Gartner Predicts Search Engine Volume Will Drop 25% by 2026, Due To AI Chatbots and Other Virtual Agents 93
Gartner: By 2026, traditional search engine volume will drop 25%, with search marketing losing market share to AI chatbots and other virtual agents, according to Gartner. "Organic and paid search are vital channels for tech marketers seeking to reach awareness and demand generation goals," said Alan Antin, Vice President Analyst at Gartner. "Generative AI (GenAI) solutions are becoming substitute answer engines, replacing user queries that previously may have been executed in traditional search engines. This will force companies to rethink their marketing channels strategy as GenAI becomes more embedded across all aspects of the enterprise."
With GenAI driving down the cost of producing content, there is an impact around activities including keyword strategy and website domain authority scoring. Search engine algorithms will further value the quality of content to offset the sheer amount of AI-generated content, as content utility and quality still reigns supreme for success in organic search results. There will also be a greater emphasis placed on watermarking and other means to authenticate high-value content. Government regulations across the globe are already holding companies accountable as they begin to require the identification of marketing content assets that AI creates. This will likely play a role in how search engines will display such digital content.
With GenAI driving down the cost of producing content, there is an impact around activities including keyword strategy and website domain authority scoring. Search engine algorithms will further value the quality of content to offset the sheer amount of AI-generated content, as content utility and quality still reigns supreme for success in organic search results. There will also be a greater emphasis placed on watermarking and other means to authenticate high-value content. Government regulations across the globe are already holding companies accountable as they begin to require the identification of marketing content assets that AI creates. This will likely play a role in how search engines will display such digital content.
I predict 75% chance that Gartner is wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
I mean literally about anything. I have no idea why people pay them to prognosticate on the future.
Re:I predict 75% chance that Gartner is wrong (Score:-1, Offtopic)
Because it's calming for someone posing as an expert telling you what to do.
Consider lockdowns for covid. Today, science has proven beyond reasonable doubt that they didn't have a statistically meaningful impact on spread, and had a massively damaging impact on economy and overall health outcomes. Extra cancer deaths alone are a massive negative, before you even consider things like suicide spike among youth or longterm explosion in the loneliness among the youth and all the mental problems that came out of it, or health harm that comes out of economic misery.
But as experts who advocated for lockdowns have gone on record to state, they were pressured to "to something" because people needed to see that someone who is an expert knows what to do. And then they found out that Chinese Communist Party locked their people in their houses. At least one of national leaders in epidemiology in a Western country is on record stating that his first thought when he heard of that was "we can do that?" Because experts are just as susceptible to this problem as any other human. We view action as better than inaction inherently, even in cases where inaction, such as not locking down, or not prognosticating about a structural change we have little understanding of is probably better than proverbial shooting in the dark.
This comes from our evolutionary impulses, where inaction on feeling that existential dread of being faced with what seems to be a problem and not acting immediately and instead carefully observing what it is that is happening resulted in a death by things like predators and competing humans often enough to select those that would wait and see enough times to select that trait out of our gene pool.
Re:I predict 75% chance that Gartner is wrong (Score:0)
science has proven beyond reasonable doubt
strong words for someone posting no data...
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p... [nih.gov]
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p... [nih.gov]
and i'm not even saying you're wrong but to say such remarkably strong statement "beyond reasonable doubt" on such a variable and complex topic with so much literature out there in all direction and then on top of that wild shit to start tying this together into evolutionary biology in the way you are... man, pass around whatever you are smoking man, that's some high as balls shit
Re:I predict 75% chance that Gartner is wrong (Score:2)
> strong words for someone posting no data...
Are you even being serious? A document from October 2020 certainly has the overall perspective and hindsight of what happened.
You just googled and pasted in the first thing that matched your confirmation bias without any thought.
Published online 2020 Oct 19. doi: 10.15252/emmm.202013171
PMCID: PMC7645374
PMID: 33073919
COVID19 pandemicrelated lockdown: response time is more important than its strictness
Re:I predict 75% chance that Gartner is wrong (Score:0)
then it should be simple for you to counter that with a more recent study! you could absolutely annihilate me on the marketplace of ideas with a 2022/2023 study that counterfactuals both of those studies!
get on your google fu's! you can do it! if it was so simple for me to come up with those it should be twice as simple to counteract those since the data is i will quote again "proven beyond reasonable doubt"
Re:I predict 75% chance that Gartner is wrong (Score:2)
"Sweden's no-lockdown COVID strategy was broadly correct, commission suggests"
https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/... [www.cbc.ca]
Initially I was searching for negative media articles about how Sweden stopped lockdowns early in COVID, but this will do.
Keep in mind CBC funded by a leftist Canadian government, but they do reference the original study.
Re:I predict 75% chance that Gartner is wrong (Score:0)
See now that wasn't so hard was it?
it's interesting for sure but it's far from conclusive and there are some issues with the source study and it's authors. not that it should be ignored but it's not some silver bullet.
