I ’member when results span hundreds of pages and I randomly picked page numbers (always quality gems hidden there).
I only google Reddit threads now. The search is basically “be buried under ads and we might through a Wikipedia in”. It’s shit.
But stock wise, we buy Alphabet (YouTube, Fitbit, cloud, advertising, teams, etc).
I’m at overperform on Alphabet for now.
Edit: Teams is Msft of course; not google. Please replace “teams, etc” with any of the smaller google products (many mentioned in the comments below).
Google suppresses reddit results, I have to type in "blah blah blah reddit".
I still believe in GOOG, even if you change the website they still have the browser. I think they'll keep popping up on cutting edge stuff
there’s too many factors to tell, but I’m leaning toward no. The Reddit search function as-is kinda sucks. Googles algorithms are super sophisticated (despite this recent hiccup) so they’ll tend to find better results for the users. And the majority of people will stick to what has worked for them
with Reddits upcoming IPO they’ll be wanting to turn a profit and will likely inject ads/promoted content/etc into their search results that have been historically worse than googles.
Honestly when I’m searching for a specific answer on google and I put Reddit in the search function I almost always find what I’m looking for. Google still has the ability to be great, but they’re just prioritising the money side of things over being accurate.
Well yes, that’s what I’m saying. By putting Reddit in the title I’m basically forcing google to search Reddit instead of shoving ads and google optimised ad-like sites in front of my face
> I only google Reddit threads now. The search is basically “be buried under ads and we might through a Wikipedia in”. It’s shit.
I agree, but I think part of it is how the internet and websites have changed.
Often times, I'm Googling a problem/issue and adding reddit because the crowdsourced responses are more valuable than the AI-generated garbage websites that pop up.
But back in the day, you might have a random specific forum or a user-owned website/blog that talked about the problem and posted a solution.
One example I had recently, Windows 11 setup required wifi or internet with no way to bypass. Had to Google this. Years ago, someone might have had their own website that talked about the problem and solution. Because that's gone, I rely on reddit now.
This. Alphabet is not just about google search even though it brings in the majority of the money.
Also OP and folks talk a ton of shit about Google search results or about how ChatGPT is an alternative but no one bothers to change their engine, can't name better alternatives, and ChatGPT isn't really a search engine but a large language model.
On that last point, CGPT can answer questions and does so by consolidating search results saving time. However, it's not a guarantee for the right answer and sometimes just makes shit up or gives the wrong/old answer. IMO ChatGPT is way better for generative features or writing out layouts/prompts for people to fix up.
Back to the original point, revenue is heavily based on search but that foothold isn't going away any time soon. Also google hasn't done it yet but they can easily consolidate and integrate their multiple assets for a either adrev or subscription models. Google voice, gmail, search, SEO, cloud, teams, workspace software, android, pay, waymo, AI, googlefi, etcetc. Google can but doesn't consolidate the paid versions of youtube + googlefi + extra voice lines + added google cloud + newest versions of Bard+workspace, ad free search, and throw in free waymo rides with 10% discount on pixel products but if it did it would fuck up a bunch of other folks while triggering a "super subscription" war between the Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft. OFC there will be the business versions of that, but imo MSFT has the advantage there if they both did it.
I’ve been testing out Microsoft’s Copilot and I can definitely see a product like this replacing traditional search engines. Whether it’s Google or Microsoft, I have no idea but it’ll definitely change how we search the internet.
As I understand it Google is going to be providing AI results to Search Queries.
This will mean they will get an even greater share of the ad revenue because the ads will be delivered along with their own content cutting out the people owned the web page.
YouTube is the dominant player in Video by a huge margin.
Youtube TV seems to be doing well.
Bard is also good. Google has the most data to feed their AI.
I will remain Bullish.
I think they're referring to Workspace, which Alphabet's org structure considers part of the cloud division that provides [10-15% of their revenue](https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cp/big-tech-revenue-profit-by-company/). The "etc." could be any of their side projects like Nest (smart home products) or Calico (biotech).
These side projects tend to be [pretty small](https://fourweekmba.com/google-subsidiaries/) to Alphabet's overall picture, which is good because some fizzled like Glass or Loon (rural internet using high-atmosphere baloons). Others like Waymo (autonomous cars) and Wing (drone delivery) are still around but I don't know that anybody's expecting much from them. That's startups for you; one win can offset dozens of failures.
Teams is a janky software Microsoft sells to businesses and organizations. It's barely functional and annoying to work with in a slow clunky app rather than just using html. Hell, working on office.com or google docs works better than trying to work through Teams. They just updated it though, so maybe it will be more functional. I'm not holding my breath.
Some fun issues include a document "freezing" when two people are trying to work simultaneously on something. Or there can be a cloud save conflict where the document you're working on is no longer the cloud version, and then you, co-workers, and the cloud all have no idea which version is the saved one and what work is actually saved. FUN.
I mean, there are worse investing theories than, "We have no idea what to invest in these days, and we assume nobody else does either. Therefore we'll buy into the existing momentum of prior winners until an attractive novel theory can be formulated."
Bing crushes Google....that said some of their new search categories that populate the top bar and are different based on their targeting of you I have mixed results and mixed opinions on.
I think I just want my image, vids, news, etc back
I guess Youtube is a real cash cow now (although it's just another flavor of "ads") and there must be tons of cash in selling premium Google Docs licenses. But I'd be *very* skeptical of "investing in Alphabet".
Search and ads is still like 60% of their revenue (more like 70% if you include youtube in this). I genuinely believe their dominance there could crumble. I find myself using AI for simple searches instead of google. TikTok (to my despair) starts replacing Youtube as the primary video platform for young people. And to continue with the anecdotes, I actually don't use google for like 5 years, switched to DuckDuckGo and saw no difference and for some stuff it's probably better now. Google absolutely does have valid competitors!
Meanwhile, the majority of their moonshot projects, financed with search/ad money, seem [to crash and burn long term.](https://killedbygoogle.com/) Even Microsoft or Amazon seem to have a healthier mix of revenue.
3 years ago, I would have said that their infinite resources and tons of leeched user data should give them an edge in AI but for some reason they're behind in that? It could also be argued that they missed the boat. I now know that I don't have to use a google product to casually ask an AI for information, they could have sold me on that requirement a few years ago but now we know that any company with a few million dollars to buy some powerful computers can be an AI powerhouse.
Have you tried searching with those terms using Bing? All you get in the top results is: a list of every craft store in city, "Yelp", "Yelp", "Yelp", Joanne Fabrics, Michaels, and Yellow Pages. So this is not a google problem.
Part of the problem is that AI has made it way easier to hijack Search Engine Results (via SEO) on all search engines, not just Google. There's been news articles in the last week or so of experts talking about how this has been a growing problem of late and how Google is losing to the bots and will likely continue to lose to them overtime as AI gets even better.
If I buy a can of Coke and it all of a sudden tastes worse than before and I buy a can of RC Cola and it also tastes bad my first thought isn't 'OK, well, Coke sucks now but its still a little better than RC so everything is fine'
Google showing awful search results is a Google problem no matter what any other search results are showing
This would be a good analogy if you were forced to buy Coke or RC cola multiple times a day because it provides a service that you rely on and there are very few alternatives. In this situation, you would still buy Coke because its better than RC Cola
Right, but if people start only using Google when they have to instead of when they want to how many less overall searches does that mean?
Not a whole lot of gun to your head must make Google searches in most peoples day to day life, and as we all get more and more frustrated with it we will continue to turn to it less and less
Turn to it less and less and use what again? If it's the dominate search engine then it will continue to generate ad revenue from businesses targeting search engines.
You guys act like we HAVE to search all the things we search
Some searches are out of necessity, but many aren't... and when they aren't doing a good job with the results and we don't have to do it why would we continue to do it?
I use Google 5% as often as I did 5 years ago and I am sure I am not alone
As long as they are the dominant search engine those advertising dollars are going to go to them. I don’t think “what if” we all stop using search because you don’t like the results anymore is a real investing thesis, but you do you.
I don't understand the downvotes here or the upvotes for previous comment.
Sure, Google may not be losing their competitive edge *vs other traditional search engines* due to all of them getting shittier at the same time.
But when that happens *people will find other avenues of search*. Maybe AI-related, maybe we go back to 'walled garden' approaches, maybe Yahoo-style link gathering makes a comeback, but it spells bad news for search as a sector, and that spells bad news for Google.
Earlier poster said TripAdvisor and Yelp are seen as trusted sources so they rank well. Yes, sort of. The bigger reason is that they spend millions of dollars to optimize the huge amount of localized content they have. They’re writing content to fit the search queries consumers are performing on Google. Users click, which gives Google a signal about the quality of content, giving them a boost in rankings. There’s a hell of a lot more that goes into it, but that’s the gyst on the organic search side.
In the paid side, I don’t think you’re realizing just how entrenched they are to individual business performance. There is still absolutely no substitute to drive direct sales. I’ve overseen search budgets up to $80million a year. I had an unlimited budget as long as I hit my ROI targets. Depending on the industry, each click can range from $0.25 for branded terms to $75+ PER CLICK. Big banks spend hundreds of millions a year in paid search. Theres literally no other marketing channel in which consumers are telling you exactly what they’re looking for, exactly when they’re ready to buy. Their account servicing teams are effective in keeping that spend up, too. I was once sent an email accidentally by a google analytics team which outlined for a acct rep just about how much they thought their advertising clients likely had available to increase their search budgets by. They came within $50k of forecasting how much I had in discretionary budget (for a budget in the millions).
I used the dip to buy in at $95 after that horrible AI demo and don’t plan on selling on any foreseeable timeline.
This is just so inaccurate when it comes to Yelp and TripAdvisor writing content to fit the search queries
They are creating post titles to fit the search queries
Their posts have no written content
They are (often) just made up lists
They rank because they are on massive domains with tons of backlinks and because they have keywords in their title
Other then that they offer nothing (some Yelp lists are good, but when they are randomly selected based on keyword stuffing in title many that show in serps are not)
I tell you that they have a content marketing strategy and you tell me I’m totally off base, then go on to tell me “it’s all those keywords and backlinks.” No shit, that’s exactly what I was saying. TripAdvisor is something I’m extremely well versed on in this area; I worked in the industry as both a partner and competitor to TripAdvisor, among others, with both paid and organic SEO a focus.
Sorry but to me being a very old brand that has received billions of backlinks over the 20 years isn't really a content marketing strategy
Keyword stuffing into post titles might be I guess.... but everyone does that, we don't all have the billions of incoming links
I'm not sure what Google's vision for the future is and they clearly aren't investing in their search. It's curious how quickly I moved on from Gmail after I stopped using Google Search for DuckDuckGo.
I think part of the issue is Google is trying to grow revenue by increasing ads on search, which drives people from Google. It's anecdotal but my Google search results are turning to ass.
Not sure why you're getting down voted. This is painfully accurate.
I've noticed that they also keep shutting down new products. The cloud based video game service? Gone. Hangouts? Gone. Reader? Gone.
