OpenAI plans to announce Google search competitor on Monday

https://www.reuters.com/technology/openai-plans-announce-google-search-competitor-monday-sources-say-2024-05-09/

by thomasjudge • 2 years ago

23 21 2 years ago

andy992• 2 years ago

I see this as an extremely negative market signal. Basically all of what could have been collapses to a search competitor. It's not a sign of a bright future for real advances. Is there any other way to look at it?

allears• 2 years ago

I think it's just an attempt to generate revenue to fund the insane cost of compute. Research will still happen. But after all, this isn't a charitable or non-profit organization (despite the complicated company structure). OpenAI basically wants to make a profit, and so their efforts will always point in that direction.

catchnear4321• 2 years ago

yes.

it was always a money grab, and now it is more transparent. this was just a startup selling a dream for a payday. it just hurts more because everyone is excited by the dream. this isn’t simply the loss of a better slap chop.

other money grabs involve open source, the model isn’t the money grab, it supports it. those will provide more fun. more progress. some can afford to even do so quickly. more will change.

something will arise as a search competitor for openai, sama will have already squeezed enough juice out of it for something, the cycle will continue anew.

or someone will build something that invalidates the lot of it and we can move forward a bit more quickly.

bdjsiqoocwk2• 2 years ago

Haha I just basically wrote the same thing. I'm not the only one then.

qp11• 2 years ago

Depends what ideas they have for search.

They could do a Group feature or social/community formation feature around people with similar questions close by etc.

machiaweliczny• 2 years ago

I hoped that google would add a way to chat on websites with likeminded people in their browser and to merge it somehow with groups and search history.

It's more organic than tweeter/X and something that should be built-in part of web IMO.

The problem is probably that without accounts you can't fight with bots easily

andy992• 2 years ago

I don't think the ideas matter. It's even possible (though unlikely) OpenAI could have some great new angle on social search or whatever you're suggesting that makes them big money. The point is that it's tangential to the need for bigger and bigger AI advances that are already priced into the market. If there's an indication that's stalling, the industry will feel it hard, regardless of whether someone invents a better search engine.

rvz• 2 years ago

Startup Perplexity, which has a valuation of $1 billion, was founded by a former OpenAI researcher, and has gained traction through providing an AI-native search interface that shows citations in results and images as well as text in its responses. It has 10 million monthly active users, according to a January blog post from the startup.

Who can tell me how and why is Perplexity.ai is worth $1BN? How much revenue are they making vs the amount of money they are burning? What is the justification of this valuation?

Since those 'citations' and 'search results' are all from (guess where) Google Search! So Perplexity's sources are no better than Google. Additionally, I do not know anyone outside of this AI tech bubble that knows about 'Perplexity' and they only have heard of Google, Bing and ChatGPT.

The hype around Perplexity seems to be another co-ordinated VC vehicle for another company to acquire them at an inflated valuation and it looks like it is going to be no-one else but Amazon Inc.

This hype is almost the same as the Clubhouse hype which that company is somehow worth $4BN when it clearly isn't. Given that Google now offers search grounding, enterprise-level generative AI features for GCP customers, Perplexity's valuation obviously looks significantly inflated for the deliberate purpose of someone else acquiring them.

The result is predictable and unsurprising. I predict that Perplexity will just get acquired by a big tech company.

Alifatisk3• 2 years ago

I found out about Perplexity.ai through labs.perplexity.ai. I gave the search feature a shot and liked what I saw, it’s like searching on the web but having gpt as middle-man. I can ask questions and then follow-up questions, it’s quite cool and it’s free! (for now).

I saw that they had an app on Appstore so I made my sister download it and try it, she liked it aswell, seeing the sources and citations is a huge bonus.

I wasn’t really sure what the search source is, I assumed it was bing but you seem more confident so I assume they rely on Google.

niutech2• 2 years ago

See the report on Perplexity $1B valuation: https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/ai-search-startup-perplexity-set...

ungreased0675• 2 years ago

I hope at least a few of the copyright lawsuits against OpenAI succeed. What they’re doing is not good for the digital ecosystem.

pcurve• 2 years ago

For me, Google Search is just a way to search Reddit 95% of the time.

Slix• 2 years ago

Too bad Discord can't be searched. There's lots of information trapped on Discord.

Alifatisk3• 2 years ago

That’s a huuuge loss in my opinion, I really wish the contents of public Discord servers was indexable.

Remember a project that where supposed to fix that but I don’t know what happened, I guess no one was interested in it?

bdjsiqoocwk2• 2 years ago

Ahhh so this is openais monetization strategy. Making a search engine and putting ads on it.

Right now id says t's going to fail. Not only are they not better than Google by enough, id say they're worse. This could change, but I think the "ai" aspect detracts from being a good search engine.

hulitu• 2 years ago

OpenAI plans to announce Google search competitor on Monday

Isn't OpenAI owned by Microsoft, just like Bing ?

Wasn't Bing offering "AI powered search results" (which were total crap IMHO but that's another story).

Is Microsoft canibalising Microsoft ?

vargr616• 2 years ago

Is Microsoft canibalising Microsoft ?

that is a very microsoft thing to do

Alifatisk3• 2 years ago

You would be surprised to know how many times Microsoft have done similar things.

I once found three Microsoft apps on Appstore that had the same features and everything but with a little different ui design.

I think it was the Bing app, Microsoft Start and Copilot.

addicted• 2 years ago

At one point (maybe still?) Microsoft had at least 3 business chat/calling apps that were supported simultaneously.

Lync, Skype for Business, and Teams. And that doesn’t include the non business focused alternatives such as Skype and MSN (although I’m not sure if MSN overlapped with the rest of them).

JumpCrisscross• 2 years ago

Obligatory HN comment that Kagi already does this [1].

[1] https://help.kagi.com/kagi/ai/quick-answer.html

OpenAI plans to announce Google search competitor on Monday

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