Lot's of discussion on both of the spectrum: https://twitter.com/BjornLombo... [twitter.com]
at the end of the day "lockdowns bad" is as brain destroying as "lockdowns good" and these binary ideological positions prevent us from having the actual interesting discussion like when are lockdowns necessary, what should they look like, what measures actually make sense, what countries did good, what countries did bad and why, what does the r.0 and mortality measures have to be on a novel disease to enforce measures
sweden is actually a very interesting case since while they didn't do much in terms of mandatory measures they had very high uptake of voluntary measures that would have happened in a lockdown as well like social distancing, working from home, not attending public events as well as having already high institutional trust and a strong social welfare system, all things a place like the USA lacks so what works there may not work elsewhere and even amongst the scandi countries they didn't do remarkably better or worse
Re:I predict 75% chance that Gartner is wrong (Score:1)
> See now that wasn't so hard was it?
The only thing scientifically proven hard... is my dick... from watching you scramble.
All the sensationalist media bullshit about how Sweden ended lockdowns and it was going to be a disaster, blah blah blah...
It's the same garbage every year. The media is always working over time to push an agenda that anyone can see isn't true. Which is why it's a lot of work.
You can be a pretend pragmatist and a condescending twat but the lockdowns were bullshit. Even king fuckface admitted in hindsight it was mainly a disease of the elderly with a low fatality rate similar to the flu. But you'll probably argue that too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
2020 - 2021
Sweden’s Unconventional Approach to Covid-19: What went wrong
https://chicagopolicyreview.or... [chicagopolicyreview.org]
Column: Did Sweden beat the pandemic by refusing to lock down? No, its record is disastrous
https://www.latimes.com/busine... [latimes.com]
Sweden’s Deadly COVID Failure
https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/20... [thetyee.ca]
Did Sweden’s coronavirus experiment pay off? Not really
https://www.wired.co.uk/articl... [wired.co.uk]
2024
Fuck, now that we can't sell vaccines anymore and the numbers are out, Sweden was right.
https://every.fucking.one/ [fucking.one]
Re:I predict 75% chance that Gartner is wrong (Score:0)
lol firstly i basically agree, at least in the US we did a bad job with lockdowns but keep assuming what i believe, it's been working great
second, dont clip chimp 29 seconds out a fucking 57 minute interview of bill gates to prove anything. [youtube.com] thats the kindof braindead argumentation i am taking issue with, im not even arguing against your conclusions! but you're going about it in such an aggressive piss poor fashion that probably has a lot to do with why you find it " a lot of work" when if it's as obvious as you say it shouldnt be. if what you're saying he is saying is true then why hide the context? just put link a timestamp, by clipping that it makes you absolutely read dishonest agenda pushing (ironic!)
The media is always working over time to push an agenda that anyone can see isn't true.
and everything about how you present things tells anyone reading just the same about you. you can call my pragmatism condescending all you want but your not even being passively-condescending just instead being condescending-condescending and it reeks.
Re:I predict 75% chance that Gartner is wrong (Score:0)
There is a reason why studies you're posting are from 2020, the time of peak hysteria that support lockdowns.
Because you'll struggle to find any saying same things from 2023 (well over a year since situation ended, time to collate the numbers and draw conclusions with benefit of hindsight), while finding plenty that support the opposite conclusions. Because we actually have the numbers now, while we had no numbers in 2020 (situation was unfolding), and very few in 2021 (we started getting some numbers, situation was still on).
For example:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.co... [wiley.com]
Re:I predict 75% chance that Gartner is wrong (Score:0)
lol thank you was that so hard to do from the outset
geez have to fucking pry it out of you guys.
also while that is an interesting case it is far, far, far, far, far from "beyond reasonable doubt"
it is one country with unique social and geographic circumstances. a good piece of data for sure but you're overselling your hand a bit
glad i got you to post anything though, good job! solid C+ for having to force it out of you.
Re:I predict 75% chance that Gartner is wrong (Score:1)
Strange to complain about "uniqueness" of "control group nation" is that it in fact served as a "control group nation" because it's a liberal Western democracy within the EU, functioning under a sufficiently similar legislative, cultural and economic system to serve as control for the global test we did. The main difference was that they didn't lock down, whereas the rest of us did. So we have a "hypothesis - lockdowns and masks have a meaningful impact, test subjects: most of Western democracies, control group within test subject group that doesn't: Sweden".
From oncology standpoint, recognition that "we fucked up bad" started to come as early as 2022 for example:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p... [nih.gov]
And that UK government panel? It was convened to exonerate government after this in mid 2020 started a hell of a snowball:
https://www.thelancet.com/jour... [thelancet.com]
This set the stage for actually blaming the UK government for lockdowns that came after it, because you could argue after this study government was well informed that it was looking to single to double digit percentage increase in specific cancer deaths in near future. And then actual numbers as documented with hindsight confirmed the additional deaths.
Problem with UK is that lockdowns were among the harshest in Western world there (people arrested for walking dogs alone in the park, patently absurd from prevention standpoint even if you believe that this illness spreads outdoors after Summer of Love protests/riots), and both legislation/policing and healthcare is a government function, so government is expected to be responsible for all of it. And they have a lot of pissed off people who lost parents to preventable cancers that weren't screened or treated in time because of lockdowns.
So the very people who's heads were on the chopping block convened on a panel of experts, and exonerated themselves.
Would you like suicide statistics, or literacy statistics to see other well documented massive impacts of lockdowns?