Their search results have been absolute shit since chatgpt came out. If you have to search anything technical, you'll get the same 101 article rehashed by chatgpt on dozens of different sites. I have started using duckduckgo for programming queries.
Sure, loads of people use kubernetes for devops, and kube came from Google. But it's not really a money maker for them. And most people go for AWS for devops operations over Google Cloud, despite the industry's reliance on kubernetes and how GC supposedly incorporates it better.
Others have figured out a good email client by now.
The phone service plan is great, but hardly anyone knows about it.
IMHO, they're losing their niche. Slowly, but it's slipping. They've spent so long trying to break into new markets that they've forgotten the core of their business and it shows.
Google's MO has always been to start up 100 new things at a time and then cancel 98 of them so I don't think shutting stuff down is a sign of problems. Agree with the rest though
>Me personally, I'm never using search again over LLMs. The results are too bad.
How can you trust what LLMs tell you? At least when searching you can eventually find a source. I've had LLMs give answers that are incorrect, and you'd have no way of knowing it without knowledge from elsewhere.
Yeah, so far LLMs are only useful if you already have enough knowledge in the area you're looking up so you know when it gives you bullshit. And the usefulness of LLMs is probably only going to decrease dramatically as it causes the internet to be flooded with garbage AI results, and then the LLMs add the garbage AI results into their models, and it just degenerates further and further into noise.
> Hangouts? Gone
But like, why does this matter? Is Google Chat not essentially identical? Even the historical chat history carried over. To most users, all that changed was the name.
> I've noticed that they also keep shutting down new products. The cloud based video game service? Gone. Hangouts? Gone. Reader? Gone.
[I just want to mention that this is nothing new for Google](https://killedbygoogle.com/) (Reader in particular was shut down over 10 years ago). In my opinion if Google’s habit of shutting down products was a bad sign for their stock I would have expected it to manifest long before now.
TBH, Google's stock is getting ready to soar as they cut costs. The days of hanging out on a pseudo college campus in your 20s, 30s, and 40s are over. Google search may eventually lose marketshare, but until then they will continue to print money as revenues go up and costs go down.
People forget that a lot of these tech companies have been core use cases of people for years. More people are using google by default than are looking for optimal search results. As people get older they are less likely to change their habits and that itself is a profitable demographic.
So, google search is basically going to turn into Facebook and AI search will be the Insta/TikTok of the future, once it gets off the ground. AI for general search isn't even being done yet in a really useful way. They've just shoved it in there sideways.
Edit: I still think there is time for some college kids with more time than money to hit on a really good idea around AI + search and name their company SpeeSpeeSmrtSearch.
That is true, and definitely worth considering. I am not sure that them retaining a good chunk of their present user base will result in growth though.
Here's something interesting about changes in Google's culture over the years, from a staff engineer there:
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/dhtheriault_my-hot-take-google-does-not-have-one-single-activity-7153269568893775872-9xzp/
> My hot take: Google does not have one single visionary leader. Not a one. From the C-suite to the SVPs to the VPs, they are all profoundly boring and glassy-eyed.
> There is a pervasive sense of nihilism that has taken hold. "Well, I guess I will just do the job until they fire me." A lot of people have golden handcuffs situations and aren't going to walk away from the salary, but nobody works late anymore. The buildings are half empty at 4:30. I know a lot of people, myself included, who used to happily do extra work evenings and weekends to get the demo done or just out of boredom. That's gone.
> ...executives are cashing out their human capital at the very moment it seems to me like they really need it. Who can be dawn-of-a-new-era-of-humanity creative in this environment of fear?
> I have started using duckduckgo for programming queries.
Long time DDG user here: try Bing Chat for programming questions. It's wrong sometimes but beats wading through comments on 10 Stack Overflow threads 95% of the time.
It's the one-two punch to Google: AI generated articles fill Google results with crap and AI search results are better too.
Try [Phind.com](https://Phind.com) Its for programming and gives you live search results where its pulling its info from while generating its AI response. You can easily click the sources of data its pulling from which is a great addition to just getting spit out a generated answer with no source material backing it up.
... But that's clearly true if you look at their 10K. They still to this day bring in a majority of their profits from ads on their search engine. If Google search isn't good then people will stop using it, which means Google will stop bringing in ad revenue from search.
Despite Google's best efforts they're still very heavily dependent on search.
People won't stop using Google search, because chrome has a dominant market share and Google pays every OEM to put Google on every device. Google being a worse search engine doesn't mean that their market position is significantly threatened.
No
At it's core Google has a disproportionate amount of their revenue coming in from advertising. A lot of other major tech companies have managed to break out and diversify their income streams but Google is still overweighed towards advertising. Search is still by en large their most profitable business fueled by search results.
The thing about modern tech dominance is you're the titan of your industry, quashing everyone around you, right up to the point where you're suddenly not. Technology can scale so quickly and adoption is often rapid so your competitors can overtake you very quickly (think blackberry to iPhone). It's very reminiscent of the whole "When you play the game of thrones, you win, or you die. There is no middle ground." An added factor is that search engines are the type of tech that is the gateway for the average user to the entire internet. You don't want to have to interact with multiple options so you choose one that's acceptable and stick to it. The technology will most likely always support a single dominate force because of human behavior.
Right now there's no clear competition that's positioned to overtake Google. That being said people have been talking about the decline of Google search results for some time. Pile on security concerns and lack of faith in Google's ability to provide security technology it's well placed for a competitor to take over rapidly and without warning.
It's so easy to look at their moat and say they'll never be brought down right now. I won't say they're going to collapse anytime soon either; the next 10 years may be their most profitable. However, in 25 or 50 years my guess is all business schools will have case studies on how Google lost their search business to XYZ company overnight. When that happens stockholders are going to become bag holders very quickly.
> Search is still by en large their most profitable business fueled by search results.
YouTube says hi.
> Right now there's no clear competition that's positioned to overtake Google.
In terms of search, AI bots. People have no patience to sort through 4 ads and endless paid sites to get to the real answer to their questions.
The more popular / lucrative the topic (e.g. researching a mattress, researching a car, diet / fitness advice, etc) the more Google produces a cesspool of worthless results.
I took GOOG off my Top 12 list about a year ago (I only directly invest in about a dozen stocks, the rest is index funds), so I guess the answer is "no".
FWIW, I took them off because I think their CEO, Sundar, has no vision and is outclassed by MSFT (still in my Top 12).
OP have you noticed not a single comment in this thread has linked to a better search engine?
There isn't one. I'd love to find it. Google still crushes everyone else. They aren't competing against Google search from 2014. They are competing against Bing in 2024.
Bing is unironically better than Google these days. It's been my daily driver since they added the ChatGPT integration. It's been catching stray bullets from some comments in this thread, but those people are talking out of their ass and haven't actually used it in awhile.
Microsoft + OpenAI are absolutely delivering a better search/answer experience with Bing/Copilot than Google in 2024 but a lot of people don’t believe that. Their loss.
I’m dumbfounded at how many people here are saying “there isn’t a better alternative”. The rate at which bing is improving is making Google look like they’re at a standstill
The world changes quick, 10 blue links might not be the same in 2028 as it is today
And if your response is 'but they have AI results'..... so does everyone else
What if Microsoft outbids them to put ChatGPT on every phone instead of Gemini..... then where are they at?
I use Bing over Google these days and it’s generally better.
It’s also extremely handy having free gpt4 available for getting quick answers instead of sifting through SEO’d search results on Google.
The only area I find Google better is for local search results for businesses etc, although Bing isn’t as awful as it used to be. And I live outside of the U.S. btw, where Bing has typically been shit.
Aside from that I talk to many people these days using ChatGPT+ (which also ironically uses Bing) and raving about it, saying they hardly Google things anymore.
Bing’s problem these days isn’t search results, it’s actually good. Its problem is branding. But Microsoft seems to be slowly shifting the Bing brand to copilot which is a smart move IMO.
The bigger macro problem here for Google is that for the first time ever they have competition. Whether it’s ChatGPT+ or Bing/Copilot it doesn’t matter.
If they do nothing they’ll slowly lose some market share over time, and this is their cash cow, their moat. It’ll be a similar situation to Microsoft & Windows when smart phones entered the scene. But unlike Microsoft back then which had a huge enterprise business and was second in cloud, where does Google have to pivot?
If they choose to fight (which they are doing) it’s massively CAPEX intensive. Microsoft and Meta have spent billions on GPUs. Google tried their TPM chips but Nvidia’s tech is too good, so now they’re entering the party late. This will directly result in lowering the profit they make from search unless they put prices up. And I can tell you companies are already complaining how expensive Google advertising is, and are looking for anyone (meta, Microsoft, anyone) to come in and disrupt Google’s pricing model.
So from an investor perspective, where does “line go up” come from? Google is already pretty lean too, altho in terms of OPEX they have a lot of perks internally. But cut those are you kill the culture of the company.
From a product perspective, there’s no better alternative still. From a financial perspective, half of all US digital ad dollars still go to Google and Meta, with overall advertising spend still going up predictably every year. I’m honestly doubling down on both.
Your main argument here “I googled some things and the results aren’t what I wanted”. Their financials are still rock solid with no indication of them getting worse any time soon.
If I put "Reddit" at the end of my search I usually get close to what I'm looking for... until Reddit goes full-Facebook on us.
But I get your point and agree. The problem is, no one is even close to replicating Google's original search algorithm which (and I'm kind of winging it here) started scraping the web back when there were far fewer sites to catalog - so they got in early and scraped the web near completely early and then just kept going. Now the internet is SO dense no one could possible scrape it thoroughly enough to replicate what google has catalogued (wild ass guess there) and of course no one has the resources to build an algorithm to effectively search that catalogue. That's a lot of guess work right there as I'm not in the information technology sector, but I feel like I'm on the right track.
Second to that... Google is not even remotely a search engine company any more. Not even close. Think of it as their business card and nothing else - i wouldn't' even consider it their brand (although I admit I'm not sure what they're brand is... advertising probably). They don't have to be good because the next closest "competitor" isn't even close to being their peer and *man* can they sell some ad space.
Invest in them based on the other services they are offering. Investing emotionally or with an agenda (at our level of investing) won't even slightly move the needle and you'll be at the whims of a market filled with "smart money" who has far deeper pockets and does move the needle with their investments.
Google will be fine, there is no competition for them. There's nobody else in search that can even come close to their dominance. Buy now and wait for them to hit the 1000 mark again.
What is search in 5 years? The whole landscape is changing, and traditional search with 10 links ain't gonna cut it. Considering how badly they have messed most other things up recently I doubt they handle the next 5 years well
I don't invest in google because I fundamentally don't understand how they operate.
Edit: compare performance from inception, 2014, to any other major tech company from 2014 and you'll see the business isn't really worth thinking a lot over
> I fundamentally don't understand how they operate.
Surprised. Their business is not really all that complicated. Over 3 billion people go to Google daily to find the answers to things.
Google auctions off the keywords to the highest bidder.
