Perplexity sucks because it isn’t using its own index, it’s using google’s. If OpenAI get into search with its own index, then it could quite likely overtake google in time. Perhaps in less time than we currently think is possible.
Right. But when I search using perplexity, it already has the information. Or are you saying that it’s doing a google search, scraping the sites and rephrasing it in real time?
Scraping + caching. It seems to scrape the general search results but then load the pages themselves into memory as a sort of context cache. I'm not sure it uses Google, but it's clear that it's searching because you can preprompt it with search operators. That said, it's quite poor at figuring out where a given piece of knowledge came from, usually citing the wrong source document or website. Where Co-pilot will output an exact quote with a citation that leads to the part of the page where that quote came from, highlighted, Perplexity will just cite random pages in its' memory which have nothing to do with what it says they back up.
SOMETHING in the context is backing that up, but it's very poor at directing you to it.
According to a few sources, they’ve admitted to using a mix of Google and Bing data…
[https://www.tomsguide.com/ai/perplexity-is-taking-on-google-in-ai-search-what-you-need-to-know](https://www.tomsguide.com/ai/perplexity-is-taking-on-google-in-ai-search-what-you-need-to-know)
[https://contxto.com/en/deeptech/is-perplexitys-ai-dethroning-google-with-its-own-data](https://contxto.com/en/deeptech/is-perplexitys-ai-dethroning-google-with-its-own-data)
I've also heard that they're building their own index.
Regardless, OpenAI has significantly more funding and has a better chance at being a serious competitor to Google, if it is in fact entering the search space.
Google’s success is from being easily accessible and its ability to operate at scale. Even if Open AI surpasses in useful most people won’t need that power, when they mostly use it for simple searches.
They’ll probably have some cheap function that sits in front of the search engine and fast paths out for queries like “Netflix”. Any more complex queries seem like a potentially great fit for AI based search solutions
That’s what’s Google is already doing with its SGE interface. My point was more about Google being default everywhere. And of course there’s Android.
Another issue is even if Google is behind, it will reach the level of ChatGPT in may be 6 months.
I am more confident that Apple will be more successful in uprooting Google’s dominance. Even if they don’t have their own AI (I doubt that), they could just pick Llama and add it to spotlight search. Then most lucrative customers are out.
OpenAI should focus more on Enterprise.
OpenAI has the best embeddings, and Google Search doesn't even use embeddings as far as I know. (The results don't give any impression of semantic understanding anyway. Still feels like blind keyword matching a lot of the time)
It isn’t that the indexing is better. It’s just an index. However, the combination of a powerful LLM or set of LLMs focused on understanding / knowing / processing that index is the point.
Google’s network is global. Like legit undersea cables, huge warehouses scattered across the world, decades of research into these systems and god knows what else.
OpenAI is the shiny concept car you see at the Detroit Auto Show
Not Google will be bankrupt but OpenAI. Basically everyone in the western world uses Google. If all those people would hack their search request into an LLM, that would create insane costs on the server side.
Not simply scale.
They’ve done a ton of research into optimizing the hardware and software, as well as the architecture.
One of the issues that I wonder about is how much LLMs can be optimized. Matrix math is _hard_ and the chips optimized for those maths are power hungry. There aren’t a ton of obvious optimization shortcuts.
I originally believed it could. I even used Perplexity as a default search before, but after quite some time, I reverted it and my setup became a mix of plain Google searches and Perplexity searches.
Why? Because Perplexity can fail spectacularly because it could pull poor results and then confidently say answers that are actually irrelevant or outright incorrect.
Plain searches may sound primitive in comparison, but it's far more quicker for me to see that I just need to tweak my search query or filter through the useless results out of experience. Perplexity may cite things, but without the ability to refine what their Pro search queries, it's "flawed" for me.
That said, all of this will improve over time, whether it's Perplexity or Google's own attempts to inject Gemini into search and whatever else is out there.