Re:I predict 75% chance that Gartner is wrong (Score:0)
what i would "like" is for these types of sources to placed upfront alongside your incredibly strong claims instead of having to insult and plead for you to post any of it so we can have an actual discussion around a shared reality instead of pure partisan engagement baiting like your initial post.
instead we have to play the silly forum game of "if you want the right answer post a wrong answer instead of just asking for it"
Re:I predict 75% chance that Gartner is wrong (Score:2)
Strange to complain about "uniqueness" of "control group nation" is that it in fact served as a "control group nation" because it's a liberal Western democracy within the EU, functioning under a sufficiently similar legislative, cultural and economic system to serve as control for the global test we did.
Never mind that they have an incredibly low population and even more importantly, a super low population density https://database.earth/populat... [database.earth] which makes it not ideal at all for use as a control in the context of studying the spread of really any disease but particularly an airborne one.
Outside of that of that it makes a perfect control though.
Re:I predict 75% chance that Gartner is wrong (Score:0)
Re:I predict 75% chance that Gartner is wrong (Score:5, Informative)
Today, science has proven beyond reasonable doubt that they didn't have a statistically meaningful impact on spread,
Nope, wrong. Stop listening to Faux News. What you think you're citing has never been peer reviewed [factcheck.org].
But one working paper posted online in January — and not peer-reviewed — has gotten a lot of attention in conservative circles for its conclusion that “lockdowns have had little to no effect on COVID-19 mortality.” The paper, which is an analysis of other studies, has been touted as a “Johns Hopkins University study,” but it’s not a product of the university’s Bloomberg School of Public Health, whose vice dean — among other public health experts — has criticized the paper.
“The working paper is not a peer-reviewed scientific study,” Dr. Joshua Sharfstein, vice dean of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said in a Feb. 8 statement sent to us in an email. “To reach their conclusion that ‘lockdowns’ had a small effect on mortality, the authors redefined the term ‘lockdown’ and disregarded many peer-reviewed studies. The working paper did not include new data, and serious questions have already been raised about its methodology.”
Sharfstein said that early on “when so little was known about COVID-19, stay-at-home policies kept the virus from infecting people and saved many lives. Thankfully, these policies are no longer needed, as a result of vaccines, masks, testing, and other tools that protect against life-threatening COVID-19 infections.”
Further, and for more insight [snopes.com] on this fake study:
While many media reports on this working paper noted that "lockdowns only reduced COVID deaths by 0.2 per cent," this may give readers a false impression of what this working paper actually found. The common definition of a "lockdown" is a mandatory state of isolation. In terms of the pandemic, many people would take "lockdown" to refer to a requirement for people to stay inside their homes (not attending public events, school, going to restaurants, or leaving for any other non-essential reason.)
This paper, however, defines a lockdown as "the imposition of at least one compulsory, non-pharmaceutical intervention (NPI)." This means that this study interprets a mask-wearing requirement as a "lockdown," even if that requirement did not prevent a person from visiting public spaces.
Still further, study after study has shown that lockdowns, social distancing, and mask wearing unequivocally reduced infections and deaths [newscientist.com].
If lockdowns didn't work, why is it every single time people gathered [livescience.com] in groups [vice.com] some of them contracted covid [washingtonpost.com] and some died [go.com] from it? It's almost as if keeping people separated would make more sense owing to the facts.
Re:I predict 75% chance that Gartner is wrong (Score:-1)
People often credit masks and vaccines but the true savior was directional arrows on supermarket floors. By having people and the virus move in one continuous direction it vastly reduced exposure. My sources tell me upwards of 840,000 to 1.7 million lives were saved just by arrows.
And people think they can just walk both ways up and down aisles today. The directional arrows should be here to stay and anyone caught disobeying them should be imprisoned for manslaughter.
--
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
Woke, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Re:I predict 75% chance that Gartner is wrong (Score:1)
lol great response to a well sourced and though out comment.
just snark your way out of thinking about your priors at all. best not to challenge your brain too much.
Re:I predict 75% chance that Gartner is wrong (Score:0)
It's right-wing Trumptards like yourself that continually dismiss the science. It's proven that the directional arrows had as much impact as masking.
Sure, this is mostly true because people weren't double masking like Fauci recommended but to deny directional arrows is worse than black slavery. I hope Donald Trump loses and we open the border up so bigots like you can be lost to American history.
Re:I predict 75% chance that Gartner is wrong (Score:2)
Re:I predict 75% chance that Gartner is wrong (Score:1, Troll)
>If lockdowns didn't work, why is it every single time people gathered [livescience.com] in groups [vice.com] some of them contracted covid [washingtonpost.com] and some died [go.com] from it?
Wait, you don't remember Summer of Love, when thousands routinely gathered to scream next to one another for hours and no one contracted covid?
The thing you linked as debunk btw? That was a government panel that needed to exonerate UK government because it was one of the most draconian ones, looking at a rather miffed populace looking to shake it down for compensation.
By my favourite is the "snopes debunk":
>This paper, however, defines a lockdown as "the imposition of at least one compulsory, non-pharmaceutical intervention (NPI)." This means that this study interprets a mask-wearing requirement as a "lockdown," even if that requirement did not prevent a person from visiting public spaces.
They actually concluded that neither masks nor lockdowns influenced the spread in a meaningful way. Snopes "debunk" you quote is true snopes material: They note that neither lockdowns nor masks generated a significant differential according to the study, therefore they didn't prove that lockdowns generated a significant differential.
No shit. Study pointed out that neither one did. This is a galaxy brain debunk right there.