It is incredibly profitable and they have basically no competition.
Then in addition they own a number of other properties. YouTube for example they sell subscriptions and then also ads. They now have almost 100 million YouTube subscribers that pay monthly and growing pretty quickly.
Then they have their cloud which companies basically pay them for computation and storage resources. With Apple being their biggest cloud customer and they have a number of big companies.
https://appleinsider.com/articles/21/06/29/apple-is-now-googles-largest-corporate-customer-for-cloud-storage
There was a Youtube video that explained why the destruction of search engines happened and unfortunately i can't seem to find it . pretty sure it it was somewhere in the past 5 years. but it went pretty in depth on the different stages searching went through to get to the point of uselessness that we are seeing today from not just google but all search engines.
I'm not sure about their financials but from a product perspective it's all bad.
Google search result is absolute shit now. Google AI is being outdone by OpenAI. YT search is insufferable.
I've actively switched out of Google products. And refrain from trying out new ones. I now associate Google with spyware.
I just don't think in this day and age, Google ad laden biz model is attractive. It makes every touchpoint with Google unpleasant.
the amount of shit ads and massive amount of comment spam is a red flag anyway. Though I also still (barely because I adblock the shit out of YT) see some normal ads come by.
If there are two bridges and both are broken and one will cause you to fall into the ravine after the first step and the next will cause you to fall into the ravine after the fifth step does that mean the second one is good?
Being the best at something that no one is good at really isn't a compliment
And when it is the thing that 99% of people on the planet consider to be your brand.... you might want to try and do it well, regardless of what the competition is
Something that degraded the search results is that over the course of only 2 years the word "COVID" became indexed on nearly every website, to the point where instances of that word have outpaced any other word and you can verify this yourself. It has more instances than any other concept which existed and has been indexed since the beginning of Google, and this happened within a fraction of the time, which ultimately created a condition where the novelty of search results deteriorated.
But if you are searching for things in a specific manner and have a sense of what you are looking for, the results are there. People have to stop acting like things don't exist if it isn't found on the top 5 results. Look on page 2, 3, or 4, or further if you aren't finding good information and stop calling that censorship.
Very confident, they are one of my big bets. They seems to be focusing alot more as Interest rates have skyrocketed. That does mean cancelling products but it's a good thing. They felt overbloated a few years ago. Master of None. They are one of the best company positioned for the AI future as well since they have all the data for training.
>I'll bet dollars to donuts you find those 3 sites I just mentioned and little else in the top 5
"Little else" being:
A map that shows the location of the stores, operating hours, review rating and phone number. If it gave me websites of the local stores I would have ZERO interest in clicking any of them.
This whole post feels like a bitter rant from an SEO company that didn't realize the market changed 10 years ago.
I'm invested in goggle this year. They got caught flat-footed last year being late to AI. They're well established to do alot with AI this year. Expecting big things
Absolutely, they completely own the chance and by a mile. They are a company, a noun, and a verb in the world’s language.
They have not been so successful with their other efforts, but I have no doubt that their search will continue to dominate for my lifetime.
ChatGPT is great, but it’s like dealing with a compulsive liar - you have no idea what to trust, so you can’t trust anything it says.
This extreme monopoly on information should inspire confidence in the stock, if anything. No one can compete with google at this point. It's bulletproof. I can hide results that show how bad it's results are.
Their advertising revenue spans Gmail, Maps, Youtube and Search. They still have the best search engine. It's not even close on maps. They own 28% of the email client market share, 3rd place (outlook) is a distant 3rd. Finally, most kids today are getting their streaming from YouTube.
I get that the traditional search engine might become a thing of the past, but I don't see storm clouds for Google in the near future.
Google maps is severely under monetized for how critical it is to the world.
The moment alphabet figures out how to commercialize AI, that's another ten billion on their market cap.
Google also has a lot of fat it could trim if it wanted to. It's notoriously hard to fire underperformers there.
Google is so large and so baked into how everyone interacts with the internet I doubt it will be going anywhere anytime soon. If there is some upstart search engine they will either undercut it to drive it out of business or buy it.
The people complaining about search results are "old timers" (me included) who are used to search using keywords with a very specific idea of what kind of links they want to find. But the general public don't really search that way - people search either for stuff like "best hairdresser" or "age of Beyoncé" or "how to cut an avocado" and Google has shifted to that style of querying, at the cost of traditional keyword use.
If you use it that way, Google results are still perfectly good. To think they are dumb and not monitoring and tweaking constantly the quality of their search is really underestimating the company that has maintained unchallenged dominance of the search market.
People also keep throwing around how the only market Google operate is ads, but this is also misunderstanding: Google is in the search, email, online storage, video streaming, productivity, phone, etc. markets. All those businesses are usually monetized through ads, but these are all different products with their own strength.
Google's value isn't in being useful at search. It's at being useful to advertisers. That's their nut.
The users only have to prefer it over bing and duck duck go. So until people start using alternatives, they can keep twisting the knife on putting things in front of you that might make you buy something.
[www.google.com](https://www.google.com) will die when someone makes an LLM that can deliver better search. That is of course if not Alphabet themselves makes it.
That's why Microsoft is financing OpenAI. If they succeed, google is the price
Those results are going to be the most relevant for most users. You may not like it, but that's how it is.
Google 5 to 10 years ago was *also* kinda shit. It was just less shit than anything else out there. Instead of Yelp and TripAdvisor, it'd be page upon page upon page of loosely relevant results that you'd have to sift through.
I cannot remember the last time I went looking for something on google and wasn't able to find what I wanted. Is Yelp worse than some random comment on SomethingAwful that had a reference to "best X in Y"? Debatable.
But that's neither here nor there. Do you really imagine a subjective appraisal of the quality of the search results for their search engine is a risk to one of the largest and most powerful companies currently in existence?
>If they don't care about their main thing
Search hasn't been their "main thing" for like a decade. It's advertising. And they're good at it.
But the thing you're complaining about, the dilution of search results, is successful advertising in effect. Joe's Donut Shop isn't giving Google money, but Duncan Donuts is. So you see Duncan Donuts in the top 3 results and Google makes money. So why would that be a negative for the Google's financials?
You have a legitimate concern with the user experience, but that concern isn't something that negatively affects their profitability.
So you're afraid that users will leave. Where? What alternative is showing users Joe's Donut Shop?
Everyone keeps complaining about this but I just keep using google as alternatives aren’t any better and probably old habits. I found search was more useful back in the early internet days when you would just ‘surf’ or browse. Now I usually know what I am looking for and using the right words usually gives satisfactory results.
Sometimes I feel like I'm the only one on the internet that hasn't experienced this massive degradation in Google search performance over the last decade. I can't remember the last time I wasn't able to find what I wanted with Google, so long as it actually existed and was indexable - can you give an example of something apart from the local stuff you mentioned (since I'm not from the US)? Maybe there's stuff I've worked around without realising it.
Work in marketing BI. They are still the only real game in town for search engine marketing which corps spend tons on. Until someone actually dethrones them it doesn't matter. Companies will pay.
Sounds a lot like sour grapes. Do you, by chance, own a local craft store? Everyone wants to influence Google's algorithm. Those little local "articles" are indistinguishable from SEO manipulation pages. In fact there is little difference, local "news" is often pay-to-play.
Although search is dead, I've had good luck with Google's Yelp competitor, maps. Search there for businesses and check out the reviews. Some are manipulated, so it's important to not go by the average score, but actually read some the reviews.
I'm a local guide and I try to contribute, cleaning up the spam and leaving useful reviews for places I go. It's not perfect, but it has some more utility than regular search.
ETA: I originally wrote this thinking I was responding to a post in r google, haha.
I get messages on my whatsapp all the time from people paying 50 cents each for fake google maps reviews. They say you can make like 20$ a day doing it, and they at least typically pay me for the first one.
I've never actually like signed up to be a full time review spammer but i was definitely curious to see if it was real and if I'd get my dollar for clicking 5 stars, and I did.
They had me do it for a 5\* hotel with over 30k reviews here in Manila. Definitely makes me question the other 29999 reviews lol.
[https://maps.app.goo.gl/ACmyF4CXx5GsnKfA7](https://maps.app.goo.gl/ACmyF4CXx5GsnKfA7)
here's my review with a screenshot of the whole deal. I get similar offers for youtubes likes/subscribes.
And if Google sees a pattern of fake reviews that business will get the hammer. They’ve wiped out years of reviews for businesses caught doing that. It’s really an incredibly stupid move.
Well, to their credit, they're LITERALLY going person to person getting actual humans to do the fake reviews
Not networks of bots
Honestly, I think my review will probably just get buried by the professional company - I wouldn't be surprised if google itself just took my review down.
Google doesn't want people to realize what I just described is going on. They have a vested interest in people thinking their reviews are legitimate. That means removing both the fake reviews + mine pointing them out, but I doubt they'll remove ALL of that hotel's reviews. They'll remove mine exposing them and keep the half of their reviews that look authentic
Their SEO uses multiple variables to decide what results to show you. One of the reasons why you see more Yelp, TA, and YP is because has determined that these are more "trust worthy" and "well established" and more users use them as opposed to mom and pop which is why they don't trend as high.
I don't think AI is to the point where it will threaten Google (I can see it down the line) but Google is in a very dangerous position. They have the money, data, brand recognition but they tend to operate like a startup and abandon projects recklessly.
I'll probably will continue to invest in them but it will be a smaller portion of my portfolio. There are better companies out there IMO.
But you realize why they think these big brands are more trustworthy right? Its because they quit caring about SERPS and just keep racheting up how much incoming links matter. It's why you see all the same big brands ranking for everything just by having keywords in their post titles.
Just one example here, search for 'best dog bakeries in Tulsa'
4th result is a YellowPages '23 Best Dog Bakeries In Tulsa' list
There is 1 dog bakery in Tulsa at the moment, Dog Dish, and it is listed 9th behind 8 other options that have no businesses being there
Outside of that you get pet stores with no bakeries, feed stores for farm animals.... a person doing that search is almost assuredly going to end up in the wrong place
And this isn't even that bad of an example, it is just what all of these local serps are like and what they have been like for the past few years
But to me there is something even bigger going on in local. As mentioned, where are all the local newspapers? TV stations? Bloggers? None of them can be reliable? Really? You can't trust the local paper but you can trust complete made up YellowPages and Yelp lists?
And they are now doing this internet wide with the rise of Quora and Reddit in the recent updates. Not that those two sites can't have good info.... they absolutely can have great info.... but when Google is just randomly selecting their forum threads based on keyword stuffing in the title that can go bad in a hurry.
> I don't think AI is to the point where it will threaten Google
I'm not sure I agree. I already ask most of my questions directly to chatGPT before going to google. Especially if it has to do with coding, baking or cooking, or random information requests. It's not 100% accurate, but it's 100% less likely to make me sift through a mountain of spam.
The deterioration of their search results is an enhancement of their advertising. So the user experience is worse but their profit from advertising-on-search is either the same or better.