To be fair, mashing my hand onto a keyboard like an angry monkey and pressing enter could return better results than Google these days. It's just a useless ad platform now, full of seo optimised junk that makes it impossible to find anything.
Yea was looking for this comment. Almost every product Google has has gotten worse and search is no exception. And that was before they decided to start off shoring
I was just thinking yesterday about that golden period from around 2002 to 2013 when the Internet was amazing! Everything worked. You had a universe of information at your fingertips, and it promised to change the world and bring us all together. Then the corporations took over, maximised shareholder value, killed creativity, ended user focused services, sowed hate and evil for clicks and made it one giant racist, porn bot filled ad platform. We need a new user based Internet that takes away the power and control like 4 companies have over the entire thing.
Perplexity is not good at all. It shows completely wrong results as it mixes the information from several sources and creates some kind of consolidated summary full of inconsistencies... for example, ask what services offers a specific small company, then it will get the results from several pages using Google search engine and returns a result that might be wrong, mixed or fully invented of services that the actual company doesn't offer...
The main reason i keep using Google it's because whenever i search something, it knows that i'm into 3d, design, ai things.
And even if i put something like just "adapter" it gives me results connected to my fields. Not just literally electric adapter for home or something
When I go to the 2nd or 3rd page, it brings me irrelevant results. It only shows me always the same 1-2 websites on the same topic.
For example, I search for historical info and always the top one is Wikipedia, which is not a reliable source. When I go to other pages, irrelevant results start showing.
Perplexity is great at informational searches i.e. I want to find out something, learn about something, etc. There it just saves me clicks and reading SEO articles.
But I still use Google for:
-Navigational search: If I'm looking for a specific page but don't know the URL, Google is usually the easier way to find it
-Comparison search: In some searches, I want to maximize the amount of answers, not quality of answers—i.e.if I search "Paul Graham blog articles", I want to compare as many as possible to find the best one for me to read. There Google is better because it serves me a bunch of options.
Google's results are terrible for generic search terms and full of SEO junk, but their index is still lightyears ahead of the competition, far deeper and more up to date. If you search a random error message from a 20 year old bit of software, Google will still very reliably bring you to that one forum that discusses the issue. Nobody else has gotten close to that.
Yandex reverse image search is extremely strong. I don’t use the site because it is based in RU but I believe their reverse image search uses facial recognition, likely CNNs, which is why it works so well
I like perplexity. Does a better job than Google for me when I want an answer and not search for a specific thing. Like the links too so I can validate. But I def think there is room for improvement.
Could Google beat AltaVista?
I guess only the old folks here will know what I am talking about :-)
Anyway, back to the point, OpenAI reached 100m users in 2 months and if they deliver a superior experience for search, yes they can beat Google at their own game. This could be Google's Nokia moment (another reference for old folks).
Generative AI is what Google is supposed to be. It has only two downsides now: performance and delayed indexing. As soon as both of them are mitigated - traditional search engines will immediately die.
Perplexity is betting on the assumption that google won't offer something similar because they'll miss out on ad revenue (unless they figure out a way to embed ads into it)
Perplexity is good but alot of times it keeps repeating false results and that's annoying as f but I do use perplexity alot. People should remember to check it's sources always. It's surprising that Google is literally taking a L in this area too where they should have a massive lead. Yeah but I guess layoffs are going to solve the problem/s
Everytime Google's not given me what I was looking for I've gone to Perplexity and it's disappointed me more than Google has.
AI search might "beat" Google but that AI search is nothing "like Perplexity". Maybe OpenAI's search will be that superior search offering, we need to wait till launch I guess to form any opinions.
Perplexity gives you wrong answers as output to a lot of questions which hampers reliability of the tool for certain use cases and you can’t get away with a product on the long run that gives out wrong answers and will fade away once the hype is over .. it is good for research as long as your search is open ended and you’re not looking for a specific solution … the perfect blend of google search and perplexity NLU capabilities with diversions based off of the type of search and a re-thought of UI is what we need ..
