I will tell you all you need to know about Google - I was doing some research for a product I am building, my daughter (age 12) was an inspiration for what I am building and I asked her if she had time to help me with something and she did. Told her to “google ____” and she started laughing HARD and called me a boomer for suggesting she use Google… :)
Re:What Went Wrong for Yahoo
by integralid on Sunday July 27, 2025 @07:47PM
(#44705762)
Anecdotal evidence, not backed up by data. Actual data clearly shows that Google is the leading search engine across all age groups.
Re:What Went Wrong for Yahoo
by somenameforme on Sunday July 27, 2025 @11:55PM
(#44707090)
These aren't incompatible issues. Google has a monopoly maintained by excessive and illegal anti-competitive practices. The majority of users have no clue how to even change their default search engine, which Google actively exploits. Just checking it out - it took no less than 6 clicks into various specific menu and sub-menu settings to do so.
Poll only the subset of people that are actively aware of how to change their search engine and I suspect Google's dominance suddenly completely disappears. Remember, there was a time when Internet Explorer was the leading web browser across all age groups. Then Microsoft was forced to make it easier for people to change their default browser, and suddenly nobody was using IE anymore.
My apologies, I did not mean to imply that my kid's humour is evidence of Google's demise. But it does make you wonder a bit... we use Google out habit (they used to be decent) and also because they pay boatload of money to be default search on iphone and myriad of other reasons but younger generations do not have that intimate relationship with google and can see "with fresh eyes" its usefulness compared to the alternatives ...
Re:What Went Wrong for Yahoo
by somenameforme on Sunday July 27, 2025 @12:41PM
(#44702539)
Most searches, even in natural language, are extremely simple. Google could certainly have added this functionality, but they chose not to. This is how old giants always die. They become so obsessed with further squeezing their users that they begin to stagnate, decline, and eventually completely miss the writing on the wall - and face disruption.
Re:What Went Wrong for Yahoo
by scarface_74 on Sunday July 27, 2025 @01:08PM
(#44702747)
Translate is not what most people consider NLP.
Also, what makes you think that NLP would solve the problem you're describing? Only LLMs has proven that it could fully understand and process the queries in the way you're describing, hence why I brought that up. However it is expensive computationally, and only recently was it even technically possible to do.