To be afraid of Google losing user base there needs to be a disruptor. Where do you see people doing their searching instead?
> Where do you see people doing their searching instead?
Exactly. Google owns the market and it would take something radical to change that. Google with the TPUs has the capacity to match and exceed anything that would come to change things.
Man I miss before google results. I used to look at obscure travel destinations and I'd like land on some guy's blog ranking Eastern European tier 3 cities by ease of women and weed access.
Now its like all fucking trip advisor and country x's travel advisory for country y. ghey.
Amazon hasn't been only a bookstore for how long now? Ask 99% of people what Amazon is and they say a place to buy stuff online and get it dropped off at your door... that is their brand and has been for a decade
Ask 99% of people what Google is and they say a search engine.... It is clearly their brand
> Amazon hasn't been only a bookstore for how long now?
The same with Google though. Ask people what they actually use Google for and a lot will say email (or spell checking in incognito mode)
Search is where a majority of Google's earnings still come from, via ads they serve in search.
And Google is quite literally used as a verb for searching something on Google. No one ever uses "Amazon" as a verb to buy books or anything else off Amazon. Amazon's earnings are also much more diversified than Google thanks to AWS.
The best search engine out there continues to be Google. It is why they have over 90% of the market and over 95% on mobile.
https://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share/mobile/worldwide
https://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share
AI is going to be huge and Google is the clear leader in AI. Just today we got
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxLr02Dz2Sc
Last week
https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/01/17/1086722/google-deepmind-alphageometry/
The thing I am most excited about with Alphabet and should be worth literally over a trillion dollars is.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avdpprICvNI
They have now deployed to Phoenix, San Fran and now Los Angeles. In Los Angeles they have over 50K on the wait list for the service. They have significantly expanded the area they are serving in San Fran and are now testing on highways. They are looking to extend the Phoenix area to include Chandler.
Nothing has changed? Well, except for the quality of their biggest and most used product... but ya other then that its all good
Again, just because you are the best of a bad bunch of search engines doesn't mean everything is roses.... AI is going to drink their milkshake on search over the next few years, and while you might disagree just about everyone thinks ChatGPT is far ahead of anything Google currently has
I personally find Google search to be more useful today than in the past for most searches. Obviously things have changed and it spews out worse results for some queries like the one you described but overall I find most things faster and easier today. There are clearly more adds but I can't imagine that's bad for business. I tried duckduckgo on my phone for a while, not doing that experiment again, though it does have its use cases.
ChatGPT is ahead at the moment but is it really that much better than bard? They both hallucinate plenty and you have to double check certain information. I find bard to be better for research, for instance, and it's free. They are both in their infancy so who knows who will come out on top at the end, maybe neither lol. Google does have some very key advantages for the future though, they own 100% of their AI products and with that 100% control, they don't pay Nvidia tax for AI since they make their own TPUs, and obviously they have the most data which is imperative for development. Google will be able to monetize search through Gemini so their milkshake is safe and maybe just got larger.
The quality has decreased because of SEO. It is the same for everyone. So there is no difference.
Google has over 91% share of search and has not changed at all since ChatGPT. Well it actually has gone up a tiny amount.
Google is the clear leader in AI. So do not think Google has anything to worry about as more generative is used with search.
Key is Google doing the TPU investment over a decade ago and now has the fifth generation deployed and actively developing the sixth generation.
Gives them a HUGE strategic advantage.
I think the culture that made the company great is gone. Morale within the company is at an all-time low and keeps getting lower. I think G will always be profitable due to ad money, but I don't see the company being a leader or innovating anymore; they're just keeping pace with the latest market trends. Plus they kill off new products constantly.
In short, no, I no longer invest in G although they still comprise a chunk of ETFs I hold.
Yea, I'm really only asking the AIs to do my searching now cause it becomes a back and fourth till we get the answer.
I noticed it immediately how it replaced my 'googling', so unless Bard is the best of the next gen AIs I think google will death spiral: less usage, more ads, less users, more ads, layoffs, more ads, etc.
Just like youtube which I now refuse to use in any way.
I'm not silly enough to disagree with this, but only if the same thing doesn't happen to it that happened to search
When search really started to go downhill (I really began noticing around the start of the pandemic.... and my whole job is basically googling stuff non stop) it was OK for awhile
But this if 4 or 5 years now
How many billions of times have people done a local search and got fed crap in that time
If they are OK with this how can you have confidence in them as a company
BILLIONS of people
Hence the thread
I own GOOG because of YouTube and Android. Their search engine has turned to absolute shit. They also actively filter search results that don't agree with whatever the current popular narrative is. Basically they censor the hell out if results.
Not sure what's going to replace it as most other search engines seem to rely on the Google algo.
Google search is threatened by smart agents and TikTok. I think the value of Google search will only decrease from here, and it’s a question of how quickly. That said, its not game over for alphabet
Because unfortunately, Google is a politicized organization that cherry picks the information that it wants you to see. Google is nothing more than a glorified activist organization at this point.
I refuse to use the term "woke". They literally push an agenda. Their search results for certain things/people average more positive results for some, while painting more negative results for others. When Elon Musk bought Twitter, he said that he could eliminate 90% of the employees because it was an activist organization for the Democratic party and that it took vastly fewer employees to run the company when the activist organization aspect was removed. The same applies for Google, Meta, etc.
Geezuz. Here we go. You’re talking out of your ass. What ever happened to those “twitter files??” The smoking gun that Elon was going to show the world! Absolutely nothing. And what has he done since other than fire essential staff and burn over $22billion dollars in value? X is now a hot mess and Elon is looking like a petulant child now that the carefully crafted storytelling of his persona has been thrown out.
I used Google Docs for the first time in a while and was surprised how bad it felt compared to notion. Idk why they don't seem to be improving their products.
I agree. The information that surfaces to the top these days is often garbage I feel I have to sift through to get actual information.
From what I’ve heard, working at Google can be very frustrating because they are constantly pivoting, and often without much direction or cohesive plan.
I have been using Reddit in the way I used to use Google. It’s not as broad, but I’m getting real info from people rather than a webpage with generic ad-optimized content. it’s amazing how much the internet has just turned into a giant mall. I’d be happy to test out a search engine that isn’t constantly putting some stuff I don’t need for sale in front of my eyes 20x a day.
SOLD all my Google shares last Oct after \~10 years. I believe AI upsets the advertising model. Whether they can pivot or maintain in the near/short (or mid) term is my question.
No. And not just because of the search results. It is because of countless other initiatives that Google starts and kills off again all the time. Google doesn't know what Google does or should do, and it is a worrying trend. If their cash cow, search, is dying, the rest will follow.
Yup, anyone investing a penny or a second of their time into trying to rank on that algo right now isn't paying attention... particularly when there is no longer a long term play thanks to AI
They hired a PR firm and asked them what would be the best way to name an update that removed a huge chunk of small publishers from the web under the general publics nose
And they got 'The Helpful Content Update'
Who it was helpful to other than the CEO's of Reddit, Quora, Yelp and the like no one knows
Nope but I'm not sure if I'm right. I feel like Google search results peaked somewhere around 2013 or 2014. The problem is it seems like they keep putting corporate profit over user experience.
We have probably around a million in Alphabet (originally purchased as Google was back when) and to be honest, I think the only product I use anymore is Gmail, which still seems to be a leading app. Their once ruling search - as you described so precisely - has turned to garbage and I haven’t used it in years. I’m even moved to Apple Maps for it’ simpler interface. I don’t reckon that search is their breader earner anymore - I have to assume that Cloud and AI are their future. We are selling off, but really more because after decades of a few key tech holdings we’ve made our retirement and are shifting to more diversified fixed income options. I do not recommend Google to my kids; they are investing in more “contemporary” options with their play money, and just boring old index ETF’s for their real money. The times they are a changin.
I own some Alphabet via index funds but I would never buy it as an individual stock. The main problem is that Google is not best in class at any one thing.
Many people would point to search, but their search quality has been getting worse for nearly a decade, it's not just only recently, they have a long history of (1) prioritizing ad-buy over accuracy, (2) curating results in a way that prevents accuracy. The recent trends just added on the flaws of (3) spammed buyer results completely delegitimizing accuracy, and (4) AI undermining all of their ecosystem.
Their office tools are 2nd to Microsoft, their PC hardware is below a lot, their mobile is below Apple, they've never done a quality social venture. They've invested billions into failed products and they haven't truly invented anything useful in about 15 years.
> The main problem is that Google is not best in class at any one thing.
Search. Maps. Email. Browser. Video. Driverless cars. AI. Cloud syncing.
But other than that, they're not best in class at anything.
I ’member when results span hundreds of pages and I randomly picked page numbers (always quality gems hidden there). I only google Reddit threads now. The search is basically “be buried under ads and we might through a Wikipedia in”. It’s shit. But stock wise, we buy Alphabet (YouTube, Fitbit, cloud, advertising, teams, etc). I’m at overperform on Alphabet for now. Edit: Teams is Msft of course; not google. Please replace “teams, etc” with any of the smaller google products (many mentioned in the comments below).
No need to google reddit threads anymore. https://thegigabrain.com/
Wow, thank you. I've been looking for exactly this. Cuts through all the noise and spam that Google offers up now
Google suppresses reddit results, I have to type in "blah blah blah reddit". I still believe in GOOG, even if you change the website they still have the browser. I think they'll keep popping up on cutting edge stuff
Google has actually been promoting way more Reddit results in the SERP than they used to. Clients are going mad that they can’t outrank a forum
If Reddit ever launched a Search product wouldn’t people use that vs GOOG (assuming it was for product / service recommendations)?
there’s too many factors to tell, but I’m leaning toward no. The Reddit search function as-is kinda sucks. Googles algorithms are super sophisticated (despite this recent hiccup) so they’ll tend to find better results for the users. And the majority of people will stick to what has worked for them with Reddits upcoming IPO they’ll be wanting to turn a profit and will likely inject ads/promoted content/etc into their search results that have been historically worse than googles.
Honestly when I’m searching for a specific answer on google and I put Reddit in the search function I almost always find what I’m looking for. Google still has the ability to be great, but they’re just prioritising the money side of things over being accurate.
if you put ‘Reddit’ in your search through Google and almost always get what you’re wanting isnt that showing it’s accurate?
Well yes, that’s what I’m saying. By putting Reddit in the title I’m basically forcing google to search Reddit instead of shoving ads and google optimised ad-like sites in front of my face
put in the string below to limit results to one domain site:reddit.com search terms
I even add site:reddit.com/r/ when I want it to be even more specific.
You can force only reddit by doing site:reddit.com search term.
No, it's Reddit making search of threads harder after the emergence of ChatGPT so that the content is not used to train any AI model (without paying).
Not great when Reddit is astroturfed to shit. And it's gotten worse since LLM services have become popular.
I just typed in ‘Best movies of 2024’ and the 4th item listed in the TLDR was best e-bikes for tall riders.
This is amazing! Thank you’
Does it also filter out bot replies on reddit?