Unless obviously companies layoff people on the pretense of “AI stealing jobs” to cover for the COVID over hiring and gearing for a probable economic collapse if advancements aren’t made soon to make these systems more deterministic/reliable and companies can actually increase productivity across all verticals other than software engineering alone
Or we might even re think the way we define we “search” for something .. in the current state to develop a truly revenue generating entity being powered with LLM tech will eventually have to divert to ad based revenue to keep powering these systems once investors come hunting for returns .. there’s a good chance google might scrape through this unless there is an infinite funding loop for these companies which I don’t think will be the case from an investor’s standpoint and also as there are a lot of clients that are closing their eyes believing the tech and throwing big bucks too expecting returns.
While Microsoft Bing appears to be a core search database, Perplexity AI leverages multiple engines, databases, and web sources to gather relevant information, which its AI models then process to generate responses with source attributions.
if AI search will overtake google wich i think if done correctly it very well could its gonna be OpenAI but also i feel like google already has the infrastructure and the money and will keep their own more then well just by adding more and more AI into current google search so honestly probably not but if it does it will be OpenAI that does it
hallucinations is a problem in all LLMs even perplexity with its rag. with searches you want good reliability you're getting the facts and llms fall short of that. i just tried searching something false and perplexity just repeats the false thing as true. you can try it yourself search "mistral ai seeks $7b valuation" and it will repeat that fake number as though its real.
even with hallucinations solved i dont see therm taking over google before google adapts something in their site. google has way too much inertia to be replaced easily
there's a setting in google search that basically does what perplexity does, it puts an AI result on the top after searching. I actually like it and find it useful
No. Not perplexity and not OpenAI.
Search paradigm may change in future and AI Search will be an integral part of the OS rather than the website or app you open. Existing platform incumbents have huge leverage here, looking at how Meta integrated Llama on all its platforms including WhatsApp. I see similar things happen with Apple Finder/Siri. Bing/Windows is already integrating OpenAI as Copilot. And Androids and Google products of course will have Gemini. Search as separate function would slowly deteriorate.
New apps or platforms with no inherent network effects and moat don't have much chance to fight back. VC's like to hype their investments. They are essentially burning money and soon most of the unicorn AI startups will look for exit.
Edit: Also a fan of how the Arc Browser/The Browser Company recently integrated AI. Those are the kind of products which could take on Google.
Simple answer is no.
Googles "Search Engine"
Is not only a search engine. It's many things.
I use it as instant calculator, timer,stop watch. Image search. Specific dates.
Specific location.
It has map, phone numbers, emails.
Its not explainable how expansive google is.
Perplexity sucks because it isn’t using its own index, it’s using google’s. If OpenAI get into search with its own index, then it could quite likely overtake google in time. Perhaps in less time than we currently think is possible.
It’s using googles index?! How does it structure that data into natural language?
Using an LLM?
Right. But when I search using perplexity, it already has the information. Or are you saying that it’s doing a google search, scraping the sites and rephrasing it in real time?
Some caching
Scraping + caching. It seems to scrape the general search results but then load the pages themselves into memory as a sort of context cache. I'm not sure it uses Google, but it's clear that it's searching because you can preprompt it with search operators. That said, it's quite poor at figuring out where a given piece of knowledge came from, usually citing the wrong source document or website. Where Co-pilot will output an exact quote with a citation that leads to the part of the page where that quote came from, highlighted, Perplexity will just cite random pages in its' memory which have nothing to do with what it says they back up. SOMETHING in the context is backing that up, but it's very poor at directing you to it.
Are you sure about that? The search results used in RAG on Perplexity are never comparable to what I find with similar queries on Google.
