Latest news with #Googling
The Star
21 hours ago
- Entertainment
- The Star
'Smoke' review: Fires up our yearning for a gripping tale
'I only have two things to say. First, manners maketh man. And second, I'm still standing.' Photos: Handout Fire is an organism that waits and watches and breathes, or so a character in the new crime drama Smoke tells us. Indeed, with its crafty use of angles and pyrotechnics, the show makes its blazes seem almost... sentient, and nasty, spiteful try Googling that opening phrase, and the AI assistant immediately stresses that fire is NOT an organism. Whatever you do, though, don't Google the true crime podcast on which this one is based, if you don't want your enjoyment of (at least) the first two episodes to be ruined. Those unfamiliar with the case would probably, to a viewer, have to pick their jaws up off the floor by the time the credits roll. Those who know it might find themselves picking out various liberties taken by co-showrunner/writer Dennis Lehane (Mystic River, Shutter Island, Gone Baby Gone) in bringing the case to the screen. Whichever group you are in, there is still a lot to keep us invested as Lehane sets up the pieces, motivations, back stories and character dynamics of this deliberate, compelling, (semi-)true crime offering. Transplanted from the actual case setting to the fictional US Pacific North-west town of Umberland, Smoke has arson investigator Dave Gudsen (Taron Egerton, the Kingsman movies, Rocketman, Lehane's Black Bird miniseries) and police detective Michelle Calderon (Jurnee Smollett, Lovecraft Country, Underground, Birds Of Prey) tracking down two serial arsonists. It wastes no time revealing one of the culprits to viewers, but teases us as to the identity of the other. 'The narrator was right, this darn fire seems to be alive and mad as heck.' Smoke successfully humanises this first suspect, Freddy (Ntare Guma Mbaho Mwine, Heroes, The Lincoln Lawyer, The Chi), with his sympathetic circumstances offering a precarious fulcrum on which his ruthless actions rest (and pivot). Meanwhile, for most of the initial two episodes, anyway, we get to see Gudsen and Calderon's developing partnership and their respective backgrounds and current situations, which are not entirely healthy and factor in the characters' actions and reactions. The two leads settle into their partnership smoothly and comfortably enough, although the people in their lives – including Gudsen's wife Ashley (Hannah Emily Anderson, soon to be seen in Return To Silent Hill) and Calderon's ex-lover Burke (Rafe Spall, Trying) – remain on the fringes, mostly. Until their respective influence/pressures on our lead characters take a startling toll in the last third of Episode Two, anyway. Its slow... build (hah, thought I was going to say "burn", didn't you) pays off in spades at this point, leaving us salivating for the rest of the week until a new episode drops, yet also satisfied by the storytelling and the leads' deftness in putting us immediately at ease with their characters, insecurities and all. Above all, highly curious about where Lehane and Co. will take this next (yes, I'm steadfastly refusing to look up the real-life case.) With nine episodes slated for this one, expect that feeling of being on tenterhooks all week long to continue well into August. A new episode of Smoke arrives every Friday on Apple TV+.
IOL News
4 days ago
- IOL News
Is ChatGPT really killing Google?
