/quenhus/uBlock-Origin-dev-filter

In particular look in the dist folder, find your search engine(s) of choice, and then get the blocklist you'd like. Paste into "MyFilters" in uBlock.

Bonus: Here's one that entirely blocks Youtube Shorts in your Subscriptions feed:

     www.youtube.com##ytd-grid-video-renderer:has(#thumbnail[href*=shorts])
◧◩◪
370. antoni+xm1[view] [source] [discussion] 2023-02-09 05:54:45
>>awad+Zj
It’s definitely because Susan Wojcicki is at the helm. Interestingly, Google started in her (parents?) garage.

Here’s a tour of the recreation https://maps.app.goo.gl/syHHp9GWmaGA5Woz7

376. ahmetn+Jo1[view] [source] 2023-02-09 06:22:09
>>i13e+(OP)
I remember Peter Thiel once said that investing in google is investing against innovation, that the company had no competition for a very long time, and that they see no reason to why they needed to reinvent themselves. As long as there's no threat to the company, they can just maintain the current tech and harvest the green from it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Q26XIKtwXQ
◧◩◪◨⬒
432. someth+XD1[view] [source] [discussion] 2023-02-09 08:52:40
>>ryboso+aq1
Agreed.

Also the comparison is between Google versus Dropbox (the underdog David that's analogous to OpenAI), not Google versus Amazon or even Google versus Microsoft.

Google is 51% of office productivity software market versus Microsoft. Microsoft is at 47%, Dropbox isn't even listed. [1]

Dropbox has a decent share of the personal cloud storage market but has really failed to expand beyond that vertical or become significantly profitable. [2]

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/983299/worldwide-market-...

[2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1328893/global-file-shar...

◧◩◪
439. colleg+pH1[view] [source] [discussion] 2023-02-09 09:22:58
>>dicedu+iA1
I use xapian a lot https://xapian.org/
◧◩◪
458. dpkirc+zW1[view] [source] [discussion] 2023-02-09 11:37:33
>>juve19+541
This is really the core of my disappointment in Google: their poor handling of malicious SEO. Having humans go over shared site blocklists that people use to improve results, hand verify each entry, and remove those sites from Google results would go a long, long way.

I'm talking about lists like these: https://github.com/quenhus/uBlock-Origin-dev-filter/blob/mai...

It wouldn't take a small team more than a few weeks to get through these lists -- most of the work has already been done.

Alternatively, they could just let us add these lists to a first-party interface so we don't have to use plugins to achieve the same results.

◧◩
487. ur-wha+tF2[view] [source] [discussion] 2023-02-09 15:18:14
>>valley+yq
> Mountain View is mostly flat.

Well ... Not a big one, I grant you, but hill nevertheless :

https://www.google.com/maps/@37.4231911,-122.084872,3a,75y,1...

◧◩◪◨⬒
488. jocaal+vG2[view] [source] [discussion] 2023-02-09 15:21:56
>>azangr+FB1
> Or that they should build their own high-quality search engines?

That may already be happening https://openwebsearch.eu/

The role of a government in a capatilistic society is to basically do the stuff that isn't profitable for corporations to do without exploiting the population. For example build roads, because if a corporation did that there would be tolls everywhere and it would be hard for poor people to improve their living standards if they couldn't economically move around. That seems to have happened on the internet. The internet is in the commons and everyone expects it to be free, the problem is that the infrastructure to navigate it was built by corporations and now we have to pay tolls through ads and trackers

◧◩◪◨
516. pffft8+0r5[view] [source] [discussion] 2023-02-10 05:15:14
>>Cipate+5V1
https://bpi.com/will-usdcs-blackrock-money-fund-create-a-bac...

You'll have fuedal lords (aka billionaires) in control of the digital money supply. How is that not a coup?

[go to top]