Re:I predict 75% chance that Gartner is wrong (Score:2)
Have you forgotten how many people refused to wear masks despite them being required? A true lockdown, where everything is closed so you have nowhere TO GO AND MEET PEOPLE in the first place is vastly different from an honor-system of "Please wear a mask so you don't accidentally kill people" that certain people took as literally Nazi Germany levels of oppression.
Re:I predict 75% chance that Gartner is wrong (Score:0)
If lockdowns didn't work, why is it every single time people gathered [livescience.com] in groups [vice.com] some of them contracted covid [washingtonpost.com] and some died [go.com] from it? It's almost as if keeping people separated would make more sense owing to the facts.
And if lockdowns did work, then perhaps you can explain why New York nursing homes had to order so many body bags because they thought it “made sense” to lock up the sick in facilities not even remotely prepared for it.
Perhaps your statistics included China’s lockdowns that resulted in a country with a billion+ humans in it, recording less than 6,000 deaths. Nothing like a horrific amount of corruption to warp those statistics into worthless oblivion. The only thing COVID lockdowns truly validated, was how compliant the lemmings will be. Governments looove being able to predict mass manipulation accurately, and now they can.
Re:I predict 75% chance that Gartner is wrong (Score:2)
Re:I predict 75% chance that Gartner is wrong (Score:2)
Nope, wrong. Stop listening to Faux News. What you think you're citing has never been peer reviewed.
Is it your assertion something is wrong and can be summarily dismissed because it has not been peer reviewed? Shall the huge body of CDC's pandemic era studies none having undergone peer review be considered wrong and subject to summary dismissal as well?
This paper, however, defines a lockdown as "the imposition of at least one compulsory, non-pharmaceutical intervention (NPI)." This means that this study interprets a mask-wearing requirement as a "lockdown," even if that requirement did not prevent a person from visiting public spaces.
Policy questions are the most salient as they directly inform real world impacts of policy. If people are going to organically tend to pursuit NPIs on their own initiative in response to perceived risks anyway then papers contrasting retaliative outcomes of states imposing policy have supreme relevance and value as this most directly speak to the conditions actually faced by the policy maker. As we've seen during the pandemic "mandates" have lead to substantive erosion of trust and legitimacy in state in addition to imposition of avoidable suffering. There has to be something on the other side of the ledger to make the policy worthwhile.
Even early on in the pandemic there was widespread confusion and association of "mandates" with economic hardship even though the economy organically tanked itself before any substantive state mandates were in place.
Still further, study after study has shown that lockdowns, social distancing, and mask wearing unequivocally reduced infections and deaths.
Yet the most rigorous and comprehensive analysis of masking data showed no statistically significant real world impact on spread in the population.
https://www.cochranelibrary.co... [cochranelibrary.com]
If lockdowns didn't work, why is it every single time people gathered in groups some of them contracted covid and some died from it? It's almost as if keeping people separated would make more sense owing to the facts.
It is a natural consequence of the logistic curve for transmission and El Farol (A lot of people I know are sick, maybe I'll stay home until it is less risky). Mandated NPIs tended to be imposed in response to spikes in transmission which by the time they were instituted would have had little impact on baked in inertia.
Worth remembering it was not possible to shield anyone from infection. It is only possible to statistically shift when in time infection occurred. There was value in shifting to different times to stall for vaccines and better treatments or in some occasions reduce impact on medical systems yet everyone was going to get infected whether they were vaccinated or not and whether they even knew they had been infected or not.
Any given policy can only be evaluated against stated goals of the underlying policy. If your goal was to prevent infection then your policy is likely a product of GIGO (see China et el). You most certainly don't want a policy that promotes inevitable synchronization of infections or imposition of increasingly unreasonable demands.
To sum it up: "Oh, God, give us courage to change what must be altered, serenity to accept what can not be helped, and insight to know the one from the other."
Lack of such acceptance and insight did very much result in avoidable suffering and death. In the US alone the medical industry lost out on tens of billions of dollars even with massive government intervention due to large scale failures to provide normal non-covid medical care during the pandemic which of course had massive follow on consequences.
Re:I predict 75% chance that Gartner is wrong (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm curious, how many times on Slashdot have you been shown to be wrong with your covid claims as is the case now with the many replies (complete with backing citations) below your post here?
Re:I predict 75% chance that Gartner is wrong (Score:0)
Indeed. This time citations were truly galaxy brain material. A government panel that was convened to exonerate the government from responsibility for lockdowns and snopes claiming that "because study said that this is "lockdowns and masks" and they defined lockdowns as both lockdowns and masks, they obviously can't prove that lockdowns didn't reduce the spread".
When the claim is that neither mask mandates nor lockdowns did. Neither x nor y. So fact check is that "you didn't prove that it was specifically not x (because one came with the other), you only proved that both together had no statistically visible impact, so you're wrong!"
Galaxy brain debunk. Nevermind that there are people still using snopes for fact checking in 2024, after their modus operandi of "narrative check masquerading as fact check" has been well documented with many examples.
In the wake of well documented increase in oncology deaths from lockdowns. In the wake of well documented rise in youth suicide and mental health problems, also not present in control nation of Sweden, and several other problems. Nope, didn't happen.
The funny part is that I was arguing for lockdowns in 2020. Was I wrong then? Based on information at the time, no. Best information of the time strongly implied that lockdowns were the way to go, but "more data is needed for conclusive evidence" was always the caveat.