Chat GPT is increasingly being used for functions which were previously the domain of Google. Image: Supplied Shira Ovide There are regular headlines suggesting chatbots like ChatGPT may be taking over for Googling. Maybe you've also started using artificial intelligence instead of Google to hunt for hiking boots, news about flooding in Texas or Roblox game tips. To separate truth from belief, I dug into the numbers. What I found was that our use of chatbots is growing fast but that Google search still overwhelmingly remains our front door to find online news, information and products. Sorry, AI bros. Web search may be losing some ground to AI, but we rely on it so much that chatbots are barely making a dent. The data suggests that Google has nearly 400 times the usage of ChatGPT for some news and information. Chatbots for news Similarweb, which studies our website activity, said last month that ChatGPT is a massively fast-growing way that Americans are finding online news articles. About 25 million times from January through May this year, we landed on a news website after clicking a link in ChatGPT - up from just about 1 million times a year earlier, according to Similarweb. Wow. (The Washington Post has a content partnership with ChatGPT owner OpenAI.) Video Player is loading. Play Video Play Unmute Current Time 0:00 / Duration -:- Loaded : 0% Stream Type LIVE Seek to live, currently behind live LIVE Remaining Time - 0:00 This is a modal window. Beginning of dialog window. Escape will cancel and close the window. Text Color White Black Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Background Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Transparent Window Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Transparent Semi-Transparent Opaque Font Size 50% 75% 100% 125% 150% 175% 200% 300% 400% Text Edge Style None Raised Depressed Uniform Dropshadow Font Family Proportional Sans-Serif Monospace Sans-Serif Proportional Serif Monospace Serif Casual Script Small Caps Reset restore all settings to the default values Done Close Modal Dialog End of dialog window. Advertisement Video Player is loading. Play Video Play Unmute Current Time 0:00 / Duration -:- Loaded : 0% Stream Type LIVE Seek to live, currently behind live LIVE Remaining Time - 0:00 This is a modal window. Beginning of dialog window. Escape will cancel and close the window. Text Color White Black Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Background Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Transparent Window Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Transparent Semi-Transparent Opaque Font Size 50% 75% 100% 125% 150% 175% 200% 300% 400% Text Edge Style None Raised Depressed Uniform Dropshadow Font Family Proportional Sans-Serif Monospace Sans-Serif Proportional Serif Monospace Serif Casual Script Small Caps Reset restore all settings to the default values Done Close Modal Dialog End of dialog window. Next Stay Close ✕ But in the same five months, Americans landed on news websites about 9.5 billion times from using web search engines including Google and clicking on a link, Similarweb's director of market insights, Laurie Naspe, confirmed. Put another way, for every American who asked ChatGPT for information and landed on a news website to learn more, 379 people used Google to do the same thing. Important caveats: We behave differently when using chatbots for information compared with web search engines. Chatbots (including the 'AI Overviews' in Google search) paraphrase information from news articles about Samsung's latest smartphone or online reviews of air purifiers. You might rarely click a web link to find out more, as you do with conventional Google searches. That behavior is causing carnage for websites and alters the Similarweb numbers. When we use ChatGPT to summarize news events and stop there, it doesn't show up in Similarweb's web click data. However you interpret the numbers, Google remains for now a dominant way Americans find news websites. The percentage of website visits to search vs AI sites Image: The Washington Post Chatbots vs search A different report, by web analysis firm Datos by Semrush and software company SparkToro, found that about 11 out of every 100 of our website visits from a computer is to Google and other search engines. AI technologies - including ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Claude and more - account for less than 1 out of every 100 websites we visit combined. The report shows a huge increase in the amount of web visits to chatbot sites in the past year, but we're still using search websites many times more. 'Search is one of the most popular and fastest-growing features in ChatGPT,' an OpenAI spokesperson said. 'We're investing in a faster, smarter search experience and remain committed to helping people discover high-quality news and information.' Google said it generally doesn't comment about its market share. SparkToro CEO Rand Fishkin did some related number crunching and found that chatbots were even punier compared with search. He made educated assumptions to compare how often we're using ChatGPT to find the kinds of information for which we've typically used Google, such as learning about the Golden Gate Bridge or comparing options for an air conditioner. Fishkin found that we're doing more than 14 billion Google searches a day compared with at most 37.5 million Google-like searches on ChatGPT. Google, in other words, has about 373 times the comparable usage of ChatGPT. Important caveat: Fishkin's educated guesses are just one data point. Fishkin also wasn't counting our use of chatbots for tasks we don't do in search, such as summarizing a long report or writing a bedtime story. And some of our time with Google search is now with its AI Overviews and AI Mode, though it's hard to measure how much. There have been other imperfect but useful analyses that have suggested we're doing more Google searches and using chatbots more, too. At least hundreds of millions of people use ChatGPT each week, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in April. While the numbers aren't comparable, Google's web search has nearly 5 billion users. So are chatbots killing Google search? The answer, like our habits, isn't that simple. In my conversations with people who oversee websites, some of them said they are overhauling their strategy to attract readers and viewers like you, because they believe fewer people will find them from web search links and more from chatbots. Your favorite websites are willingly or grudgingly adapting to chatbots that might kill them anyway. It can also be true that we constantly misjudge how fast new technology is replacing our old habits. It might feel as if people buy everything online, but e-commerce accounts for just 16 percent of all the stuff that Americans buy. Until very recently, Americans still spent more time watching conventional cable or free television than streaming on TVs, according to Nielsen. And for now, the use of ChatGPT for news and other information remains puny. 'When everyone else is talking about it and the media's writing about it, a new technology can feel far bigger than it is,' Fishkin said. | The Washington Post
Washington Post
5 days ago
- Washington Post
Is ChatGPT really the new Google? We dug into the numbers.