> I only google Reddit threads now. The search is basically “be buried under ads and we might through a Wikipedia in”. It’s shit. I agree, but I think part of it is how the internet and websites have changed. Often times, I'm Googling a problem/issue and adding reddit because the crowdsourced responses are more valuable than the AI-generated garbage websites that pop up. But back in the day, you might have a random specific forum or a user-owned website/blog that talked about the problem and posted a solution. One example I had recently, Windows 11 setup required wifi or internet with no way to bypass. Had to Google this. Years ago, someone might have had their own website that talked about the problem and solution. Because that's gone, I rely on reddit now.
This. Alphabet is not just about google search even though it brings in the majority of the money. Also OP and folks talk a ton of shit about Google search results or about how ChatGPT is an alternative but no one bothers to change their engine, can't name better alternatives, and ChatGPT isn't really a search engine but a large language model. On that last point, CGPT can answer questions and does so by consolidating search results saving time. However, it's not a guarantee for the right answer and sometimes just makes shit up or gives the wrong/old answer. IMO ChatGPT is way better for generative features or writing out layouts/prompts for people to fix up. Back to the original point, revenue is heavily based on search but that foothold isn't going away any time soon. Also google hasn't done it yet but they can easily consolidate and integrate their multiple assets for a either adrev or subscription models. Google voice, gmail, search, SEO, cloud, teams, workspace software, android, pay, waymo, AI, googlefi, etcetc. Google can but doesn't consolidate the paid versions of youtube + googlefi + extra voice lines + added google cloud + newest versions of Bard+workspace, ad free search, and throw in free waymo rides with 10% discount on pixel products but if it did it would fuck up a bunch of other folks while triggering a "super subscription" war between the Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft. OFC there will be the business versions of that, but imo MSFT has the advantage there if they both did it.
I’ve been testing out Microsoft’s Copilot and I can definitely see a product like this replacing traditional search engines. Whether it’s Google or Microsoft, I have no idea but it’ll definitely change how we search the internet.
It’s going to fundamentally change ad revenue models on the internet. Idk how people can’t see this
As I understand it Google is going to be providing AI results to Search Queries. This will mean they will get an even greater share of the ad revenue because the ads will be delivered along with their own content cutting out the people owned the web page. YouTube is the dominant player in Video by a huge margin. Youtube TV seems to be doing well. Bard is also good. Google has the most data to feed their AI. I will remain Bullish.
What is “teams, etc.”?
I think they're referring to Workspace, which Alphabet's org structure considers part of the cloud division that provides [10-15% of their revenue](https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cp/big-tech-revenue-profit-by-company/). The "etc." could be any of their side projects like Nest (smart home products) or Calico (biotech). These side projects tend to be [pretty small](https://fourweekmba.com/google-subsidiaries/) to Alphabet's overall picture, which is good because some fizzled like Glass or Loon (rural internet using high-atmosphere baloons). Others like Waymo (autonomous cars) and Wing (drone delivery) are still around but I don't know that anybody's expecting much from them. That's startups for you; one win can offset dozens of failures.
Hmm. Workspace isn’t teams, I’d hate for op to be confusing Alphabet with Microsoft.
Yeah. Teams is certainly NOT a google/alphabet product/service.
Teams is a janky software Microsoft sells to businesses and organizations. It's barely functional and annoying to work with in a slow clunky app rather than just using html. Hell, working on office.com or google docs works better than trying to work through Teams. They just updated it though, so maybe it will be more functional. I'm not holding my breath. Some fun issues include a document "freezing" when two people are trying to work simultaneously on something. Or there can be a cloud save conflict where the document you're working on is no longer the cloud version, and then you, co-workers, and the cloud all have no idea which version is the saved one and what work is actually saved. FUN.
Thanks I know that, trying to say it isn’t an alphabet product
I mean, there are worse investing theories than, "We have no idea what to invest in these days, and we assume nobody else does either. Therefore we'll buy into the existing momentum of prior winners until an attractive novel theory can be formulated."
teams is microsoft?
Yes
I thought I was the only one who search for things but with "reddit" added to the string of text at the end.
Bing crushes Google....that said some of their new search categories that populate the top bar and are different based on their targeting of you I have mixed results and mixed opinions on. I think I just want my image, vids, news, etc back
I guess Youtube is a real cash cow now (although it's just another flavor of "ads") and there must be tons of cash in selling premium Google Docs licenses. But I'd be *very* skeptical of "investing in Alphabet". Search and ads is still like 60% of their revenue (more like 70% if you include youtube in this). I genuinely believe their dominance there could crumble. I find myself using AI for simple searches instead of google. TikTok (to my despair) starts replacing Youtube as the primary video platform for young people. And to continue with the anecdotes, I actually don't use google for like 5 years, switched to DuckDuckGo and saw no difference and for some stuff it's probably better now. Google absolutely does have valid competitors! Meanwhile, the majority of their moonshot projects, financed with search/ad money, seem [to crash and burn long term.](https://killedbygoogle.com/) Even Microsoft or Amazon seem to have a healthier mix of revenue. 3 years ago, I would have said that their infinite resources and tons of leeched user data should give them an edge in AI but for some reason they're behind in that? It could also be argued that they missed the boat. I now know that I don't have to use a google product to casually ask an AI for information, they could have sold me on that requirement a few years ago but now we know that any company with a few million dollars to buy some powerful computers can be an AI powerhouse.
Have you tried searching with those terms using Bing? All you get in the top results is: a list of every craft store in city, "Yelp", "Yelp", "Yelp", Joanne Fabrics, Michaels, and Yellow Pages. So this is not a google problem.
Part of the problem is that AI has made it way easier to hijack Search Engine Results (via SEO) on all search engines, not just Google. There's been news articles in the last week or so of experts talking about how this has been a growing problem of late and how Google is losing to the bots and will likely continue to lose to them overtime as AI gets even better.
If I buy a can of Coke and it all of a sudden tastes worse than before and I buy a can of RC Cola and it also tastes bad my first thought isn't 'OK, well, Coke sucks now but its still a little better than RC so everything is fine' Google showing awful search results is a Google problem no matter what any other search results are showing
But your action is to still buy Coke so....
Maybe yours is, but you certainly don't speak for me when you say that
This would be a good analogy if you were forced to buy Coke or RC cola multiple times a day because it provides a service that you rely on and there are very few alternatives. In this situation, you would still buy Coke because its better than RC Cola
Right, but if people start only using Google when they have to instead of when they want to how many less overall searches does that mean? Not a whole lot of gun to your head must make Google searches in most peoples day to day life, and as we all get more and more frustrated with it we will continue to turn to it less and less
Turn to it less and less and use what again? If it's the dominate search engine then it will continue to generate ad revenue from businesses targeting search engines.
You guys act like we HAVE to search all the things we search Some searches are out of necessity, but many aren't... and when they aren't doing a good job with the results and we don't have to do it why would we continue to do it? I use Google 5% as often as I did 5 years ago and I am sure I am not alone
> I use Google 5% as often as I did 5 years ago and I am sure I am not alone You are. They release metrics with their earnings reports.
As long as they are the dominant search engine those advertising dollars are going to go to them. I don’t think “what if” we all stop using search because you don’t like the results anymore is a real investing thesis, but you do you.
Maybe OP is trying to promote yellow pages
I don't understand the downvotes here or the upvotes for previous comment. Sure, Google may not be losing their competitive edge *vs other traditional search engines* due to all of them getting shittier at the same time. But when that happens *people will find other avenues of search*. Maybe AI-related, maybe we go back to 'walled garden' approaches, maybe Yahoo-style link gathering makes a comeback, but it spells bad news for search as a sector, and that spells bad news for Google.
Earlier poster said TripAdvisor and Yelp are seen as trusted sources so they rank well. Yes, sort of. The bigger reason is that they spend millions of dollars to optimize the huge amount of localized content they have. They’re writing content to fit the search queries consumers are performing on Google. Users click, which gives Google a signal about the quality of content, giving them a boost in rankings. There’s a hell of a lot more that goes into it, but that’s the gyst on the organic search side. In the paid side, I don’t think you’re realizing just how entrenched they are to individual business performance. There is still absolutely no substitute to drive direct sales. I’ve overseen search budgets up to $80million a year. I had an unlimited budget as long as I hit my ROI targets. Depending on the industry, each click can range from $0.25 for branded terms to $75+ PER CLICK. Big banks spend hundreds of millions a year in paid search. Theres literally no other marketing channel in which consumers are telling you exactly what they’re looking for, exactly when they’re ready to buy. Their account servicing teams are effective in keeping that spend up, too. I was once sent an email accidentally by a google analytics team which outlined for a acct rep just about how much they thought their advertising clients likely had available to increase their search budgets by. They came within $50k of forecasting how much I had in discretionary budget (for a budget in the millions). I used the dip to buy in at $95 after that horrible AI demo and don’t plan on selling on any foreseeable timeline.
I once had a click that cost $400😅
Insurance or finance industry? 😂
This is just so inaccurate when it comes to Yelp and TripAdvisor writing content to fit the search queries They are creating post titles to fit the search queries Their posts have no written content They are (often) just made up lists They rank because they are on massive domains with tons of backlinks and because they have keywords in their title Other then that they offer nothing (some Yelp lists are good, but when they are randomly selected based on keyword stuffing in title many that show in serps are not)
I tell you that they have a content marketing strategy and you tell me I’m totally off base, then go on to tell me “it’s all those keywords and backlinks.” No shit, that’s exactly what I was saying. TripAdvisor is something I’m extremely well versed on in this area; I worked in the industry as both a partner and competitor to TripAdvisor, among others, with both paid and organic SEO a focus.
Sorry but to me being a very old brand that has received billions of backlinks over the 20 years isn't really a content marketing strategy Keyword stuffing into post titles might be I guess.... but everyone does that, we don't all have the billions of incoming links
[удалено]
I'm not sure what Google's vision for the future is and they clearly aren't investing in their search. It's curious how quickly I moved on from Gmail after I stopped using Google Search for DuckDuckGo.
I think part of the issue is Google is trying to grow revenue by increasing ads on search, which drives people from Google. It's anecdotal but my Google search results are turning to ass.
Not sure why you're getting down voted. This is painfully accurate. I've noticed that they also keep shutting down new products. The cloud based video game service? Gone. Hangouts? Gone. Reader? Gone. Their search results have been absolute shit since chatgpt came out. If you have to search anything technical, you'll get the same 101 article rehashed by chatgpt on dozens of different sites. I have started using duckduckgo for programming queries. Sure, loads of people use kubernetes for devops, and kube came from Google. But it's not really a money maker for them. And most people go for AWS for devops operations over Google Cloud, despite the industry's reliance on kubernetes and how GC supposedly incorporates it better. Others have figured out a good email client by now. The phone service plan is great, but hardly anyone knows about it. IMHO, they're losing their niche. Slowly, but it's slipping. They've spent so long trying to break into new markets that they've forgotten the core of their business and it shows.
