alt Hacker NewsHave you looked at the results for any commercial query, something like [sofa beds] or [hard drives]? It is basically 100% ads. Anything where the user is intending to spend money, they show only ads, and have all the top producers in the world bid against each other for who gets featured, and Google captures essentially all surplus value in the transaction.
My wife is an investor, and one of her portfolio areas is pharmaceuticals. A couple of portfolio companies have reported that it's becoming basically impossible to make any money off of a new product, because you need to advertise it to reach the customer, and Google will skim all the excess producer surplus off as you compete with other startups serving the same market.
It's basically the perfect business model. They own the path to the consumer, which means they own the economy.
I'd also recently hired someone out of Google Search, and they said that the only queries that "legacy" (non-AI-mode) search cares about are commercial-seeking queries, and the only metric they optimize for is ad conversions on those. It literally is thousands of people whose only job is to get you to click more ads.
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The open decentralized internet of the 2000s was one of the greatest common goods in human history. It makes me incredibly sad to see it destroyed so quickly. The niche blogs and forums that still exist are still incredibly useful when I stumble on one researching a niche topic, but I know their days are numbered with search traffic rapidly going to zero.
Maybe in the future something comparable will be invented and protected. No harm in dreaming a little I guess.
Doesn't even have to be a query where you intend to spend money, I can't tell you the amount of times I look something up wondering if it exists or to learn more about it and it tries to sell me something
Is there some writing on the wall? In the future if LLMs are more efficient and eventually commoditized, needing less infraestructure to be run (think on-device as chip efficiency increases). Apple can eventually just make their own, and provided they don’t benefit from the Google partnership anymore, who will need a search engine aside from Android and PCs?
This is absolute nonsense.
You are mangling a well defined term of producer surplus that is widely accepted in economics with your own.
While I get that there a lot of ads -- particularly if you search for something with the intent to buy -- I tried out both of your example queries.
"sofa beds": Popular Products section (5x2 grid of chips) Reddit link: "Are sofa beds actually practical" Wayfair Reddit link: recommendations Wirecutter "Discussions and forums" section (Reddit and random crap) Ikea "In stores nearby" (5x1 of chips) "Deals on sleeper sofas" (5x2 of chips) "Things to know" section "Brands" (one row of chips) Furniture store Furniture store Furniture store "More products" (5x2 chips) Furniture store "People also search for"
None of these were marked as sponsored. I assume, but don't know, that the Popular Products chips are sponsored somehow.
"hard drive": Popular Products (5x2) Wikipedia Best Buy People Also Ask section Reddit: request for what brand is good Brand Picks for You (5x1) Things to Know section Amazon link PCMag reviews Reddit: "What exactly is HDD?" Brands section NYT review article What People Are Saying section (a weird mix of stuff) Wikipedia More Products section Store link People Also Search For section
None marked as sponsored.
Not that crazy for a vague, commercially-oriented search. Certainly not 100% ads.