There are regular headlines suggesting chatbots like ChatGPT may be taking over for Googling. Maybe you've also started using artificial intelligence instead of Google to hunt for hiking boots, news about flooding in Texas or Roblox game tips. To separate truth from belief, I dug into the numbers. What I found was that our use of chatbots is growing fast but Google search still overwhelmingly remains our front door to find online news, information and products. Sorry, AI bros.
Time Out
18-06-2025
- Time Out
New York ranked 2nd for summer staycation city in the U.S.
Forget flight delays and the dreaded TSA line. It turns out, the second-best place in the country for a summer escape is, well, right here. New York City just landed the No. 2 spot in a new ranking of the best staycation cities in the U.S., thanks to its unbeatable blend of luxury, culture and good old-fashioned summer fun. The list, compiled by global online gaming provider Playstar, looked at America's biggest cities and evaluated everything from hotel and restaurant ratings to amusement parks, hiking trails, gas prices and how often people were Googling vacations there. New York City earned a vacation score of 67.27 out of 100, narrowly missing the top spot to Houston (67.76), which nabbed the crown with a surge of staycation buzz, low gas prices and tons of family-friendly hikes. But don't hang your Mets cap in shame: New York absolutely crushed it in the high-end leisure department, boasting more five-star hotels (a whopping 963) and top-rated restaurants (240) than any other city on the list. Add in 141 amusement parks and 128 hiking trails and you've got a weekend itinerary that practically writes itself. The city also ranked third overall for family-friendliness, proving it's not just for date nights and rooftop cocktails. With 50 nearby lakes, plus enough parks and playgrounds to tire out even the most sugar-fueled kid, New York makes a solid case for skipping the flight and staying put. That said, don't expect your staycation to come cheap. NYC ranked 37th for average gas prices—$3.13 a gallon—making it one of the most expensive road-trip hubs in the country. But let's be honest: When the Empire State Building is your skyline and Central Park is your backyard, who needs to go far? If your PTO is limited but your appetite for adventure isn't, consider this your excuse to treat yourself to a little hometown holiday. Whether exploring a new corner of Prospect Park, checking into a luxe hotel in SoHo or finally trying that fancy tasting menu you've bookmarked for months, there's never been a better time to see the city through vacation-tinted glasses.
Forbes
13-06-2025
- Forbes
The End Of Browsing? AI Is Rewriting The Rules Of Online Visibility
Back when I was in high school, writing an academic essay was a chore. I'm talking leave-your-house-drive-to-the-library-to-search-for-citations-pain. Once, I spent an entire Saturday thumbing through books for quotes to back up my points. Later compiling that citation list in AP style was no joy either. By the time I got to college, the web had sped the search process way up. The miracle of online databases slashed my research time. A few years after that when I worked as a journalist covering the oil industry, I could easily access multiple sources by Googling topics. By then, the tedious part had become weeding out dead-end hyperlinks—usually anything past page one of the search results. In 2025 it's worth asking: do students or professionals search anymore? Business Insight Journal has an interesting take on this question. 'Students aren't just searching differently—they're searching elsewhere. According to Everspring's new 2025 AI Search Trends Report, prospective students increasingly turn to AI tools like ChatGPT instead of traditional search engines.' Professionals are also increasingly using AI to deliver direct answers rather than sift through pages of results. ''I don't even use Google anymore—I just use ChatGPT,' said Ash Minhas, a Technical Content Manager at IBM in a piece from the company evocatively titled: 'Browsing Obsolete: Examining the AI Search Era.' In it, Minhas gushes about artificial intelligence's utility to 'scan and synthesize a vast amount of sources in a short amount of time.' This remarkable shift in how we access information in such a short span reminds me of the saying: 'When one door closes, another opens.' That's because the expression 'Googling it' hasn't just lodged its way into our lexicon—it's become a way of life. Don't know something? Google it. But in a few years hearing someone say this may sound as quaint as the AOL modem startup noise. It might become a cultural relic due to the collapse of not just traditional search but the whole Search Engine Optimization (SEO) industry. Before discussing its likely replacement, Language Model Optimization (LMO), it's time for a refresher on the previous technology. Fittingly enough, it comes from 'SEO stands for search engine optimization, which is the process of improving a website's visibility in organic search results on Google and Bing, or other search engines. SEO involves researching search queries, creating helpful content, and optimizing the user experience to improve organic search rankings.' 