• Some users have recently had their accounts hijacked. It seems that the now defunct EVGA forums might have compromised your password there and seems many are using the same PW here. We would suggest you UPDATE YOUR PASSWORD and TURN ON 2FA for your account here to further secure it. None of the compromised accounts had 2FA turned on.
    Once you have enabled 2FA, your account will be updated soon to show a badge, letting other members know that you use 2FA to protect your account. This should be beneficial for everyone that uses FSFT.

Google Changes Its Search Box for the First Time in 25 Years

P

philb2

2[H]4U
Joined
May 26, 2021
Messages
3,375
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/19/business/google-seach-bar-ai-gemini.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share

On Tuesday, Google said the A.I. shift had inspired it to overhaul the dimensions of its search bar for the first time since 2001. The box is getting bigger and more interactive so that people can ask even longer questions and upload photographs and videos into queries.

In addition, people can ask follow-up questions with a chatbot on Google’s main search page. The company will also offer digital assistants, known as agents, to automate searches so that someone who may be apartment hunting can be notified of a new listing without opening a real estate site like Zillow.
 
If they used AI to give me links to the proper answer then I'd have no issue with it. The problem is that they want to replace all those links and all those sources with their own summaries. If nobody is visiting linked websites then those websites will wither and die unless they're run by large corporations that can afford the upkeep without ad revenue. Once all the source information starts to stagnate then what are people going to be finding in google AI search? Out of date information? People will just stop using Google and go back to asking on forums again except those forums will likely be run by Facebook because all the other sites will have died off.
 
Ididar said:
If they used AI to give me links to the proper answer then I'd have no issue with it. The problem is that they want to replace all those links and all those sources with their own summaries. If nobody is visiting linked websites then those websites will wither and die unless they're run by large corporations that can afford the upkeep without ad revenue. Once all the source information starts to stagnate then what are people going to be finding in google AI search? Out of date information? People will just stop using Google and go back to asking on forums again except those forums will likely be run by Facebook because all the other sites will have died off.
Click to expand...
I hate that junk...if I wanted an AI answer il ues an AI as most of the time it's not even remotely right. Really feels like we are going backwards and more towards Idiocracy at turbo speed wit AI
 
Google search has been curated material given to us based on advertising revenue for a loooong time. Not that I think it will be all that different now. Just that it hasn't been that useful. At least AI gets me in the ballpark. I search google and often it can't just say nothing found, it just sends me things that are close. Searching part numbers always angers me when it provides different numbers as top items and the actual matched ones are a few links down.

Also I didn't notice the change until it was pointed out lol.
 
Coincidentally there are other changes with Google AI (Gemini).. assuming this is related, as Google expects bigger resource load on its AI products with the search box change 🤣

1779369349068.png
 
Ididar said:
If they used AI to give me links to the proper answer then I'd have no issue with it. The problem is that they want to replace all those links and all those sources with their own summaries. If nobody is visiting linked websites then those websites will wither and die unless they're run by large corporations that can afford the upkeep without ad revenue. Once all the source information starts to stagnate then what are people going to be finding in google AI search? Out of date information? People will just stop using Google and go back to asking on forums again except those forums will likely be run by Facebook because all the other sites will have died off.
Click to expand...
Hang in there [H], I saw an AI summary and noticed the hardform.com was a source. If AI companies, people, keep the info up-to-date and are always scraping forums, it will kill forums. (My limited understanding is the scraping is costly to the forums that get slammed by AI using up bandwidth but no ad revenue.)
 
Sucks. I used Gemini to get a phone number for tech support. It provided a number. Used Google search to verify it. It was VERY wrong. Told Gemini it was wrong. Gemini provided another number. Google search proved it also was very wrong. Gemini never gave me the correct number.

We’re effed.
 
CaffeineMan said:
Hang in there [H], I saw an AI summary and noticed the hardform.com was a source. If AI companies, people, keep the info up-to-date and are always scraping forums, it will kill forums. (My limited understanding is the scraping is costly to the forums that get slammed by AI using up bandwidth but no ad revenue.)
Click to expand...
Nothing to see here, but I have seen double this number lately.

