There are some tasks that I would have used a search engine for in the past, because that was more or less the only option. Say, searching for "ffmpeg transcode syntax" and then spending 15 minutes comparing examples from Stack Overflow with the official documentation to try to make sense of them. Now I can tell Claude exactly what I'm trying to accomplish and it will give me an answer in 30 seconds that's either correct, or close enough for me to quickly make up the difference.
I'm still going to turn to Google to find out what a store's opening hours or phone number is, as well as a lot of other tasks. But there are types of queries that are better suited for an LLM, that previously could only be done in a search engine.
There's also a non-technical reason for LLM search. Google built its business on free search, paid for by advertising, which seemed like a good idea in the early 2000's. A few decades later and we have a better appreciation for the value of the ad-driven business model. Right now, there's a whole lot of money being thrown at online LLMs, so for the most part they're not really doing ads yet. It's refreshing to make a query and not have sponsored results at the top of the list. Obviously, the free online LLM business model isn't going to last indefinitely. In the pretty near future, we'll either need to start paying a usage fee, or parse through advertisements delivered by LLMs as well. But it's nice while it lasts.
>>>Obviously, the free online LLM business model isn't going to last indefinitely.
I think this is one of those points where LLMs have already changed the paradigm
People liked being able to search, but would not pay for it. For many queries , the value wasnt there: users still had to scroll thru pages or tinker for the right query for the required result.
Eventually search turned so much worse by seo spam, that kagi stepped in to fill the void.
LLMs start from a different direction. The value is clearly there. OpenAI etc still have a ton of paying subscribers.
I do think eventually some will incorporate ads, but I think innovation has revealed that theres a market -perhaps a substantial one- for fee-based information search with LLMS
Ads delivered via LLMs will cost more to distribute, which means higher cost for the businesses purchasing ads, perhaps high enough to deter a lot of smaller ads customers, so I think we'll see an interesting dynamic appear there. Especially if the ad-laden SEO-boosted sites suffer from further enshittification of Search, which has been spinning in its own vicious cycle lately.
I'm still going to turn to Google to find out what a store's opening hours or phone number is, as well as a lot of other tasks. But there are types of queries that are better suited for an LLM, that previously could only be done in a search engine.
There's also a non-technical reason for LLM search. Google built its business on free search, paid for by advertising, which seemed like a good idea in the early 2000's. A few decades later and we have a better appreciation for the value of the ad-driven business model. Right now, there's a whole lot of money being thrown at online LLMs, so for the most part they're not really doing ads yet. It's refreshing to make a query and not have sponsored results at the top of the list. Obviously, the free online LLM business model isn't going to last indefinitely. In the pretty near future, we'll either need to start paying a usage fee, or parse through advertisements delivered by LLMs as well. But it's nice while it lasts.