Comment by array_key_first

Comment by array_key_first 11 hours ago

9 replies

Being an insane brand means literally nothing if people can trivially switch to competitors, which they can.

There isn't even a tenth of enough money if you group together all of advertising. Like, the entire industry. Ads is a bad, bad plan that wont work. Advertising is also extremely overvalued. And even at it's overvalued price tag, it's nowhere near enough.

whalee 10 hours ago

People could trivially switch their search engine to Bing or Yahoo, but they don't.

If ads are so overpriced, how big is your short position on google? Also ads are extremely inefficient in terms of conversion. Ads rendered by an intelligent, personalized system will be OOM more efficient, negating most of the "overvalue".

I'm not saying they should serve ads. It's a terrible strategy for other reasons.

  • I-M-S 9 hours ago

    Funny that you mention Yahoo, as in my mind they're the perfect example of what the poster above you noted: people quickly switched to Google once a better alternative to Yahoo appeared.

  • timr 9 hours ago

    You know that Google literally spends billions to ensure that people don’t switch, right?

    That’s possible because they’re immensely profitable.

    • bitpush 7 hours ago

      Isn't the billions just setting the default? The ability to switch is the same as far as I understand it.

      • timr an hour ago

        The default is what matters.

sophia01 9 hours ago

It's Coca Cola vs Pepsi. Yes some might even say Pepsi has been shown to taste better, but people still buy loads of Coke.

Of course the tech savvy enterprises will use the best models. But the plumber down the road doesn't care whether she asks Gemini or ChatGPT about the sizing of some fittings.

  • adgjlsfhk1 8 hours ago

    right, but casual users aren't paying (and won't ever)

    • littlestymaar 4 hours ago

      Users aren't paying for Google or Facebook either. Advertisers do.

pjaoko 10 hours ago

> Being an insane brand means literally nothing if people can trivially switch to competitors, which they can.

Logically speaking, yes it is easy to switch between OAI and Gemini, or Coke and Pepsi. But brand loyalty is more about emotions (comfort, familiarity,..) rather logical reasoning.