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by AJ007 1125 days ago
On it's own, ChatGPT makes up answers. Bard does as well, but it's worse. Google's integrated featured snippets are notorious for wrong answers. When Google says they are adding more AI to their search experience, I'm not optimistic.

I've been using perplexity.ai for the majority of my searches in the past month. It isn't ChatGPT but it uses OpenAI's GPT APIs. It sources answers from search results and cites them. Even if the answer may be wrong, it came from other websites and it didn't just hallucinate them based on memorized data.

It is much faster to find answers this way. It certainly meets the magnitude test for speed and quality -- I get answers at least 10x quicker. Additionally, because it is reading through multiple results you can see when different sources are providing conflicting information.

Google has the capability to do all of this. The unknown is what does it do to all of the ad revenue being driven by the users who have had no idea they've been clicking on ads to the tune of $200+ billion a year?

Does that mean there will be too much internal resistance to revenue cannibalization when other platforms have a better search experience?

1 comments

> It sources answers from search results and cites them. Even if the answer may be wrong, it came from other websites and it didn't just hallucinate them based on memorized data.

You can get this same experience, with GPT by using the Edge browser/app

It will give you an answer and at the bottom the sources with links so you can check. Really helpful

> You can get this same experience, with GPT by using the Edge browser/app

AFAICT you get the same kind of thing from the Google Generative Search, but it is integrated with the traditional search UX.

And of course it’s also just an announcement

You need to dig through multiple articles and links to get to the waitlist signup page

(Join waitlist buttons under the fold here: labs.withgoogle.com)

Until this is actually out, it’s just vaporware

This is not Google catching up, it’s Google being left behind