back to article Everyone wants better web search – is Perplexity's AI the answer?

AI search engine startup Perplexity has raised $73.6 million in a series-B funding round led by Nvidia, Jeff Bezos, and other investors. California-based Perplexity announced the cash infusion on Thursday, and is now said to be valued at $520 million. The year-old startup has raised around $100 million so far. Perplexity …

  1. tiggity Silver badge

    AI not needed in search

    Just decent results would keep people happy.

    Not that many years ago searches on Google were acceptable, but now they are fairly dreadful.

    These days I use a variety of search engines (also has the advantage that people will often use "right to be forgotten" on Google to hide embarrassing info that is useful to know e.g. "financial advisor" with an old fraud conviction - it may have legally expired* but arguably relevant for people to be aware of it before entrusting their savings. Using a non Google engine can sometimes reveal such "hidden" information.)

    I also tend to use meta search engines more often these days (that pull data from various search engines to (hopefully) get results that are not too screwed up by any one search engine being totally useless on the request I gave) - (usually dogpile but not always)

    * they may, in that example, post fraud conviction, be a reformed & legitimate character, but knowing all their history allows potential clients of that person to make a better informed decision (some people will be fine with accepting them as a redeemed character, others may take the view once a crook, always a crook)

    1. drand

      Re: AI not needed in search

      This exactly. I would go so far as to say Google search results were very good for a time (probably longer ago than I think it was). But we all know the problem: search is now a vector for shovelling ads down our throats and scraping data; unless and until this changes - which it won't - then no amount of AI or anything else thrown at it will help the ultimate search outcome for regular users.

    2. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

      Re: AI not needed in search

      Web search (I typically use DDG) works fine for me, for the cases where I've used it in the past. For real research, I use real tools.

      Certainly web search could be better. What tool couldn't be?

      But also certainly "AI" won't make it so. We already have a technology for doing conversational research; it's called "research librarians". SotA LLMs are far, far behind their capabilities.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Whatever happened to Copernicus ?

    and why has no one come up with a similar search engine aggregator ?

  3. Neil Barnes Silver badge

    All I really want

    is a search that allows me to say return results with "this" and "that" but not "cats". I don't want to be told an answer; I want to go to the web page that has the original source. AI spamming pollution of sites like youtube isn't helping; now there are lots of sites all with the same rephrased information and I don't trust any of them.

    I don't want replies which represent the search engine's idea of what I was really asking, because often it isn't; instead, as pointed out above, it's just an advertising vector anyway. And it's bloody annoying when an exact match is three or four results down, underneath the spam.

    1. cyberdemon Silver badge
      Big Brother

      Re: All I really want

      So you mean you want a true boolean query of all web pages matching your criteria??

      Too powerful. You can't have that. You must be a terrorist.

      Use the AI-"search" like the rest of the proles

    2. captain veg Silver badge

      Re: exact match

      I habitually use DDG. It's not especially great functionally, but no worse than the alternatives. It does, however, insist on shovelling in hits related purely to my geolocation with no reference at all to the search terms. This is majorly annoying.

      I see that Google still features an "I'm feeling lucky" button. What I'd like is one stating "I know what I'm searching for".

      -A.

    3. elaar

      Re: All I really want

      I think we're in the minority these days unfortunately. People have become lazy, and want to be spoon fed answers from search queries, and I doubt most of them can be bothered to click the web link to check the validity of the answer either. But what I expect is them to segregate these search methods. One should be a website search, the other a simple question-answer search, they should not be combined.

  4. Howard Sway Silver badge

    It's very bland

    Asking it a few questions, it gave some very boring summary answers of a few paragraphs, with a few sources cited in boxes above the text. As a search engine it is slower and less useful than Google when trying to find links to information. Feels like exactly the sort of thing that would get some VC investors desperate to throw money at the AI hype to part with their money, but users will quickly get bored by having to read so much when they want search that is quick and gets you to more fully detailed information quickly. The inevitable adverts that they will have to insert into the text in order to make money, will make it even less attractive.

  5. MiguelC Silver badge
    Coat

    "is Perplexity's AI the answer?"

    Are you familiar with Betteridge's law of headlines?

    1. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

      Re: "is Perplexity's AI the answer?"

      Kind of surprised I had to go halfway down the comments page to find a mention of it.

  6. myhandler

    Even the Google 'verbatim' button shovels crap.

    I end up with the 'verbatim' setting on, then sets of words in quotes and it still shovels crap.

    If only I could lock verbatim to 'on' - and yes there used to be a plug in that did that.

    Whenever I try DDG it's no better. I've even tried Bing, it's not so annoying but results are even vaguer.

  7. Tron Silver badge

    Distributed search, not AI is the way forward.

    Google used to be fine, but is now a shadow of its former self, pandering to commerce and heavily censored. I don't think they have added a feature in the last decade. Much better contextualisation would have been easy.

    Anything close to the original Google search would be great, but you would need to operate using distributed software to avoid censorship. Distributed search would offer additions such as persistent search and the aggregation of search data from third parties.

    The less AI we have, the better.

  8. Omnipresent Silver badge

    I just want

    An internet without eeeeeeeeeviiiiiiiiiiiillllllll.

    1. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

      Re: I just want

      I have an algorithm for that:

      1. Replace the current population with humans without evil.

      2. Reinvent everything.

POST COMMENT House rules

Not a member of The Register? Create a new account here.

  • Enter your comment

  • Add an icon

Anonymous cowards cannot choose their icon

Other stories you might like