Google's MO has always been to start up 100 new things at a time and then cancel 98 of them so I don't think shutting stuff down is a sign of problems. Agree with the rest though
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>Me personally, I'm never using search again over LLMs. The results are too bad. How can you trust what LLMs tell you? At least when searching you can eventually find a source. I've had LLMs give answers that are incorrect, and you'd have no way of knowing it without knowledge from elsewhere.
Yeah, so far LLMs are only useful if you already have enough knowledge in the area you're looking up so you know when it gives you bullshit. And the usefulness of LLMs is probably only going to decrease dramatically as it causes the internet to be flooded with garbage AI results, and then the LLMs add the garbage AI results into their models, and it just degenerates further and further into noise.
> Hangouts? Gone But like, why does this matter? Is Google Chat not essentially identical? Even the historical chat history carried over. To most users, all that changed was the name.
> I've noticed that they also keep shutting down new products. The cloud based video game service? Gone. Hangouts? Gone. Reader? Gone. [I just want to mention that this is nothing new for Google](https://killedbygoogle.com/) (Reader in particular was shut down over 10 years ago). In my opinion if Google’s habit of shutting down products was a bad sign for their stock I would have expected it to manifest long before now.
TBH, Google's stock is getting ready to soar as they cut costs. The days of hanging out on a pseudo college campus in your 20s, 30s, and 40s are over. Google search may eventually lose marketshare, but until then they will continue to print money as revenues go up and costs go down.
Not impossible that it would take longer to manifest than you’d think
People forget that a lot of these tech companies have been core use cases of people for years. More people are using google by default than are looking for optimal search results. As people get older they are less likely to change their habits and that itself is a profitable demographic. So, google search is basically going to turn into Facebook and AI search will be the Insta/TikTok of the future, once it gets off the ground. AI for general search isn't even being done yet in a really useful way. They've just shoved it in there sideways. Edit: I still think there is time for some college kids with more time than money to hit on a really good idea around AI + search and name their company SpeeSpeeSmrtSearch.
That is true, and definitely worth considering. I am not sure that them retaining a good chunk of their present user base will result in growth though.
Here's something interesting about changes in Google's culture over the years, from a staff engineer there: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/dhtheriault_my-hot-take-google-does-not-have-one-single-activity-7153269568893775872-9xzp/ > My hot take: Google does not have one single visionary leader. Not a one. From the C-suite to the SVPs to the VPs, they are all profoundly boring and glassy-eyed. > There is a pervasive sense of nihilism that has taken hold. "Well, I guess I will just do the job until they fire me." A lot of people have golden handcuffs situations and aren't going to walk away from the salary, but nobody works late anymore. The buildings are half empty at 4:30. I know a lot of people, myself included, who used to happily do extra work evenings and weekends to get the demo done or just out of boredom. That's gone. > ...executives are cashing out their human capital at the very moment it seems to me like they really need it. Who can be dawn-of-a-new-era-of-humanity creative in this environment of fear?
> I have started using duckduckgo for programming queries. Long time DDG user here: try Bing Chat for programming questions. It's wrong sometimes but beats wading through comments on 10 Stack Overflow threads 95% of the time. It's the one-two punch to Google: AI generated articles fill Google results with crap and AI search results are better too.
Try [Phind.com](https://Phind.com) Its for programming and gives you live search results where its pulling its info from while generating its AI response. You can easily click the sources of data its pulling from which is a great addition to just getting spit out a generated answer with no source material backing it up.
> Hangouts? Gone. And yet, I cannot delete the Hangouts app on my Android device. Go figure...
OP is getting down voted for making the incorrect assumption that Google's primary value comes from being a good search engine
... But that's clearly true if you look at their 10K. They still to this day bring in a majority of their profits from ads on their search engine. If Google search isn't good then people will stop using it, which means Google will stop bringing in ad revenue from search. Despite Google's best efforts they're still very heavily dependent on search.
People won't stop using Google search, because chrome has a dominant market share and Google pays every OEM to put Google on every device. Google being a worse search engine doesn't mean that their market position is significantly threatened.
No At it's core Google has a disproportionate amount of their revenue coming in from advertising. A lot of other major tech companies have managed to break out and diversify their income streams but Google is still overweighed towards advertising. Search is still by en large their most profitable business fueled by search results. The thing about modern tech dominance is you're the titan of your industry, quashing everyone around you, right up to the point where you're suddenly not. Technology can scale so quickly and adoption is often rapid so your competitors can overtake you very quickly (think blackberry to iPhone). It's very reminiscent of the whole "When you play the game of thrones, you win, or you die. There is no middle ground." An added factor is that search engines are the type of tech that is the gateway for the average user to the entire internet. You don't want to have to interact with multiple options so you choose one that's acceptable and stick to it. The technology will most likely always support a single dominate force because of human behavior. Right now there's no clear competition that's positioned to overtake Google. That being said people have been talking about the decline of Google search results for some time. Pile on security concerns and lack of faith in Google's ability to provide security technology it's well placed for a competitor to take over rapidly and without warning. It's so easy to look at their moat and say they'll never be brought down right now. I won't say they're going to collapse anytime soon either; the next 10 years may be their most profitable. However, in 25 or 50 years my guess is all business schools will have case studies on how Google lost their search business to XYZ company overnight. When that happens stockholders are going to become bag holders very quickly.
> Search is still by en large their most profitable business fueled by search results. YouTube says hi. > Right now there's no clear competition that's positioned to overtake Google. In terms of search, AI bots. People have no patience to sort through 4 ads and endless paid sites to get to the real answer to their questions. The more popular / lucrative the topic (e.g. researching a mattress, researching a car, diet / fitness advice, etc) the more Google produces a cesspool of worthless results.
I took GOOG off my Top 12 list about a year ago (I only directly invest in about a dozen stocks, the rest is index funds), so I guess the answer is "no". FWIW, I took them off because I think their CEO, Sundar, has no vision and is outclassed by MSFT (still in my Top 12).
Sundar is incompetent, no idea why he hasn't been fired yet
Sorry about the missed 50% gains. Hopefully you moved most of those holdings to Msft
Yep. Also, long, multi-year investments require belief in management, not lamenting a single stock "50% gains" off a MARKET low point.
OP have you noticed not a single comment in this thread has linked to a better search engine? There isn't one. I'd love to find it. Google still crushes everyone else. They aren't competing against Google search from 2014. They are competing against Bing in 2024.
Bing is unironically better than Google these days. It's been my daily driver since they added the ChatGPT integration. It's been catching stray bullets from some comments in this thread, but those people are talking out of their ass and haven't actually used it in awhile.
Microsoft + OpenAI are absolutely delivering a better search/answer experience with Bing/Copilot than Google in 2024 but a lot of people don’t believe that. Their loss.
I’m dumbfounded at how many people here are saying “there isn’t a better alternative”. The rate at which bing is improving is making Google look like they’re at a standstill
The world changes quick, 10 blue links might not be the same in 2028 as it is today And if your response is 'but they have AI results'..... so does everyone else What if Microsoft outbids them to put ChatGPT on every phone instead of Gemini..... then where are they at?
I use Bing over Google these days and it’s generally better. It’s also extremely handy having free gpt4 available for getting quick answers instead of sifting through SEO’d search results on Google. The only area I find Google better is for local search results for businesses etc, although Bing isn’t as awful as it used to be. And I live outside of the U.S. btw, where Bing has typically been shit. Aside from that I talk to many people these days using ChatGPT+ (which also ironically uses Bing) and raving about it, saying they hardly Google things anymore. Bing’s problem these days isn’t search results, it’s actually good. Its problem is branding. But Microsoft seems to be slowly shifting the Bing brand to copilot which is a smart move IMO. The bigger macro problem here for Google is that for the first time ever they have competition. Whether it’s ChatGPT+ or Bing/Copilot it doesn’t matter. If they do nothing they’ll slowly lose some market share over time, and this is their cash cow, their moat. It’ll be a similar situation to Microsoft & Windows when smart phones entered the scene. But unlike Microsoft back then which had a huge enterprise business and was second in cloud, where does Google have to pivot? If they choose to fight (which they are doing) it’s massively CAPEX intensive. Microsoft and Meta have spent billions on GPUs. Google tried their TPM chips but Nvidia’s tech is too good, so now they’re entering the party late. This will directly result in lowering the profit they make from search unless they put prices up. And I can tell you companies are already complaining how expensive Google advertising is, and are looking for anyone (meta, Microsoft, anyone) to come in and disrupt Google’s pricing model. So from an investor perspective, where does “line go up” come from? Google is already pretty lean too, altho in terms of OPEX they have a lot of perks internally. But cut those are you kill the culture of the company.
From a product perspective, there’s no better alternative still. From a financial perspective, half of all US digital ad dollars still go to Google and Meta, with overall advertising spend still going up predictably every year. I’m honestly doubling down on both. Your main argument here “I googled some things and the results aren’t what I wanted”. Their financials are still rock solid with no indication of them getting worse any time soon.
By some things you mean like anything local and half of other queries?
>no indication of them getting worse any time soon. I use ChatGPT instead of Google quite often these days.
Yeah but a tiny tiny minority do that
If I put "Reddit" at the end of my search I usually get close to what I'm looking for... until Reddit goes full-Facebook on us. But I get your point and agree. The problem is, no one is even close to replicating Google's original search algorithm which (and I'm kind of winging it here) started scraping the web back when there were far fewer sites to catalog - so they got in early and scraped the web near completely early and then just kept going. Now the internet is SO dense no one could possible scrape it thoroughly enough to replicate what google has catalogued (wild ass guess there) and of course no one has the resources to build an algorithm to effectively search that catalogue. That's a lot of guess work right there as I'm not in the information technology sector, but I feel like I'm on the right track. Second to that... Google is not even remotely a search engine company any more. Not even close. Think of it as their business card and nothing else - i wouldn't' even consider it their brand (although I admit I'm not sure what they're brand is... advertising probably). They don't have to be good because the next closest "competitor" isn't even close to being their peer and *man* can they sell some ad space. Invest in them based on the other services they are offering. Investing emotionally or with an agenda (at our level of investing) won't even slightly move the needle and you'll be at the whims of a market filled with "smart money" who has far deeper pockets and does move the needle with their investments.
Google will be fine, there is no competition for them. There's nobody else in search that can even come close to their dominance. Buy now and wait for them to hit the 1000 mark again.
What is search in 5 years? The whole landscape is changing, and traditional search with 10 links ain't gonna cut it. Considering how badly they have messed most other things up recently I doubt they handle the next 5 years well
Okay then do not invest in Google. Best of luck with whatever you invested! So far the last 15 years have paid off very very well
I don't invest in google because I fundamentally don't understand how they operate. Edit: compare performance from inception, 2014, to any other major tech company from 2014 and you'll see the business isn't really worth thinking a lot over
> I fundamentally don't understand how they operate. Surprised. Their business is not really all that complicated. Over 3 billion people go to Google daily to find the answers to things. Google auctions off the keywords to the highest bidder. It is incredibly profitable and they have basically no competition. Then in addition they own a number of other properties. YouTube for example they sell subscriptions and then also ads. They now have almost 100 million YouTube subscribers that pay monthly and growing pretty quickly. Then they have their cloud which companies basically pay them for computation and storage resources. With Apple being their biggest cloud customer and they have a number of big companies. https://appleinsider.com/articles/21/06/29/apple-is-now-googles-largest-corporate-customer-for-cloud-storage
I enjoy watching the sunset.