The difference between me and people like you isn't that one of us was right and one wrong back then. The difference is that I don't get emotionally invested in most of my opinions to the best of my ability, so I can note to myself that I was wrong and change my mind. In this case, we have ample data from which we can see the things like oncology death wave post lockdowns, we can see the suicide spikes, we can see the crash in literacy rates among locked down children. And we can contrast it with nations like Sweden where lockdowns were very light, and as a result impact is far lesser if at all present on all those metrics.
Ability to change one's mind when new data comes is apparently a superpower, because so few people possess it.
Re:I predict 75% chance that Gartner is wrong (Score:2)
For starters, you're conflating "lock downs did nothing in the context of COVID" with "lock downs caused other problems non COVID problems" which are two separate issues. Furthermore, you use phrases like "well documented" but can't be bothered to provide citation (which should be easy if these things are well documented) as those responding to you have done and it can't be due to the time it would take as you have no problem taking the time to write lengthy posts. It's also interesting that you're taking the time to respond to me rather than the people who have completely taken apart your claims all with proper citation.
After that you start getting personal, talking about me as if you know me while promoting your own enlightenment which is anything but apparent going by your post.
In short, given all these things, I'm having a hard time taking you seriously right now.
Re:I predict 75% chance that Gartner is wrong (Score:0)
The difference is that I don't get emotionally invested in most of my opinions to the best of my ability, so I can note to myself that I was wrong and change my mind.
But you're still desperately clinging to your "electric parking brakes are rare".
Same with turbos...
You still think "vaccinating during a pandemic is bad"...
You're on of the most stubborn and least willing to acknowledge how wrong you are that people are likely to encounter.
You probably still think "homeowners = landlords". Just out of spite because I told you they're not.
Re:I predict 75% chance that Gartner is wrong (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I predict 75% chance that Gartner is wrong (Score:0)
Today, science has proven beyond reasonable doubt that they didn't have a statistically meaningful impact on spread,
LOL. Got any citation for that other than Fox News?
Re:I predict 75% chance that Gartner is wrong (Score:0)
the director of my team absolutely gobbles up anything that Gartner says... we reorg'd our whole infrastructure team into something that makes absolutely zero sense and hasnt worked well for the last 6 years but here we are... cuz gartner says so!
Re:I predict 75% chance that Gartner is wrong (Score:-1)
the director of my team absolutely gobbles up anything that Gartner says...
He probably gobbled up COVID lockdowns and coerced vaccinations too. Once a boot licker always a boot licker.
Re:I predict 75% chance that Gartner is wrong (Score:0)
how'd you know hes an ex-marine?
Re:I predict 75% chance that Gartner is wrong (Score:2)
75% of the prediction might be wrong, but for Google they can't just say 'Gartner has 75% wrong on the prediction of the complete dismissal of our company.' If a doctor is wrong 75% of the time, but has 25% that it's right, your child would die, would you take the chance?
Re:I predict 75% chance that Gartner is wrong (Score:0)
> your child would die, would you take the chance?
If a doctor said a shot could cure your child of an illness and only had a 0.00002% fatality rate; would you take it?
What if the illness it protected against only had a 0.00001% mortality rate.
Re:I predict 75% chance that Gartner is wrong (Score:0)
lol the statistics and probability under stander has logged on
those are the only two metrics we use to evaluate things, yup, you got it "number bigger than other number mean thing good"
Re:I predict 75% chance that Gartner is wrong (Score:2)
I think you are saying Google has to respond to something like this.
I suggest they are, by diversifying their business and investing in LLMs. It may not be enough - in fact, it probably isn't enough if Gartner is right, but they're at least doing something.
Re:I predict 75% chance that Gartner is wrong (Score:2)
Google has responded quite a while ago, long before Gartner said this. They have their own LLM, Gartner's statements actually seem to lean heavily on Google's own assessments. I.e. Gartner isn't actually pulling this one out of their ass, but instead more or less repeating what other players in the search field including Google and Microsoft reps have been saying for a while.
Google's LLM is Bard which is generally considered to be much more prone to hallucinations than ChatGPT and generally less helpful. Their image generator/chatbot is Gemini, which was roundly mocked for being a woke failure recently. It refused to generate images of white Europeans in any context that it could view as positive and said that showing specific race was offensive when asked specifically for white people, and then present other ethnicities in asked role instead. But would generate images for all other main ethnic groups without warnings if requested. And so people asked it to generate "German officer from late 1930s" and got a lot of Sub-Saharan and East Asian Waffen SS and Wermacht officers.
Hilarious scandal followed and Google had to publicly apologize. Interestingly there was a more recent leaks that many of the companies working on image generators now compare their results to Gemini as "a marker of failure".
Also Page and Brin came back from retirement to help with Google's AI efforts and CEO Pichai infamously declared "code red" on them being behind on AI.
Re:I predict 75% chance that Gartner is wrong (Score:3)
Google has responded quite a while ago, long before Gartner said this. They have their own LLM, Gartner's statements actually seem to lean heavily on Google's own assessments.
It's also a comment on the continuing enshittification of google's own search engine. Google search hallucinates results all the time, based on what it "thinks" I want, instead of what I typed into the fucking search box. OK, these may not be hallucinations but a sale of my search to the highest advertising bidder, but it's still shit, and less useful than just giving the user the results that they searched for.
