This is how AI actually dies. It dies the slow death that search died.
At first it’s actually useful. Then people figure out how to game it. Then so much of it had been gamed that it ceases to be useful .
Let’s face facts, search has sucked for a long time now. It happened slowly, but I’m old enough to remember altavista, and search today is about as good as that now.
I will say this about Google’s AI thing: it really is useful to search for products with really precise criteria.
Like for example “Look for product xyz for sale in city xyz, sold in order of preference: 1/ by a local brick-and-mortar, 2/ by a brick-and-mortar that sells online in that city’s country, 3/ by an online retailer in Europe - exclude Amazon, eBay, Aliexpress and all the major marketplaces - exclude US businesses”: it WILL find what you want where you want and give the middle finger to Google’s advertisement, suggestions and plugs, 100%.
That’s a more useful, better search than Google Search ever was, and it certainly feels like Google shooting itself in the foot. Because I really don’t know how Google’s customers - i.e. advertisers - benefit from Google’s AI responses in any way. At least when you search for something to buy.
Altavista was much better than most search engines have been in many years now, on account of one killer feature: you could search an exact combination of strings that had to be in whatever you searched or had to be excluded, and it returned only pages that strictly had and didn’t have those strings.
In contrast, whenever you search anything on Google nowadays, even if you absolutely tell it to include or exclude something, it just serves up whatever it wants.
This is how AI actually dies. It dies the slow death that search died.
At first it’s actually useful. Then people figure out how to game it. Then so much of it had been gamed that it ceases to be useful .
Let’s face facts, search has sucked for a long time now. It happened slowly, but I’m old enough to remember altavista, and search today is about as good as that now.
Search didn’t die though, it’s just continually gotten worse and we’re stuck with the bad product.
Search dies because of advertising. Google literally promoted their head of Advertising to be their new head of Search, which is why it’s shit now.
Here’s a good article on it for anyone interested: https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-men-who-killed-google/ (article starts after the horizontal break)
One of their decisions which included making search results worse so people spend longer searching on google so they can be served more ads.
So capitalism?
I will say this about Google’s AI thing: it really is useful to search for products with really precise criteria.
Like for example “Look for product xyz for sale in city xyz, sold in order of preference: 1/ by a local brick-and-mortar, 2/ by a brick-and-mortar that sells online in that city’s country, 3/ by an online retailer in Europe - exclude Amazon, eBay, Aliexpress and all the major marketplaces - exclude US businesses”: it WILL find what you want where you want and give the middle finger to Google’s advertisement, suggestions and plugs, 100%.
That’s a more useful, better search than Google Search ever was, and it certainly feels like Google shooting itself in the foot. Because I really don’t know how Google’s customers - i.e. advertisers - benefit from Google’s AI responses in any way. At least when you search for something to buy.
Don’t worry, that will be fixed soon.
Yeah probably…
Altavista was much better than most search engines have been in many years now, on account of one killer feature: you could search an exact combination of strings that had to be in whatever you searched or had to be excluded, and it returned only pages that strictly had and didn’t have those strings.
In contrast, whenever you search anything on Google nowadays, even if you absolutely tell it to include or exclude something, it just serves up whatever it wants.