[pixl97]

I am still wondering if Google is experiencing it Kodak moment.

They have the dominant product that makes them billions and billions of dollars at 'relatively' low cost.

The new dominant product is on its way, but it costs far more to operate and will net them far less money, so... um no one wants to kill the goose that is still laying golden eggs, even though its days are numbered already.

[DonHopkins]

Oh how the term "Kodak Moment" has jumped the shark.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Kodak_moment

Etymology

(moment worth photographing): From an Eastman Kodak Company advertising campaign.

(business's failure to foresee): In reference to the Eastman Kodak Company's decline when cameras and film were overtaken by smartphones and digital technologies.

Noun Kodak moment (plural Kodak moments)

(informal) A sentimental or charming moment worthy of capturing in a photograph.

(informal) The situation in which a business fails to foresee changes within its industry and drops from a market-dominant position to being a minor player or declares bankruptcy.

Kodak Film Commercial - These are the Moments - Baby (1993):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPSCmnoVgEU

[xyzzy123]

I think it's not just run cost - there's also a risk of ad revenue destruction, that has to be worrying.

[alain94040]

I don't see ads as a big problem with ChatGPT. You could put a side-bar on the right and on the fly recommend products relevant to the on-going conversation.

The cost of computing these ads would be a lot more than today's keyword-based approach, that's certainly a problem. But think of hyper-relevant ads, based on the chat itself. There's a lot of information there, that beats tracking people's behavior online all day.

[visarga]

> But think of hyper relevant ads

That depends on ad publishers, right? If they want to sell A, B and C and I am interested in D, then Google's still showing one of A, B or C to me. D doesn't make profit if there is nobody paying for ads.

Google is advertising things we don't need, that's why ad clicks are so abysmal. LLMs won't change that.

[HyperSane]

And you could even program the LLM to try to subtly manipulate people into using the advertised product.

[flir]

You can inline the ads. Ask it to write you a poem about flowers that includes an ad for interflora.

[visarga]

A LLM trying to trick and manipulate? That's how your multi-million dollar model quickly becomes worthless in the eyes of the public.

[Lio]

I could see this happening.

I’ve been infuriated with DuckDuckGo on occasion because it refused to exclude certain results.

In fact when you add an exclusion clause it simply boosts those results further instead of removing them.

I’ve been told this is because the underlying search providers refuse to exclude paying customer even when you explicitly don’t want to hear from them.

I could definitely see this happening in LLM answers too and I don’t expect it to be particularly subtle.

[bigDinosaur]

People haven't been up in arms about the dishonesty around 'native' marketing.

[HyperSane]

Not if it was REALLY good at everything else and really subtle.

[iamleppert]

100% this -- a Google search requires multiple input queries, refinement, and scrolling a list of possible answers that are really just links to other web sites. The ChatGPT experience is far superior to this, for the average consumer and getting close for the power user. It's a better way to ask the Internet what it knows with a more natural interface that everyone already knows how to use -- real natural language. Less cognitive overhead, no busy search results that require clicking back and forth and (for now) no ads. That last part is key -- ChatGPT is doing Google's job right now, and not even having to run ads. Google doesn't even offer a premium no ads option for search and if they did I doubt enough people would buy it anyway to matter.

If I was Google I'd be worried. Very worried indeed. They either need to dramatically change their entire company within 18 months, or accept they are going to loose substantial amount of market -- and once its gone, it's gone in a first mover, winner takes all environment like what we have right now. Just ask Google themselves what it felt like back in the early 2000's when they completely destroyed the other search engines.

[ModernMech]

> The ChatGPT experience is far superior

Now it is. Google used to be good too, until ads started looking like search results, and then the first page became entirely ads.

In the future, when you ask ChatGPT to help you write your resume, it will try to upsell you a premium account in linked in. It will withhold its best resume advice only for LinkedIn premium users after all.

You think Clips was bad? You’ve seen nothing yet.

[satvikpendem]

Yep, Bing already has ads now inside its chat answers.

[brookst]

How does that help Google?