The End of Internet Search as We Know It. Bye Google

Today, I want to discuss Stack Overflow, a website with millions of technical questions and answers. As of the last count, there were approximately 58 million questions. Stack Overflow is incredibly popular among developers and IT professionals, who often write answers to others' questions.

To give you an idea of its scale, in 2022, Stack Overflow employed about 800 people, and now there are almost 600 people working there. It’s a successful business model. The premise of this platform is that by answering questions, users can increase their level of seniority within the application. This, in turn, builds trust among other users who see them as credible sources of information.

So, why am I talking about Stack Overflow today? Because, as most of you know, Google and OpenAI have signed agreements with Stack Overflow to use the 58 million questions and answers to train their models. These models rely on such vast databases to generate accurate responses.

Why is this significant? Models need this information to provide accurate answers. Without a comprehensive database, the models wouldn't know what to answer. The problem with using Google for this is that it requires searching through numerous pages, which is inefficient. Instead, having a structured database from Stack Overflow makes this process much more streamlined.

However, there are concerns about this arrangement. Is it beneficial for the users who contribute answers? Some users have tried to remove their content but found that the tool no longer allows them to do so. When you log in and accept the terms and conditions, you relinquish control over your contributions. This means that if you ask ChatGPT or Gemini something, they might use your community-provided information, even if you didn’t intend it for the model.

Moreover, there are other cases, like the one with Quora, where auto-generated questions and answers created by AI are often incorrect. When Google ranks these incorrect answers highly in search results, it undermines trust in the models. It raises the question: can someone maliciously provide misleading information to affect the model’s output?

This issue is becoming more pronounced as fewer people use traditional search engines. For instance, the number of employees at Stack Overflow decreased from 800 in 2022 to 600 today, indicating a decline in usage. Stack Overflow, therefore, needs to monetize, even if it means partnering with companies like Google and OpenAI, who might eventually render them obsolete.

What’s more, Stack Overflow has introduced Stack Overflow AI, aiming to remain relevant. But the challenge is significant. If users can get accurate answers directly from AI models like GPT-4 without visiting a website, the need for platforms like Stack Overflow diminishes.

In conclusion, while Stack Overflow’s business model is under threat, they must adapt to survive. Google and other traditional search engines face similar challenges. They must integrate advertisements within answers to stay profitable. The internet is evolving from a place where users search and click through pages to one where AI provides direct, reliable answers.

We might see a future where the business model shifts from generating web pages to generating high-quality data for training AI models. Only time will tell how these changes will unfold.

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