Re:I predict 75% chance that Gartner is wrong (Score:1)
They have recently announced that they will at least try to clean out some of the "spam and AI results" from your search results.
I won't hold my breath considering the recent piratewires story on how google ended up in the mess with Gemini.
Re:I predict 75% chance that Gartner is wrong (Score:1)
But I know that Google will make the results of their LLM useless for search as they have for their traditional search engine.
Google results have been increasingly untrustworthy over the last 12 years. The first page is frequently completely useless.
So I'm hoping for an opensource LLM that isn't corrupted by greed to the point of being worthless.
Re:I predict 75% chance that Gartner is wrong (Score:1)
Meta's LLM model is open source.
Re:I predict 75% chance that Gartner is wrong (Score:2)
Strictly speaking as prognosticators go, 25% accuracy isn't all that bad.
Re:I predict 75% chance that Gartner is wrong (Score:2)
Re:I predict 75% chance that Gartner is wrong (Score:2)
Re:I predict 75% chance that Gartner is wrong (Score:2)
> why people pay them to prognosticate on the future.
Did you ever notice these types of folks sometimes contradict themselves?
1. Decide what you want to do.
2. Pay them for access to a study that agrees.
3. Execute your plan.
4. If it fails, blame your reliance on the #1 forecaster.
4a. If it succeeds take credit.
That's totally worth $1200 of company money.
Re:I predict 75% chance that Gartner is wrong (Score:2)
I mean literally about anything. I have no idea why people pay them to prognosticate on the future.
The numbers are a bit random (could be 5%, could be 75%), but they're saying the same thing I've been saying for months, that LLMs will meaningfully reduce search engine traffic.
Of all the tech companies freaking out and making layoffs I think Google is the one that should really be concerned. LLMs are the one thing that can really bite into their search dominance.
Here comes AI Product Placement (Score:3, Insightful)
Businesses will need to train AI to insert product placement into their answers to maintain ad revenue.
You: What is a detergent?
ChatGPT: A detergent is a substance or compound used for cleaning. It's typically added to water to help remove dirt, grease, stains, and other impurities from surfaces. Detergents such as Dawn work by reducing the surface tension of water, allowing it to more effectively penetrate and lift away grime. They often contain surfactants, which are molecules that have both hydrophilic (water-attracting) and hydrophobic (water-repelling) properties, enabling them to surround and solubilize oily or greasy substances in water. Detergents are commonly used in household cleaning products such as Tide, Palmolive, and Cascade dishwasher tabs.
Re:Here comes AI Product Placement (Score:5, Funny)
Exactly. My example was:
'What time is it in Paris?"
"It is 3pm in Paris. Here are current airline ticket and hotel prices, I've already booked your flight and added it to your calendar. There will be a rental car waiting for you on arrival. This service brought to you by Orbitz!"
Re:Here comes AI Product Placement (Score:2)
welcome to paris Arkansas
For some things, perhaps (Score:4, Insightful)
The trouble with search engines now is that the data is getting old. Say you're trying to find a solution to a programming question for a current API version. What you find is stuff that's several years out of date that doesn't actually work now. AI often gives you similar responses. The result looks legit but when you try the code, it's wrong. And if you tell the AI that it's wrong, it gives you a condescending response "You're right, that blah blah function call doesn't exist. Here's another bullsh*t response."
AI is trained on out-of-date stuff. It doesn't know that it's out of date.
Re:For some things, perhaps (Score:2)
I have been trying for years to learn Python. There are many tutorials. I have yet to get through lesson 1 without getting errors.
Re:For some things, perhaps (Score:3)
That has been a huge issue for years. The worst is when they don't put dates anywhere so I can't tell how old it is. I'm constantly hitting outdated parameter and config options.
Then there are the people who ask a question then go "I solved it!" without posting the solution. I hope there is a place in purgatory for them at least.
Re:For some things, perhaps (Score:2)
Re:For some things, perhaps (Score:2)
Then there are the people who ask a question then go "I solved it!" without posting the solution. I hope there is a place in purgatory for them at least.
Yes, with a sign saying “I managed to get out by”.
Re:For some things, perhaps (Score:2)
And yet when you need to find something that happened ten or twenty years ago you have to wade through all the remotely similar things that happened in reverse chronological order until you get to what you were thinking of.
Re:For some things, perhaps (Score:2)
The trouble with search engines now is that the data is getting old. Say you're trying to find a solution to a programming question for a current API version. What you find is stuff that's several years out of date that doesn't actually work now. AI often gives you similar responses. The result looks legit but when you try the code, it's wrong. And if you tell the AI that it's wrong, it gives you a condescending response "You're right, that blah blah function call doesn't exist. Here's another bullsh*t response."
AI is trained on out-of-date stuff. It doesn't know that it's out of date.
Given the issues you’ve raised regarding search engines alone, I’d say we humans have been trained to accept outdated bullshit responses.
AI “learned” from that. Marketing called that “Intelligence”. I’d blame them, but they certainly know how well we’re trained to accept outdated bullshit..
I can see it (Score:4, Insightful)
As I've been searching lately, AI has been cutting in to my searches. When a search engine decides to throw AI at what I've asked for it, I search on a different search engine; I'm looking for matching WEB PAGES, not some computer's interpretation of what I've asked for.