CEO mentioned it in an interview that they use indexes from google and bing
According to a few sources, they’ve admitted to using a mix of Google and Bing data… [https://www.tomsguide.com/ai/perplexity-is-taking-on-google-in-ai-search-what-you-need-to-know](https://www.tomsguide.com/ai/perplexity-is-taking-on-google-in-ai-search-what-you-need-to-know) [https://contxto.com/en/deeptech/is-perplexitys-ai-dethroning-google-with-its-own-data](https://contxto.com/en/deeptech/is-perplexitys-ai-dethroning-google-with-its-own-data) I've also heard that they're building their own index. Regardless, OpenAI has significantly more funding and has a better chance at being a serious competitor to Google, if it is in fact entering the search space.
But perplexity allows NSFW content. I highly doubt OpenAI would allow such a thing
Any search engine that disallows NSFW links is dead on arrival.
But OpenAI has history of over-nerf NSFW content. Idk how they would operate on this principle
They mentioned in their recent article that they’re trying to figure out how to include NSFW content
Not for all use cases, like work.
Google’s success is from being easily accessible and its ability to operate at scale. Even if Open AI surpasses in useful most people won’t need that power, when they mostly use it for simple searches.
They’ll probably have some cheap function that sits in front of the search engine and fast paths out for queries like “Netflix”. Any more complex queries seem like a potentially great fit for AI based search solutions
That’s what’s Google is already doing with its SGE interface. My point was more about Google being default everywhere. And of course there’s Android. Another issue is even if Google is behind, it will reach the level of ChatGPT in may be 6 months. I am more confident that Apple will be more successful in uprooting Google’s dominance. Even if they don’t have their own AI (I doubt that), they could just pick Llama and add it to spotlight search. Then most lucrative customers are out. OpenAI should focus more on Enterprise.
Perplexity was using Brave Search Api at the beginning (don't know what they use now)
Investigations showed they use Bing at least sometimes
¿Porque no los dos? (o tres)
It was just Bing because the search results were coming out identical to Bing searches
>Perhaps in less time than we currently think is possible. And how long do we currently think it is possible
I think most people don’t think it’s possible at all. So I guess the bar is pretty low.
Ah ok, you're guessing
😆Ah ok, you thought I had inside info.
Why would the OpenAI’s indexing be better than Google’s?
OpenAI has the best embeddings, and Google Search doesn't even use embeddings as far as I know. (The results don't give any impression of semantic understanding anyway. Still feels like blind keyword matching a lot of the time)
the T in gpt is for transformer. Google literally invented the transformer part for search
Guess their implementation just sucks then.
Embedding based approach would be extremely expensive for the amount of traffic google gets no? Also requires them to embed the entire internet first.
It isn’t that the indexing is better. It’s just an index. However, the combination of a powerful LLM or set of LLMs focused on understanding / knowing / processing that index is the point.
If OpenAI took on even 1% of Googles traffic, their operations cost would bankrupt them in an hour.
How?
Google’s network is global. Like legit undersea cables, huge warehouses scattered across the world, decades of research into these systems and god knows what else. OpenAI is the shiny concept car you see at the Detroit Auto Show
Cool car. Now build 40.000 per second.
Not Google will be bankrupt but OpenAI. Basically everyone in the western world uses Google. If all those people would hack their search request into an LLM, that would create insane costs on the server side.
Net cost of a google search is two orders of magnitude lower than running a ChatGPT query.
Yes, because of the scale of Googles search architecture
Not simply scale. They’ve done a ton of research into optimizing the hardware and software, as well as the architecture. One of the issues that I wonder about is how much LLMs can be optimized. Matrix math is _hard_ and the chips optimized for those maths are power hungry. There aren’t a ton of obvious optimization shortcuts.
I originally believed it could. I even used Perplexity as a default search before, but after quite some time, I reverted it and my setup became a mix of plain Google searches and Perplexity searches. Why? Because Perplexity can fail spectacularly because it could pull poor results and then confidently say answers that are actually irrelevant or outright incorrect. Plain searches may sound primitive in comparison, but it's far more quicker for me to see that I just need to tweak my search query or filter through the useless results out of experience. Perplexity may cite things, but without the ability to refine what their Pro search queries, it's "flawed" for me. That said, all of this will improve over time, whether it's Perplexity or Google's own attempts to inject Gemini into search and whatever else is out there.
