Search Is Bad. This Is News?
February 20, 2024
This essay is the work of a dumb dinobaby. No smart software required.
Everyone is a search expert. More and more “experts” are criticizing “search results.” What is interesting is that the number of gripes continues to go up. At the same time, the number of Web search options is creeping higher as well. My hunch is that really smart venture capitalists “know” there is a money to be made. There was one Google; therefore, another one is lurking under a pile of beer cans in a dorm somewhere.
“One Tech Tip: Ready to Go Beyond Google? Here’s How to Use New Generative AI Search Sites” is a “real” news report which explains how to surf on the new ChatGPT-type smart systems. At the same time, the article makes it clear that the Google may have lost its baseball bat on the way to the big game. The irony is that Google has lots of bats and probably owns the baseball stadium, the beer concession, and the teams. Google also owns the information observatory near the sports arena.
The write up reports:
A recent study by German researchers suggests the quality of results from Google, Bing and DuckDuckGo is indeed declining. Google says its results are of significantly better quality than its rivals, citing measurements by third parties.
A classic he said, she said argument. Objective and balanced. But the point is that Google search is getting worse and worse. Bing does not matter because its percentage of the Web search market is low. DuckDuck is a metasearch system like Startpage. I don’t count these as primary search tools; they are utilities for search of other people’s indexes for the most part.
What’s new with the ChatGPT-type systems? Here’s the answer:
Rather than typing in a string of keywords, AI queries should be conversational – for example, “Is Taylor Swift the most successful female musician?” or “Where are some good places to travel in Europe this summer?” Perplexity advises using “everyday, natural language.” Phind says it’s best to ask “full and detailed questions” that start with, say, “what is” or “how to.” If you’re not satisfied with an answer, some sites let you ask follow up questions to zero in on the information needed. Some give suggested or related questions. Microsoft‘s Copilot lets you choose three different chat styles: creative, balanced or precise.
Ah, NLP or natural language processing is the key, not typing key words. I want to add that “not typing” means avoiding when possible Boolean operators which return results in which stings occur. Who wants that? Stupid, right?
There is a downside; for instance:
Some AI chatbots disclose the models that their algorithms have been trained on. Others provide few or no details. The best advice is to try more than one and compare the results, and always double-check sources.
What’s this have to do with Google? Let me highlight several points which make clear how Google remains lost in the retrieval wilderness, leading the following boy scout and girl scout troops into the fog of unknowing:
- Google has never revealed what it indexes or when it indexes content. What’s in the “index” and sitting on Google’s servers is unknown except to some working at Google. In fact, the vast majority of Googlers know little about search. The focus is advertising, not information retrieval excellence.
- Google has since it was inspired by GoTo, Overture, and Yahoo to get into advertising been on a long, continuous march to monetize that which can be shaped to produce clicks. How far from helpful is Google’s system? Wait until you see AI helping you find a pizza near you.
- Google’s bureaucratic methods is what I would call many small rubber boats generally trying to figure out how to get to Advertising Land, but they are caught in a long, difficult storm. The little boats are tough to keep together. How many AI projects are enough? There are never enough.
Net net: The understanding of Web search has been distorted by Google’s observatory. One is looking at information in a Google facility, designed by Googlers, and maintained by Googlers who were not around when the observatory and associated plumbing was constructed. As a result, discussion of search in the context of smart software is distorted.
ChatGPT-type services provide a different entry point to information retrieval. The user still has to figure out what’s right and what’s wonky. No one wants to do that work. Write ups about “new” systems are little more than explanations of why most people will not be able to think about search differently. That observatory is big; it is familiar; and it is owned by Google just like the baseball team, the concessions, and the stadium.
Search means Google. Writing about search means Google. That’s not helpful or maybe it is. I don’t know.
Stephen E Arnold, February 20, 2024
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