1779392832744.png
 
sc5mu93 said:
Sucks. I used Gemini to get a phone number for tech support. It provided a number. Used Google search to verify it. It was VERY wrong. Told Gemini it was wrong. Gemini provided another number. Google search proved it also was very wrong. Gemini never gave me the correct number.

We’re effed.
Click to expand...
Gemini is the worst out of all the AI. Always has been. I asked Claude to help my friend find all the forensic therapists his attorney gave him all the names of for his custody case and it found every single one of them, their contact information, their credentials, their reviews, and ordered them from best to worst. Every single bit of information was accurate. Gemini hallucinates and gaslights. If that's an advantage then it does it better than all of them. Even after the big "update" Google just released it still sucks ass.
 
Last edited:
In case people were wondering how the fuck google was planning on monetizing the manure out of all of this:
Google made $295 billion in advertising revenue last year, out of $403 billion in total. And yet, across all these announcements – the new search box, the generative UI, Spark, the agents – there wasn’t a single mention of how any of this will be monetized. Not one word about ads.

It turns out there’s a small but growing body of research – some of it from Google’s own researchers – exploring exactly how ads could work inside LLM-generated output. And the ideas are as fascinating as they are unsettling.

One approach, proposed by Google Research, is what you might call a “token auction.” In this model, advertisers don’t buy ad slots on a page. Instead, they bid, token by token, on the actual text the model generates. Each advertiser brings their own LLM, and an auction mechanism decides whose model gets to influence the next word. The output is a weighted blend of competing interests, shaped by who’s willing to pay more.

Another approach – also from Google researchers – fits the new “Search” much more precisely. It’s called “prominence allocation.” Here, when a user submits a query with commercial intent, the system runs an auction that doesn’t just decide which ads appear, but how prominently the LLM writes about each one. The auction outputs a prominence score for each advertiser, essentially telling the model: give this product 35 words, that one 20, and this one zero. The ad isn’t next to the answer. The ad is the answer. Or rather, it shapes how much space and enthusiasm each product gets within the answer.

Now think about what Google just announced. Generative UI means there are no more discrete ad slots. The search result is a dynamically generated experience – a synthesized narrative, an interactive widget, a curated set of recommendations. In that world, you can’t place a banner ad next to the output. The only thing you can auction is prominence within it.
Click to expand...
Source: https://matthiasott.com/notes/ad-infinitum

These may not be the precise future methods of "ai" monetization, but one can bet one's hindquarters that llms' outputs will be optimized for the provider's bottom line.
 
Twisted Kidney said:
People underestimate how incredibly useful forums are, the rolling amnesia of Discord servers just isn't the same.
Click to expand...
I can't believe forums are not the norm. Reddit is... fine for some things, but good luck trying to get any kind of useful guide pinned or made in to a sticky. So good information becomes tribal knowledge to subreddit regs which is just crap and a shocking turn for the worst for what the internet should and did stand for.

Google and ddg are just so bad for getting information now. Google "how to..." or "why is..." and all you get are generated websites with domain names that are clearly bullshit. plumbingtechangels.com is not what one would consider a reputable source.
Also, reddit is so much less personal, for better or worse. I recognize half the posters in any thread I read here. In the subreddits I follow there are MAYBE two names I have ever recognized and that's because they make 80% of the threads. Sometimes that's preferred but not usually. (imo)


It's such a weird paradigm shift.
 
emphy said:
Another approach – also from Google researchers – fits the new “Search” much more precisely. It’s called “prominence allocation.” Here, when a user submits a query with commercial intent, the system runs an auction that doesn’t just decide which ads appear, but how prominently the LLM writes about each one. The auction outputs a prominence score for each advertiser, essentially telling the model: give this product 35 words, that one 20, and this one zero. The ad isn’t next to the answer. The ad is the answer. Or rather, it shapes how much space and enthusiasm each product gets within the answer.

Now think about what Google just announced. Generative UI means there are no more discrete ad slots. The search result is a dynamically generated experience – a synthesized narrative, an interactive widget, a curated set of recommendations. In that world, you can’t place a banner ad next to the output. The only thing you can auction is prominence within it.
Click to expand...

OK but in this case if you have 2 nickels to rub together it should be obvious when it's trying to sell you something then, by verbosely 'pushing it' on you.

Also - Google finally found their way to serve you ads you can't adblock - otherwise you have to forego all the text altogether 🙃🔫
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top