I'm old-fashioned. I search for content, not computer guesses at content that might contain what I asked for. Today, I looked for information on a store chain having financial issues. Google decided I was looking for "closest to Chicago", for the Los Angeles-based chain. duckduckgo at least didn't prioritize Chicago store locations over the recently-reported corporate problems.
That sort of thing will cut my searches by at least 25% going forward, as they increase the bad data. I'm getting too old to deal with the [censored] "help".
Re:I can see it (Score:3)
Agreed. What I want in a search engine is the ability to search for phrases, have "must includes", "must not includes", date ranges, and domain filters. After that it's nice to have them put effort into down ranking SEO crap.
Google is failing on all fronts. The most carefully constructed query can ignore phrases or exclusions if the algorithm feels like it, and the battle against SEO spam is more or less lost. Then you throw in the ads and remove the censored stuff - don't try looking directly for anything Google doesn't approve of - and it has less and less utility all the time.
You know what AI will bring to this? A reduced ability to make precise queries and perhaps a plain-English response telling you they aren't going to give you results because you've violated the Google Morality Code.
But nobody else is doing a better job of it (yet).
Re:I can see it (Score:5, Insightful)
Plus with AI I *HATE* playing "Guess the right wording". I feel like I'm playing a text adventure from the 1980s. "Pull the knob"? "Push the knob?" "Push the knob on the wall"? wtf!?
Re:I can see it (Score:2)
Plus with AI I *HATE* playing "Guess the right wording". I feel like I'm playing a text adventure from the 1980s. "Pull the knob"? "Push the knob?" "Push the knob on the wall"? wtf!?
Im not sure if I should laugh at the 80s reference and my childhood memories, or cry on behalf of Progress realizing we call that shit “Intelligence” now.
Re:I can see it (Score:2)
I can see the opposite. Last searches where AI got me better results then keyword search on google:
I mean, the answers were perhaps not perfect, but better then plain keyword search.
You can also start with question that sets up a context and then drill down to the detail of what you actually want. For example the SSL certificate question above was followed by "Where can I find the complete list of Key Usage Extension values?"
Re:I can see it (Score:2)
What's really pissing me off with search is no longer having pages of results and having the abominable "scroll to see more results" UI crap.
Previously I would do a search then start looking at about page 4 as that would get you past most of the shitty promoted, irrelevant, results on the first few pages. Nowadays you simply can't get to the actual results you want as you lose the will to live before you can scroll enough results (by which time the browser tab has started creaking too).
"AI" is just the return of Clippy on steroids. "Hey, why think for yourself when we can do it for you ? It's so much more convenient..."
Gartner, McKinsey, et al (Score:4, Insightful)
You have to love these consulting houses. They sell super-expensive reports that either contain banal generalities, or else they make predictions of the obvious. But the language is pretty and there are lots of buzzwords. CxOs then select what they need from the reports to justify the dumb decisions they want to make anyway.
Cynical here, because our assigned desks were just rationalized away based on a "future of work" report from some McKinsey. I've hear that it looks "much neater" now. Well, duh, we've gone WFH-to-the-max and most of the desks have literally never been used. Probably not what management intended, but what they got.
Re:Gartner, McKinsey, et al (Score:2)
AI cannot replace search until hallucination ends (Score:2)
The issue right now is that if you ask AI anything, what it gives you might be made up or wrong, so often you have to check some parts in a search engine anyway to get a definitive answer.
A recent attempt at asking AI how to do something led it to giving me three frameworks that were wholly fictional to use - which I only found out after a lot of googling to try and find where the frameworks AI had mentioned were.
AI can help amplify other things, not saying it can't be useful, but I'm not sure it will be replacing search soon, when you need to find something real.
They also say BSD is dying... (Score:0)
BSD is dying. Something something Natalie Portman.
Only if AI gets MUCH better (Score:2)
The quality of the results I get from searching vs AI are worlds apart. I sometimes go to services like ChatGPT looking for specific technical information and the results I get are usually vague at best "To create a certificate first create your certificate..."
Re:Only if AI gets MUCH better (Score:2)
"Traditional search" is typing your query into a text box and getting back whatever Google's algorithm thinks matches. That could very well be replaced by an interface where you type in a more natural language query, you still get web page hits, and they're maybe selected a little more intelligently. That last thing may or may not be good for you.
Chatting with a chatbot is an engaging UI, but it's not a very good one for getting accurate results, and it's certainly not the only way of using AI to seach.
Re:Only if AI gets MUCH better (Score:2)
"Traditional search" is typing your query into a text box and getting back whatever Google's algorithm thinks matches. That could very well be replaced by an interface where you type in a more natural language query, you still get web page hits, and they're maybe selected a little more intelligently. That last thing may or may not be good for you.
Considering the enshitification of google search results through many mechanisms including AI based relevancy botting and ad placements it would need to be pretty good to just undo the last 4 years of slide. My guess is it’s just going to lubricate the slope instead of enable any sort of traction toward content we actually want.
Re:Only if AI gets MUCH better (Score:2)
So, a lot of this depends on what happens in the courts and the marketplace - a lot of money will be exchanged for information flow, in various directions.
Re:Only if AI gets MUCH better (Score:2)
Don't hold your breath. Google doesn't think their search is worse now than it was before. Quite the opposite. It's got many more sponsored links now.
What will they ever do? (Score:2)
Re:What will they ever do? (Score:3)
Won't someone think of the poor marketers?
I do. Often. Not particularly fondly.