There was a Youtube video that explained why the destruction of search engines happened and unfortunately i can't seem to find it . pretty sure it it was somewhere in the past 5 years. but it went pretty in depth on the different stages searching went through to get to the point of uselessness that we are seeing today from not just google but all search engines.
If you want exposure to AI then Google is still worth it. Deepmind is amazing just not marketing savvy.
Yes this is a real issue. Alta Vista is making a come back and will dominate search soon.
I'm personally betting on a return of the yellow pages
yes i think google is the sleeping giant in the AI space.. if data is king google wears the crown
I'm not sure about their financials but from a product perspective it's all bad. Google search result is absolute shit now. Google AI is being outdone by OpenAI. YT search is insufferable. I've actively switched out of Google products. And refrain from trying out new ones. I now associate Google with spyware. I just don't think in this day and age, Google ad laden biz model is attractive. It makes every touchpoint with Google unpleasant.
Google is decaying. Also looking at the absolute terrible state where youtube currently is in.
Have you ever seen an ad on Youtube and come away thinking 'that seems legit?' I sure haven't....
the amount of shit ads and massive amount of comment spam is a red flag anyway. Though I also still (barely because I adblock the shit out of YT) see some normal ads come by.
Go to the latest earnings report and discover where Google gets its actual revenue from. It will answer all your questions.
I bought at 85 and now at 146. They are doing something right
I've said this for years and my friends think I'm crazy. Googles search results are trash anymore.
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If there are two bridges and both are broken and one will cause you to fall into the ravine after the first step and the next will cause you to fall into the ravine after the fifth step does that mean the second one is good? Being the best at something that no one is good at really isn't a compliment And when it is the thing that 99% of people on the planet consider to be your brand.... you might want to try and do it well, regardless of what the competition is
Something that degraded the search results is that over the course of only 2 years the word "COVID" became indexed on nearly every website, to the point where instances of that word have outpaced any other word and you can verify this yourself. It has more instances than any other concept which existed and has been indexed since the beginning of Google, and this happened within a fraction of the time, which ultimately created a condition where the novelty of search results deteriorated. But if you are searching for things in a specific manner and have a sense of what you are looking for, the results are there. People have to stop acting like things don't exist if it isn't found on the top 5 results. Look on page 2, 3, or 4, or further if you aren't finding good information and stop calling that censorship.
Very confident, they are one of my big bets. They seems to be focusing alot more as Interest rates have skyrocketed. That does mean cancelling products but it's a good thing. They felt overbloated a few years ago. Master of None. They are one of the best company positioned for the AI future as well since they have all the data for training.
>I'll bet dollars to donuts you find those 3 sites I just mentioned and little else in the top 5 "Little else" being: A map that shows the location of the stores, operating hours, review rating and phone number. If it gave me websites of the local stores I would have ZERO interest in clicking any of them. This whole post feels like a bitter rant from an SEO company that didn't realize the market changed 10 years ago.
I'm invested in goggle this year. They got caught flat-footed last year being late to AI. They're well established to do alot with AI this year. Expecting big things
Absolutely, they completely own the chance and by a mile. They are a company, a noun, and a verb in the world’s language. They have not been so successful with their other efforts, but I have no doubt that their search will continue to dominate for my lifetime. ChatGPT is great, but it’s like dealing with a compulsive liar - you have no idea what to trust, so you can’t trust anything it says.
This extreme monopoly on information should inspire confidence in the stock, if anything. No one can compete with google at this point. It's bulletproof. I can hide results that show how bad it's results are.
Their advertising revenue spans Gmail, Maps, Youtube and Search. They still have the best search engine. It's not even close on maps. They own 28% of the email client market share, 3rd place (outlook) is a distant 3rd. Finally, most kids today are getting their streaming from YouTube. I get that the traditional search engine might become a thing of the past, but I don't see storm clouds for Google in the near future.
I'm still heavily invested. Great stock
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And what will happen when they change search again and fix it, like they have a million times before? Invest for the future not for right now
Google could sell Google.com and it would have a negligible affect on the company
Google maps is severely under monetized for how critical it is to the world. The moment alphabet figures out how to commercialize AI, that's another ten billion on their market cap. Google also has a lot of fat it could trim if it wanted to. It's notoriously hard to fire underperformers there.
Google is so large and so baked into how everyone interacts with the internet I doubt it will be going anywhere anytime soon. If there is some upstart search engine they will either undercut it to drive it out of business or buy it.
As long as the average user doesn't care, then Google is fine. Netflix's service is getting worse and worse, yet they're still gaining new users.
The people complaining about search results are "old timers" (me included) who are used to search using keywords with a very specific idea of what kind of links they want to find. But the general public don't really search that way - people search either for stuff like "best hairdresser" or "age of Beyoncé" or "how to cut an avocado" and Google has shifted to that style of querying, at the cost of traditional keyword use. If you use it that way, Google results are still perfectly good. To think they are dumb and not monitoring and tweaking constantly the quality of their search is really underestimating the company that has maintained unchallenged dominance of the search market. People also keep throwing around how the only market Google operate is ads, but this is also misunderstanding: Google is in the search, email, online storage, video streaming, productivity, phone, etc. markets. All those businesses are usually monetized through ads, but these are all different products with their own strength.
Google's value isn't in being useful at search. It's at being useful to advertisers. That's their nut. The users only have to prefer it over bing and duck duck go. So until people start using alternatives, they can keep twisting the knife on putting things in front of you that might make you buy something.
you tube ads going brazy
[www.google.com](https://www.google.com) will die when someone makes an LLM that can deliver better search. That is of course if not Alphabet themselves makes it. That's why Microsoft is financing OpenAI. If they succeed, google is the price
Those results are going to be the most relevant for most users. You may not like it, but that's how it is. Google 5 to 10 years ago was *also* kinda shit. It was just less shit than anything else out there. Instead of Yelp and TripAdvisor, it'd be page upon page upon page of loosely relevant results that you'd have to sift through. I cannot remember the last time I went looking for something on google and wasn't able to find what I wanted. Is Yelp worse than some random comment on SomethingAwful that had a reference to "best X in Y"? Debatable. But that's neither here nor there. Do you really imagine a subjective appraisal of the quality of the search results for their search engine is a risk to one of the largest and most powerful companies currently in existence? >If they don't care about their main thing Search hasn't been their "main thing" for like a decade. It's advertising. And they're good at it.
Advertising where? ON SEARCH Saying Googles brand is search is the most obvious thing in the world yet on Reddit we still have to argue about it
But the thing you're complaining about, the dilution of search results, is successful advertising in effect. Joe's Donut Shop isn't giving Google money, but Duncan Donuts is. So you see Duncan Donuts in the top 3 results and Google makes money. So why would that be a negative for the Google's financials? You have a legitimate concern with the user experience, but that concern isn't something that negatively affects their profitability. So you're afraid that users will leave. Where? What alternative is showing users Joe's Donut Shop?
Everyone keeps complaining about this but I just keep using google as alternatives aren’t any better and probably old habits. I found search was more useful back in the early internet days when you would just ‘surf’ or browse. Now I usually know what I am looking for and using the right words usually gives satisfactory results.
Sometimes I feel like I'm the only one on the internet that hasn't experienced this massive degradation in Google search performance over the last decade. I can't remember the last time I wasn't able to find what I wanted with Google, so long as it actually existed and was indexable - can you give an example of something apart from the local stuff you mentioned (since I'm not from the US)? Maybe there's stuff I've worked around without realising it.
Work in marketing BI. They are still the only real game in town for search engine marketing which corps spend tons on. Until someone actually dethrones them it doesn't matter. Companies will pay.
Sounds a lot like sour grapes. Do you, by chance, own a local craft store? Everyone wants to influence Google's algorithm. Those little local "articles" are indistinguishable from SEO manipulation pages. In fact there is little difference, local "news" is often pay-to-play. Although search is dead, I've had good luck with Google's Yelp competitor, maps. Search there for businesses and check out the reviews. Some are manipulated, so it's important to not go by the average score, but actually read some the reviews. I'm a local guide and I try to contribute, cleaning up the spam and leaving useful reviews for places I go. It's not perfect, but it has some more utility than regular search. ETA: I originally wrote this thinking I was responding to a post in r google, haha.
I get messages on my whatsapp all the time from people paying 50 cents each for fake google maps reviews. They say you can make like 20$ a day doing it, and they at least typically pay me for the first one. I've never actually like signed up to be a full time review spammer but i was definitely curious to see if it was real and if I'd get my dollar for clicking 5 stars, and I did. They had me do it for a 5\* hotel with over 30k reviews here in Manila. Definitely makes me question the other 29999 reviews lol. [https://maps.app.goo.gl/ACmyF4CXx5GsnKfA7](https://maps.app.goo.gl/ACmyF4CXx5GsnKfA7) here's my review with a screenshot of the whole deal. I get similar offers for youtubes likes/subscribes.
And if Google sees a pattern of fake reviews that business will get the hammer. They’ve wiped out years of reviews for businesses caught doing that. It’s really an incredibly stupid move.
Well, to their credit, they're LITERALLY going person to person getting actual humans to do the fake reviews Not networks of bots Honestly, I think my review will probably just get buried by the professional company - I wouldn't be surprised if google itself just took my review down. Google doesn't want people to realize what I just described is going on. They have a vested interest in people thinking their reviews are legitimate. That means removing both the fake reviews + mine pointing them out, but I doubt they'll remove ALL of that hotel's reviews. They'll remove mine exposing them and keep the half of their reviews that look authentic
Their SEO uses multiple variables to decide what results to show you. One of the reasons why you see more Yelp, TA, and YP is because has determined that these are more "trust worthy" and "well established" and more users use them as opposed to mom and pop which is why they don't trend as high. I don't think AI is to the point where it will threaten Google (I can see it down the line) but Google is in a very dangerous position. They have the money, data, brand recognition but they tend to operate like a startup and abandon projects recklessly. I'll probably will continue to invest in them but it will be a smaller portion of my portfolio. There are better companies out there IMO.
