The Death Knell of Digital Search

gwbas1c 25 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

> But I would really prefer if Search just worked the way it did in the first place.

Which is one thing technologists often screw up: They misinterpret how people react to change; and they misinterpret how people really use their products.

Google Search used to be (and still is) a way to find places on the internet. As much as I like AI in searches, I agree; when I want to find the thing, I don't want AI getting in the way.

	▲	aiiotnoodle 20 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Their inability to adapt to fix the problems caused by AI and SEO have caused the product to fall apart and users went somewhere else. I do think however their decision to make search tedious for users by moving the correct answer deep into the page (or at least favouring pages that did that) was a brilliant play for advertising but has killed a lot of their core use, making it easier to leave.

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austinthetaco 9 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I havent made the leap yet, but it's pushing me closer and closer to a paid service like kagi. The thought of paying a subscription for search is abhorrent but it might be the only option for sanity.

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bookofjoe 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

https://archive.ph/6dZS9

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apercu 27 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I remember in around 2011 realizing that ~85% of the first page of Google search results was ads. I haven’t used Google search much in the last 5 years, mostly due to this but also because of how they rewarded blog spam.

	▲	esseph 21 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Google's non US/EN results MUST be absolute shit. That's the only take-away I've ever been able to get out of comments like this. I don't know if it's the language piece, the geography and routing, maybe something else in the backend user profile... Idk There is no other search engine that seems to come remotely close for me for actually showing me what I'm looking for, and on the first page. I've tried dozens probably over the years based on random comments from people, but never find anything else close to the results quality Google search gives me. I wish I knew for sure what the difference is! Maybe query verbage, search modifiers, etc?

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CodingJeebus 17 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

"Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket"

- Eric Hoffer

I've been playing the Ocarina of Time remake and whenever I get stuck trying to get a certain item or progress on a quest, I'll fire up Claude voice chat and ask it for guidance, and it regularly gets confused and gives me wrong answers (somewhere around ~30% of the time).

Given how long these models have been out and that it's a highly constrained game world from almost 30 years ago which is documented top to bottom, I struggle to understand how Claude is still so bad at straightforward questions with straightforward answers. This was a solved problem (albeit with a less modern UX) in the legacy internet and it doesn't actually feel like getting the right answer is necessarily easier.

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elevation a minute ago | parent | next [-]

> I struggle to understand how Claude is still so bad

Claude is absolutely killing it for me. Man-years and man-years of backlog work, hobby projects, optimizations, research, experiments, finally implemented. Bloated apps finally optimized to fit on micro instances, slashing my infra costs. Recovery from operations incidents in a third of the time.

If I could make Claude forget everything it every knew about Ocarina of Time to make it 1% better at what it already does so well, I'd press that button in a heartbeat.

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hhh 8 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

Why would an LLM be good at giving you answers about specifically the ocarina of time remake? it seems like the worst case scenario for confusion

	▲	dragontamer 5 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Because documents like this exist and it's an implicit assumption that LLMs have read them https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/n64/197771-the-legend-of-zelda... Google used to return these documents, or at least forums and communities who knew where these guides were. Google no longer connects communities together however. LLMs don't either but the hope was that they at least read all of the old internet and have it somewhat memorized.