[starfallg]

> Because one of the most common things I search for is stuff like 'what is the function in [x] that does [y] in [z]'.

This is also the type of search that Google makes no money from.

The money is in searching for up-to-date relevant product information, where Google is the undisputed leader.

>Search engines, especially with the resources of Google, could have developed at least basically functional natural language search decades ago

Google is one of the major AI research outfits, and arguably the only one that continues to deliver consistently over the last 2 decades. Statistical Machine Translation/Google Translate, Adwords Quality Score, TensorFlow, AlphaGo, Attention is all you need (Transformers), AlphaFold all Google innovations.

You can't really blame the prevalence of SEO slop on Google. It's not the lack of want of trying, it is hard technically (see how long it took to develop modern AI capabilities), expensive computationally (as we can see with the unsustainable cost of test-time search in ChatGPT) and in terms of user-experience.

>Google is certainly well on their way to becoming another Yahoo

Really, it isn't. Google is in the unique position of being the closest technology company to achieving full vertical integration of their value chain, from silicon to software to data to end-users. They are also at the forefront of frontier AI, including productising the research output. I don't really get the Google hate on HN, apart from maybe the YC/sama bias.

[somenameforme]

Your answer sounds very artificial. For instance "AI" is in no way whatsoever required for natural language search queries. There was some spreadsheet program back in the mid 90s that even supported natural language operation description - and is something that should also be obviously supported now a days. Even the adventure games of the same era often had natural language interfaces. It was quite useable even if obviously severely limited by minimal R&D put into it.

It was an obvious way to create a better user experience but instead search today is comparable to, if not worse than, search 20 years ago - because at least 20 years ago companies were ahead of the SEO guys, whereas that relationship has long since flipped.

[starfallg]

What makes you think that Google hasn't developed natural language processing, when they launched Google Translate in 2006?

Also, what makes you think that NLP would solve the problem you're describing? Only LLMs has proven that it could fully understand and process the queries in the way you're describing, hence why I brought that up. However it is expensive computationally, and only recently was it even technically possible to do.

[scarface_74]

> The money is in searching for up-to-date relevant product information, where Google is the undisputed leader.

Actually for products, a lot of people just go to Amazon has a thriving ad business.

> Google is one of the major AI research outfits, and arguably the only one that continues to deliver consistently over the last 2 decades. Statistical Machine Translation/Google Translate, Adwords Quality Score, TensorFlow, AlphaGo, Attention is all you need (Transformers), AlphaFold all Google innovations.

The problem with Google is that they can’t produce good profitable products. Innovation means nothing for a for profit company if it doesn’t make money.

[encom]

>I don't really get the Google hate

Easy. Google is basically spyware. It's an advertising company, and their product is you.

>searching for up-to-date relevant product information

I realise I'm not a typical user, but I would never trust Google for any searches hinting that I'm looking to buy something, because the results are almost guaranteed to be inorganic. Someone will have paid Google money to be promoted for "best clothes dryer".

[starfallg]

>Easy. Google is basically spyware. It's an advertising company, and their product is you.

This is such a flippant and facile response.

Google isn't a advertising company, it is a tech company that gets the majority of its revenue via selling advertising. This can change, and also likely to change in the next decade or so.

The reason things are is that nobody was willing to pay for search - it's a product with a very low incremental cost. The market dictated this operating model, and nobody has been able to upend this model so far, not even OAI. The numbers just don't work out. Do you think OAI can continue to subsidise free ChatGPT queries with paid ChatGPT Plus subscriptions? Almost certainly not.