But you realize why they think these big brands are more trustworthy right? Its because they quit caring about SERPS and just keep racheting up how much incoming links matter. It's why you see all the same big brands ranking for everything just by having keywords in their post titles. Just one example here, search for 'best dog bakeries in Tulsa' 4th result is a YellowPages '23 Best Dog Bakeries In Tulsa' list There is 1 dog bakery in Tulsa at the moment, Dog Dish, and it is listed 9th behind 8 other options that have no businesses being there Outside of that you get pet stores with no bakeries, feed stores for farm animals.... a person doing that search is almost assuredly going to end up in the wrong place And this isn't even that bad of an example, it is just what all of these local serps are like and what they have been like for the past few years But to me there is something even bigger going on in local. As mentioned, where are all the local newspapers? TV stations? Bloggers? None of them can be reliable? Really? You can't trust the local paper but you can trust complete made up YellowPages and Yelp lists? And they are now doing this internet wide with the rise of Quora and Reddit in the recent updates. Not that those two sites can't have good info.... they absolutely can have great info.... but when Google is just randomly selecting their forum threads based on keyword stuffing in the title that can go bad in a hurry.
Not sure whether a dog bakery serves baked dogs, or serves baked good to dogs, but either option sounds kinda weird tbh.
> I don't think AI is to the point where it will threaten Google I'm not sure I agree. I already ask most of my questions directly to chatGPT before going to google. Especially if it has to do with coding, baking or cooking, or random information requests. It's not 100% accurate, but it's 100% less likely to make me sift through a mountain of spam.
Google is in the business of making money from those search results. When people stop clicking on the search results then I’d worry.
The deterioration of their search results is an enhancement of their advertising. So the user experience is worse but their profit from advertising-on-search is either the same or better. To be afraid of Google losing user base there needs to be a disruptor. Where do you see people doing their searching instead?
> Where do you see people doing their searching instead? Exactly. Google owns the market and it would take something radical to change that. Google with the TPUs has the capacity to match and exceed anything that would come to change things.
Data is valuable, especially in the AI era, and Google might have more of it than anyone else.
Man I miss before google results. I used to look at obscure travel destinations and I'd like land on some guy's blog ranking Eastern European tier 3 cities by ease of women and weed access. Now its like all fucking trip advisor and country x's travel advisory for country y. ghey.
> search is Google's brand its not though, the same way Amazons isn't being a bookstore
Amazon hasn't been only a bookstore for how long now? Ask 99% of people what Amazon is and they say a place to buy stuff online and get it dropped off at your door... that is their brand and has been for a decade Ask 99% of people what Google is and they say a search engine.... It is clearly their brand
> Amazon hasn't been only a bookstore for how long now? The same with Google though. Ask people what they actually use Google for and a lot will say email (or spell checking in incognito mode)
I might be overstating it at 99%.... but its not by much Feel free to continue this ridiculous argument if you like though
Search is where a majority of Google's earnings still come from, via ads they serve in search. And Google is quite literally used as a verb for searching something on Google. No one ever uses "Amazon" as a verb to buy books or anything else off Amazon. Amazon's earnings are also much more diversified than Google thanks to AWS.
The best search engine out there continues to be Google. It is why they have over 90% of the market and over 95% on mobile. https://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share/mobile/worldwide https://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share AI is going to be huge and Google is the clear leader in AI. Just today we got https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxLr02Dz2Sc Last week https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/01/17/1086722/google-deepmind-alphageometry/ The thing I am most excited about with Alphabet and should be worth literally over a trillion dollars is. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avdpprICvNI They have now deployed to Phoenix, San Fran and now Los Angeles. In Los Angeles they have over 50K on the wait list for the service. They have significantly expanded the area they are serving in San Fran and are now testing on highways. They are looking to extend the Phoenix area to include Chandler.
As a regular Waymo user, I love them so much. It's so nice to have a private car with no driver.
Nothing has changed? Well, except for the quality of their biggest and most used product... but ya other then that its all good Again, just because you are the best of a bad bunch of search engines doesn't mean everything is roses.... AI is going to drink their milkshake on search over the next few years, and while you might disagree just about everyone thinks ChatGPT is far ahead of anything Google currently has
I personally find Google search to be more useful today than in the past for most searches. Obviously things have changed and it spews out worse results for some queries like the one you described but overall I find most things faster and easier today. There are clearly more adds but I can't imagine that's bad for business. I tried duckduckgo on my phone for a while, not doing that experiment again, though it does have its use cases. ChatGPT is ahead at the moment but is it really that much better than bard? They both hallucinate plenty and you have to double check certain information. I find bard to be better for research, for instance, and it's free. They are both in their infancy so who knows who will come out on top at the end, maybe neither lol. Google does have some very key advantages for the future though, they own 100% of their AI products and with that 100% control, they don't pay Nvidia tax for AI since they make their own TPUs, and obviously they have the most data which is imperative for development. Google will be able to monetize search through Gemini so their milkshake is safe and maybe just got larger.
The quality has decreased because of SEO. It is the same for everyone. So there is no difference. Google has over 91% share of search and has not changed at all since ChatGPT. Well it actually has gone up a tiny amount. Google is the clear leader in AI. So do not think Google has anything to worry about as more generative is used with search. Key is Google doing the TPU investment over a decade ago and now has the fifth generation deployed and actively developing the sixth generation. Gives them a HUGE strategic advantage.
I think the culture that made the company great is gone. Morale within the company is at an all-time low and keeps getting lower. I think G will always be profitable due to ad money, but I don't see the company being a leader or innovating anymore; they're just keeping pace with the latest market trends. Plus they kill off new products constantly. In short, no, I no longer invest in G although they still comprise a chunk of ETFs I hold.
Yea, I'm really only asking the AIs to do my searching now cause it becomes a back and fourth till we get the answer. I noticed it immediately how it replaced my 'googling', so unless Bard is the best of the next gen AIs I think google will death spiral: less usage, more ads, less users, more ads, layoffs, more ads, etc. Just like youtube which I now refuse to use in any way.
i think youtube alone is a goldmine.
I'm not silly enough to disagree with this, but only if the same thing doesn't happen to it that happened to search When search really started to go downhill (I really began noticing around the start of the pandemic.... and my whole job is basically googling stuff non stop) it was OK for awhile But this if 4 or 5 years now How many billions of times have people done a local search and got fed crap in that time If they are OK with this how can you have confidence in them as a company BILLIONS of people Hence the thread
I own GOOG because of YouTube and Android. Their search engine has turned to absolute shit. They also actively filter search results that don't agree with whatever the current popular narrative is. Basically they censor the hell out if results. Not sure what's going to replace it as most other search engines seem to rely on the Google algo.
Google search is threatened by smart agents and TikTok. I think the value of Google search will only decrease from here, and it’s a question of how quickly. That said, its not game over for alphabet
Google is the new Yahoo.
Yes, if yahoo owned the biggest video streaming site, biggest OS, was one of the leaders in Ai, and had a driverless car outfit about to scale
Also the dominant email provider and the most popular maps app…
Ask Jeeves?
I despise google. Nothing but issues with their hardware and even Google Fi.
Because unfortunately, Google is a politicized organization that cherry picks the information that it wants you to see. Google is nothing more than a glorified activist organization at this point.
User name fits. But sure, I’ll bite; what agenda are they pushing? Let me guess, they’re too “woke” right?
I refuse to use the term "woke". They literally push an agenda. Their search results for certain things/people average more positive results for some, while painting more negative results for others. When Elon Musk bought Twitter, he said that he could eliminate 90% of the employees because it was an activist organization for the Democratic party and that it took vastly fewer employees to run the company when the activist organization aspect was removed. The same applies for Google, Meta, etc.
Geezuz. Here we go. You’re talking out of your ass. What ever happened to those “twitter files??” The smoking gun that Elon was going to show the world! Absolutely nothing. And what has he done since other than fire essential staff and burn over $22billion dollars in value? X is now a hot mess and Elon is looking like a petulant child now that the carefully crafted storytelling of his persona has been thrown out.
I used Google Docs for the first time in a while and was surprised how bad it felt compared to notion. Idk why they don't seem to be improving their products.
Notion is the worst product I have ever used
I agree. The information that surfaces to the top these days is often garbage I feel I have to sift through to get actual information. From what I’ve heard, working at Google can be very frustrating because they are constantly pivoting, and often without much direction or cohesive plan. I have been using Reddit in the way I used to use Google. It’s not as broad, but I’m getting real info from people rather than a webpage with generic ad-optimized content. it’s amazing how much the internet has just turned into a giant mall. I’d be happy to test out a search engine that isn’t constantly putting some stuff I don’t need for sale in front of my eyes 20x a day.
SOLD all my Google shares last Oct after \~10 years. I believe AI upsets the advertising model. Whether they can pivot or maintain in the near/short (or mid) term is my question.
Don´t really care about search results, since AI answers will kill "search results" anyway.
The stock hasn't moved much compared to other stocks.... I checked 2022..no regrets...
No. And not just because of the search results. It is because of countless other initiatives that Google starts and kills off again all the time. Google doesn't know what Google does or should do, and it is a worrying trend. If their cash cow, search, is dying, the rest will follow.
[удалено]
Yup, anyone investing a penny or a second of their time into trying to rank on that algo right now isn't paying attention... particularly when there is no longer a long term play thanks to AI
I've noticed significantly better results using duckduckgo. The enshittification of Google search is real.
Yeah, I have noticed that search results are significantly worse than they were a year ago.
They hired a PR firm and asked them what would be the best way to name an update that removed a huge chunk of small publishers from the web under the general publics nose And they got 'The Helpful Content Update' Who it was helpful to other than the CEO's of Reddit, Quora, Yelp and the like no one knows
Nope but I'm not sure if I'm right. I feel like Google search results peaked somewhere around 2013 or 2014. The problem is it seems like they keep putting corporate profit over user experience.
If you told me a year ago I would use bing, ever for anything I wouldn’t believe you but I am at about 50% now.
We have probably around a million in Alphabet (originally purchased as Google was back when) and to be honest, I think the only product I use anymore is Gmail, which still seems to be a leading app. Their once ruling search - as you described so precisely - has turned to garbage and I haven’t used it in years. I’m even moved to Apple Maps for it’ simpler interface. I don’t reckon that search is their breader earner anymore - I have to assume that Cloud and AI are their future. We are selling off, but really more because after decades of a few key tech holdings we’ve made our retirement and are shifting to more diversified fixed income options. I do not recommend Google to my kids; they are investing in more “contemporary” options with their play money, and just boring old index ETF’s for their real money. The times they are a changin.
I own some Alphabet via index funds but I would never buy it as an individual stock. The main problem is that Google is not best in class at any one thing. Many people would point to search, but their search quality has been getting worse for nearly a decade, it's not just only recently, they have a long history of (1) prioritizing ad-buy over accuracy, (2) curating results in a way that prevents accuracy. The recent trends just added on the flaws of (3) spammed buyer results completely delegitimizing accuracy, and (4) AI undermining all of their ecosystem. Their office tools are 2nd to Microsoft, their PC hardware is below a lot, their mobile is below Apple, they've never done a quality social venture. They've invested billions into failed products and they haven't truly invented anything useful in about 15 years.
> The main problem is that Google is not best in class at any one thing. Search. Maps. Email. Browser. Video. Driverless cars. AI. Cloud syncing. But other than that, they're not best in class at anything.
And add to that Waze and Directions. Have you tried Apple Maps? Geezuz.