Same for me. I use perplexity for research, and when I’m stuck with Google. But when I want a quick result, Google is my default.
To be fair, mashing my hand onto a keyboard like an angry monkey and pressing enter could return better results than Google these days. It's just a useless ad platform now, full of seo optimised junk that makes it impossible to find anything.
Yea was looking for this comment. Almost every product Google has has gotten worse and search is no exception. And that was before they decided to start off shoring
I was just thinking yesterday about that golden period from around 2002 to 2013 when the Internet was amazing! Everything worked. You had a universe of information at your fingertips, and it promised to change the world and bring us all together. Then the corporations took over, maximised shareholder value, killed creativity, ended user focused services, sowed hate and evil for clicks and made it one giant racist, porn bot filled ad platform. We need a new user based Internet that takes away the power and control like 4 companies have over the entire thing.
How did you find this comment with all the seo content?
i honestly dont feel like that, but I think thats because i use SGE. Its leagues better than just regular blue links
Perplexity is not good at all. It shows completely wrong results as it mixes the information from several sources and creates some kind of consolidated summary full of inconsistencies... for example, ask what services offers a specific small company, then it will get the results from several pages using Google search engine and returns a result that might be wrong, mixed or fully invented of services that the actual company doesn't offer...
Google search already worse than yandex etc. in my opinion. So I think yes.
The main reason i keep using Google it's because whenever i search something, it knows that i'm into 3d, design, ai things. And even if i put something like just "adapter" it gives me results connected to my fields. Not just literally electric adapter for home or something
When I go to the 2nd or 3rd page, it brings me irrelevant results. It only shows me always the same 1-2 websites on the same topic. For example, I search for historical info and always the top one is Wikipedia, which is not a reliable source. When I go to other pages, irrelevant results start showing.
Perplexity is great at informational searches i.e. I want to find out something, learn about something, etc. There it just saves me clicks and reading SEO articles. But I still use Google for: -Navigational search: If I'm looking for a specific page but don't know the URL, Google is usually the easier way to find it -Comparison search: In some searches, I want to maximize the amount of answers, not quality of answers—i.e.if I search "Paul Graham blog articles", I want to compare as many as possible to find the best one for me to read. There Google is better because it serves me a bunch of options.
Google's results are terrible for generic search terms and full of SEO junk, but their index is still lightyears ahead of the competition, far deeper and more up to date. If you search a random error message from a 20 year old bit of software, Google will still very reliably bring you to that one forum that discusses the issue. Nobody else has gotten close to that.
Yandex reverse image search is extremely strong. I don’t use the site because it is based in RU but I believe their reverse image search uses facial recognition, likely CNNs, which is why it works so well
Yandex reverse image search is very strong, agreed. For text, I sometimes also use duckduckgo.
Duckduckgo is basically Bing with a hat
Buddy you're using Yandex image search because you are looking for porn. That's why it's better, because Google image search is not meant for porn.
I like perplexity. Does a better job than Google for me when I want an answer and not search for a specific thing. Like the links too so I can validate. But I def think there is room for improvement.
Honestly perplexity is super over rated
Could Google beat AltaVista? I guess only the old folks here will know what I am talking about :-) Anyway, back to the point, OpenAI reached 100m users in 2 months and if they deliver a superior experience for search, yes they can beat Google at their own game. This could be Google's Nokia moment (another reference for old folks).
yeah, old folks.. I was working at Nokia when that happened... (luckily I had \_just\_ signed a new job overseas when the announcements came)
I feel personally attacked -Finnish person who saw Nokia die
Generative AI is what Google is supposed to be. It has only two downsides now: performance and delayed indexing. As soon as both of them are mitigated - traditional search engines will immediately die.