Desperation (Score:2)
If this does happen, I predict it will be because search engine results will get much worse, prompting people to desperately used an AI Chatbot as a last resort. I already have to go directly search Stackoverflow or even Youtube for what I want because Google's results are next to useless.
It's actually just the evolution of search (Score:2)
Re:It's actually just the evolution of search (Score:3)
I do wish ChatGPT and others would footnote their answers and have a bibliography of sources used in the answer.
They literally don't know. It's not how language models work.
You could have them go through a process to try to figure out if information in their answer is a static factual claim or dynamically generated data and then search a copy of the training data for matches. But then you're just using another search engine.
Re:It's actually just the evolution of search (Score:2)
They literally don't know. It's not how language models work.
That doesn't stop Bing. And the results are exactly what you would expect from an LLM: they definitely look like references from a distance.
Re:It's actually just the evolution of search (Score:2)
I do wish ChatGPT and others would footnote their answers and have a bibliography of sources used in the answer.
Bing/Copilot does this. I think Google does as well.
It's really money in motion (Score:2)
Money in Motion 101 - Insist, push for, tsunami fear spreading - It's the usual playbook to get you to spend money, companies to buy things, technology replacement, new government regulations, push voting blocks, ...
Gartner, Blackrock, Vanguard, Fidelity, Wall Street, Lobbyists, Bureacrats, Election Candidates, NTO, non-profits need money to be in motion to survive and justify their jobs.
If there's a stable IT and computing environment for 20 years, with no big changes needed, Gartner has no strategy consulting to sell. ...
If your city does not need to build a bridge or road because they are all working good, there is no consulting money to be paid, no construction money to feed contractors,
It's money in motion, so that lots of transient businesses can make money.
Net, net it supports the top shelf people in the income distribution. Call it "money in motion to benefit the top X percent of people".
Predictions are hard... (Score:3)
...especially about the future
I predict that search will evolve
I hope it gets better, and makes it easier to actually find what I want
I fear that it will get worse, with a flood of scams and ads
Whatever happens, I suspect there will be a lot of unexpected surprises
I predict AI will replace Gartner (Score:4, Funny)
I predict AI will replace Gartner. And unlike most situations in which AI has enshittified things, nobody will notice in this case.
Re:I predict AI will replace Gartner (Score:3)
You don't think there'd be an appreciation for the increase in quality?
Re:I predict AI will replace Gartner (Score:2)
I predict AI will replace Gartner. And unlike most situations in which AI has enshittified things, nobody will notice in this case.
How could anyone notice? They use the same principals to come up with the same responses. There is not an ounce of original thought in either.
That depends (Score:3)
The one thing that will determine this is what happens first: AI finally producing reliable results or people dumping AI because it doesn't produce reliable results.
Re:That depends (Score:2)
The results are already reliable enough for most people, for what they search for.
"Who's that one singer who sings baby got back"
"what's the best color to pair with green"
"who's the president"
Just add in sportball stats and they'll never use a search engine again. Instant curated reality...
Re:That depends (Score:2)
The one thing that will determine this is what happens first: AI finally producing reliable results or people dumping AI because it doesn't produce reliable results.
You don't understand what is going on here. Even AGI will not produce 'realiable results'. This current AI absolutely CAN be useful, just not the way people want it to be useful. What that means is you can ask it for patterns and it can give them to you. Is that a useful trick? Yes. Will it give you reliable 'answers'? LOL, no.
Already (Score:2)
I'd be really surprised if that's not true already.
Unless someone's trying to find very precise original sources or technical data, train/plane/bus schedules, or news, or something to buy, search engines have become almost completely useless due to (primarily) ad placement and the enshitification of the Internet due to corporate sites and social media having taken over the majority of information silos. You don't have many free hosting sites anymore, so people just use social media groups to keep track of their interests where they may have historically made a blog, forum, or similar for a niche community.
Basically, anything which you could have reasonably expected as an answer to "Hey Siri," when Siri first came out is fair game for AI, and that's a huge subset of all internet searches.
For instance, " google translate", "translate", "traductor" and similar are all top 20 google searches, the rest are just people using the address bar lazily to get where they're going: gmail, yahoo mail, zillow, chatgpt, etc. Translation would be trivially solved with AI, and is today (I use it for that - it's damn near "universal translator"), and the rest of the top 100 searches can all be classified as "bookmark adjacent" except for searches for sportball results, which are scattered in there around the 50-100 top searches.
The top 100 questions are similar - a lot of stupid "what time is it", "when is mother's day", and "how many ounces in a cup" type questions. Again, all AI domain questions more so than 'search engine': you get the answer much faster.
Considering you can already replace Siri on a phone with ChatGPT and other stuff, I can wager that the percentage will be much higher... if it isn't already.
Add the ability to get latest news summaries and sport scores and you've got a huge percentage of the population who will never use a "search engine" again.
Re:Already (Score:2)
>The top 100 questions are similar - a lot of stupid "what time is it", "when is mother's day", and "how many ounces in a cup" type questions
I often use Google search as a calculator, because it's actually faster than opening the calculator app... especially if you need to include unit conversions.
Already pretty useless. (Score:2)
Obvious prediction is obvious. (Score:2)
Not only do I use Google less, but I'm even more grateful to not have to use online forums.
With AI you can get a sane, coherent answer to the question you actually asked.
Or ... (Score:1)