Data on search engine market share is available, but I wonder what that looks like for Lemmy users in particular, who I would assume lean more technical than the average user, so probably use DuckDuckGo and alternates more than Google.
I use a mix of DuckDuckGo and Kagi. I’ll also use ChatGPT, which can be good if you’re careful to verify the answers it gives you as a check against hallucinations. It’s useful for short, direct answers without ads or SEO bullshit.
This article on Ars (and if you’re not a subscriber, you absolutely should be, as they are the best tech journalists out there) inspired the question: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/06/google-admits-reddit-protests-make-it-harder-to-find-helpful-search-results
Fucking Reddit. Enshittification ruins everything.
I don’t understand why lots of you answer with chatGPT. It’s not a search engine! And you shouldn’t use it like a search engine.
If you pay there’s an option for chatgpt4 that can use Bing to search. There’s also various plugins that can let it interact with all sorts of additional data sources. Not that you should use it like a search engine exactly, but it can be useful for search if you configure it correctly and understand that it doesn’t “know” anything.
Bing has gpt 4 for free, there’s a button for it on bing.com. I do pay for GPT Plus but there’s no web search option there for me, I have to use bing for that.
This is interesting, do you know where can I understand more how it is supported to work?
I can see a usecase for where you don’t know where to start or search with, and then verify with actual searches.
I recently used it to explain for a friend what is the difference between wheat and ale beer, and it gave a very good summary. With DDG I might not get a direct explanation and would need to read a few articles and then word them in a comprehensive way.
I think we’re making some confusion here.
If you need answer to a question, you can do it by searching for sources, using a search engine, or you can do it by asking a knowledge base (e.g. reading and Encyclopedia).
If that’s the usecase, you can successfully use a generative AI to obtain an answer (providing the fact you are willingfull to accept a possibly bad answer). You are not using the AI as a search engine.
If you need a search engine, if you need to search for places and sources into the web to access it directly, you should not use an AI, because it’s not how it works. It does not search and it does not provide you searching results, it “simply” generate answer based on training, Which is a completely different task.
Bing implemented ChatGPT with their own layer on top. It works like ChatGPT and can give some ChatGPT like responses, but it does so by showing the sources and links.
Therefor, i’m happy to say - I actually like this new bing and use it a lot.
BUT… i also use bing rewards to buy all my video games so it works there too :D
Yeah the new bing/chatgpt thing has its uses. It’s not my first choice, but I do occasionally use it.
They even got me to install edge on linux in order to get early access to it.
Bing is literally the only site I’ve ever opened in edge though. lol.
Except it IS a search engine and that’s basically all it’s good for. By its very nature all it can do is collate information. It’s the only thing AI is good at.
No it’s not. To search is a specific task, and generative AI can’t do that. It can fulfill some need that we are used to fulfill by searching the web, but this doesn’t mean it’s a search engine.
If you lost the key of your car and have access to an AI that can (sometimes) start your can without a key, you can be happy about it, but you still can’t say the AI searched the key for you. It can’t do it.
Edit: btw, we are talking about generative AI here. I’m not saying there isn’t and could not be a search engine that use AI to better its result.
Maybe people mainly search for answers to simple daily life questions or something.
I guess, but it’s still not a search engine and I think it’s a bit problematic if that’s the usecase.
To be fair, some implementations like bingGPT and perplexity can provide some search engine functionality, since they actually find and provide links to the user.
ChatGPT-4 can use a search engine (Bing) via a plugin.
We just had a case of lawyers getting fucker over by chatgpt making shit up, it makes things up all the time! I don’t understand why so many people use it like that and trust it like some oracle.