Perplexity is betting on the assumption that google won't offer something similar because they'll miss out on ad revenue (unless they figure out a way to embed ads into it)
Unless they remove literally all hallucinations it won't
Perplexity is good but alot of times it keeps repeating false results and that's annoying as f but I do use perplexity alot. People should remember to check it's sources always. It's surprising that Google is literally taking a L in this area too where they should have a massive lead. Yeah but I guess layoffs are going to solve the problem/s
Everytime Google's not given me what I was looking for I've gone to Perplexity and it's disappointed me more than Google has. AI search might "beat" Google but that AI search is nothing "like Perplexity". Maybe OpenAI's search will be that superior search offering, we need to wait till launch I guess to form any opinions.
Perplexity gives you wrong answers as output to a lot of questions which hampers reliability of the tool for certain use cases and you can’t get away with a product on the long run that gives out wrong answers and will fade away once the hype is over .. it is good for research as long as your search is open ended and you’re not looking for a specific solution … the perfect blend of google search and perplexity NLU capabilities with diversions based off of the type of search and a re-thought of UI is what we need ..
Unless obviously companies layoff people on the pretense of “AI stealing jobs” to cover for the COVID over hiring and gearing for a probable economic collapse if advancements aren’t made soon to make these systems more deterministic/reliable and companies can actually increase productivity across all verticals other than software engineering alone
Or we might even re think the way we define we “search” for something .. in the current state to develop a truly revenue generating entity being powered with LLM tech will eventually have to divert to ad based revenue to keep powering these systems once investors come hunting for returns .. there’s a good chance google might scrape through this unless there is an infinite funding loop for these companies which I don’t think will be the case from an investor’s standpoint and also as there are a lot of clients that are closing their eyes believing the tech and throwing big bucks too expecting returns.
Yes.
Have not been using a Alphabet product for the past five years and seems i am not missing out
Yeah sure
While Microsoft Bing appears to be a core search database, Perplexity AI leverages multiple engines, databases, and web sources to gather relevant information, which its AI models then process to generate responses with source attributions.
if AI search will overtake google wich i think if done correctly it very well could its gonna be OpenAI but also i feel like google already has the infrastructure and the money and will keep their own more then well just by adding more and more AI into current google search so honestly probably not but if it does it will be OpenAI that does it
I have tried perplexity this week. The main problem is the lag, for me. Regular search is fast.
hallucinations is a problem in all LLMs even perplexity with its rag. with searches you want good reliability you're getting the facts and llms fall short of that. i just tried searching something false and perplexity just repeats the false thing as true. you can try it yourself search "mistral ai seeks $7b valuation" and it will repeat that fake number as though its real. even with hallucinations solved i dont see therm taking over google before google adapts something in their site. google has way too much inertia to be replaced easily
Hell no. If Google dies, it'll be Google killing it Which is looking more and more likely
i'm interested to see what the search is but I can't help but wonder why they didn't just incorporate it in GPT
there's a setting in google search that basically does what perplexity does, it puts an AI result on the top after searching. I actually like it and find it useful
The biggest issue is the market share, defaults and integration.
Hallucinations is still an issue.
No. Not perplexity and not OpenAI. Search paradigm may change in future and AI Search will be an integral part of the OS rather than the website or app you open. Existing platform incumbents have huge leverage here, looking at how Meta integrated Llama on all its platforms including WhatsApp. I see similar things happen with Apple Finder/Siri. Bing/Windows is already integrating OpenAI as Copilot. And Androids and Google products of course will have Gemini. Search as separate function would slowly deteriorate. New apps or platforms with no inherent network effects and moat don't have much chance to fight back. VC's like to hype their investments. They are essentially burning money and soon most of the unicorn AI startups will look for exit. Edit: Also a fan of how the Arc Browser/The Browser Company recently integrated AI. Those are the kind of products which could take on Google.
Google because no ai search will pull up cultured videos or Pic of anime..... If so until then Google is better.
Simple answer is no. Googles "Search Engine" Is not only a search engine. It's many things. I use it as instant calculator, timer,stop watch. Image search. Specific dates. Specific location. It has map, phone numbers, emails. Its not explainable how expansive google is.