'We're shifting from gaming Google's algorithm to engaging in real-time AI searches that respond directly to what we ask. That's the fundamental transformation unfolding right now,' said Claude Zdanow when I interviewed him to explain the impending sea change. As CEO of Onar Holding Corporation, a network of next-gen marketing and creative services agencies built to accelerate middle-market company growth via AI, he's following LMO closely. What he's noticed is the unprecedented value it brings clients. Traditional SEO often involved manipulating search rankings through keyword stuffing or an over-reliance on backlinks. There was definite utility behind such practices for companies wishing to be found, especially over their competitors. Unfortunately, end users didn't always find such stacked entries so helpful. LMO is now poised to disrupt this search model by operating as a kind of online oracle. 'Language Model Optimization is about creating content that's actually relevant and useful so that AI, not just a search engine, can interpret it, trust it, and serve it up as the best answer,' said Zdanow. 'It's no longer about finessing the system. It's about genuinely solving a user's problem.' Stepping back to contextualize this development, a logical progression is afoot. Value determines if a technology becomes widely accepted. Until web-based databases arrived, the most optimal way for high school students to source their papers was to pore through physical text. Later, search engines like Google became so popular because they worked even better. Now that LMO can accurately and efficiently deliver even more valuable answers, it's understandable that users like the Ash Minhas of the world flock to it. To grasp more of the value LMO provides, it's helpful to consult SEO Content Expert Jenny Abouobaia's LinkedIn post of the model's key prioritizations: 'Context Over Authority Signals: Unlike Google, which relies on backlinks for authority, LLMs focus on understanding the actual content.' Once more, we're talking about relevance. 'This shift isn't just about changing tactics,' said Zdanow. 'It's about changing intent. We must stop thinking in terms of algorithms and start thinking in terms of audiences. Moving forward, the question won't be 'How do I get ranked?' but rather: 'How do I help someone?'' That insight reminds me of philosopher Yuval Harari's take on the U.S.S.R.'s downfall in his book Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow. 'The Soviet Union tried to run a central economy from Moscow. And it just wasn't efficient. They brought all the information to Moscow, but there was nobody there who could process all the information fast enough and efficiently enough to make the right decisions. And this is why the distributed information system of the United States proved to be far superior to the centralized information system of the Soviet Union.' Harari's point is that America's decentralized bottom-up economy triumphed over its rival, but not through Cold War hostility. The U.S.S.R. imploded because it provided less value to its citizens. Top-down productivity collapsed alongside ideological alignment as its governance model proved incapable of meeting modern demands. The lesson here is simple: Value trumps everything in the end. Even totalitarian regimes. Companies would do well to think in these terms when it comes to getting found online. Business owners and the marketing agencies serving them can stay ahead of the search curve by producing content that's actually useful. When in doubt, stop and ask yourself: 'Would another person find this valuable?' If so, it's more likely you will get noticed under the LMO model. When it comes to content, the best advice I ever got was from my mom, back when I was still haunting the library to finish a paper on the Spartan phalanx: 'Be original.' In other words, share unique, non-derivative content, including stories or data AI cannot find anywhere else. This last point has special relevance for the times we live in. As AI automates more and more of life's drudgery and rote activities, space opens up for creativity and originality to once more be in demand. Rather than decry the shifting sands of commerce and the uncertainty it inevitably brings, we would do well to appreciate the opportunity tech provides. Especially when it allows us to deliver greater value to our fellow human beings.
