Comment by graemep
3 days ago
It have worked for Google for years, and that was without even the barrier of download in app, just going to a different URL.
3 days ago
It have worked for Google for years, and that was without even the barrier of download in app, just going to a different URL.
Don’t you think that’s because Google was objectively a head above everyone other search engine for a long time?
It’s not anymore (actually google is awful now) and people are still using it
As Chrome has about 75% market share across all platforms - probably 90% of those use the google default.
As far as I'm aware OpenAI doesn't control any defaults for which AIChat service to use.
5 replies →
Yeah but the only alternative that's actually better is paid. Google is still best ad supported search engine out there. There's no one obvious to turn to or recommend.
The best free alternative to Google right is ironically $preferred_llm_provider and ChatGPT is the obvious uncapped free option. I think free will end up being OpenAI's most if they manage to make it profitable.
> It’s not anymore (actually google is awful now) and people are still using it
if people are still using it, then it's really one of the few things, right?
* you are wrong and it's not awful
* it _is_ awful but good enough for normal people to never care about alternatives, which are anyway not even very easy to find given the absolute stranglehold google has on that slice
either way not quite the same as choice of llms today.
I've been feeling the pain of google being awful for a while now. Do you have a different search engine you would recommend?
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Google was better, but I'd argue that, say after 2014 or so, for the vast majority of my searches there was no real difference with Bing, and in some areas Bing was better (e.g. some aerial imagery in maps). Bing still never made a considerable dent in Google's market. I can easily see ChatGPT being a similar story.
You are forgetting all the money Google pays to be the default search engine in every browser.
Google was clearly superior fo a long time. They got close to 90% before enshitification started in earnest. We are not at that stage yet with AI chatbots.
Also, Google benefited from being the default on mainstream OSes. When people have to download an application, getting one or the other does not take more effort. Yes, OpenAI being tightly integrated within Windows, Android, and iOS would be a moat. That’s not the case and it is unlikely to happen. Google will go with their own and Apple won’t put itself in a situation where they are reliant on a single company, they got burned enough times.
We are at a point though where when average people think of "asking AI", they instinctively think of ChatGPT. That's a big thing.
All OpenAI has to do is not fall behind too much to the point where an alternative can generate enough hype to take the crown (see AltaVista and Google)
Exactly - it was better for a long time.
Also which search engine was the default was a massive factor - that's why Google paid for that.
If Google hadn't controlled Chrome, and or paid for defaults - they could have pretty much lost all their traffic overnight - ( if they weren't better ).
Search is easy to monetize with ads and less expensive to operate. Unless AI services can do the same thing, they'll have to charge money at some point, and then customers will look for the cheapest.
All of googles products are unique in some way and have genuine moats. The search engine was the best. The ecosystem was there and pretty good. Docs had online collaboration. And on and on.