I agree with Scott, mostly.
The technology of ChatGPT can be what finally supplants the “search page with
Ads” model of a search engine. But I think it may only make Google stronger.
Google has its own answer generators, a simple version of which you can see on
many web searches. It also has its own ChatGPT-like generative text capability,
which reportedly has not been released because Google felt it wasn’t good
enough. It wasn’t good enough in pretty much the same way ChatGPT is trash – it
gives very confident answers that are wrong. But Google is pressing hard on
their technology, largely driven by those factors Scott points to, especially
the increasing siloing of content out of the reach of their crawlers.
If you think about what Cory Doctorow says about “Enshittification”, and
project onto the future of these technologies, it doesn’t look good. Google is
already obscuring the sources of information it presents and is also already
making it less and less clear what is and is not an Ad (or “paid placement”).
So how bad does that get when all we get is a very confident sounding “Answer”
to our query?
It comes down to a simple question. Whose needs are being served? The human
asking the question? The Advertisers paying the bills? Or the giant corporation
turning the screws on them both and consolidating its control?
Darius Dunlap
darius@xxxxxxxxxxx
On Feb 2, 2023, at 6:44 AM, Mr. Ransom <mr.ransom@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
ChatGPT could certainly take Google down a stack of pegs. Google is
enormous, so I doubt it's all that easily destroyed, but... "search" isn't
going to be what it used to be.
Google is was all about finding pages and sites. ChatGPT is about finding
information. They used to be mostly the same thing, but they aren't any
longer. Google will need to adapt to that, but, as so many large companies
have found in the past, trying to pivot away from a core business is harder
than it seems.
Google indexes the world. ChatGPT synthesizes it. The generative text model
appears to be the more compelling model for a whole variety of things that
indexing just isn't sufficient for, because the new model can create things
that aren't there to be indexed. Google is reliant on what already exists
out there (which is increasingly being siloed inside systems like Facebook,
reddit, instagram, and so on. ChatGPT is not reliant on any of that, and can
create new material on its own, which is certainly not something we generally
expect from search engines.
Scott
On Wed, Feb 1, 2023 at 2:34 AM Steve Crane <steve.crane@xxxxxxxxx
<mailto:steve.crane@xxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
https://bgr.com/tech/gmail-creator-says-chatgpt-might-destroy-google-within-2-years/
Maybe time to start moving our mail lives to ProtonMail or some other paid
service. If Google dies they won't be giving us free email any longer. 🤔
Steve Crane
about.me/stevecrane <http://about.me/stevecrane>
