OpenAI is reportedly developing a search app that would directly compete with Google Search, according to The Information on Wednesday. The AI search engine could be a new feature for ChatGPT, or a potentially separate app altogether.
Microsoft Bing would allegedly power the service from Sam Altman, which could be the most serious threat Google Search has ever faced. Current AI-enabled search engines from Google and Perplexity answer your questions with a clear AI-generated answer, usually in one to two sentences. Then, the engine provides links to its sources below, like a hybrid between an AI chatbot and a search engine. The report says this new search product could be faster than ChatGPT, without sacrificing its powerful summarizing abilities.
Altman is Google’s nightmare that it can’t wake up from. Over 100 million people use ChatGPT every week, and that already seems to be reducing the number of people relying on Google Search. Now, OpenAI is coming directly for the crown, in an attempt to dethrone the most dominant internet service of all time.
Google Search has been the dominant way to find information on the internet for the last two decades, but now it’s being contested. Google’s search revenue was lower than Wall Street expected in its last earnings, and CEO Sundar Pichai completely dodged a question about whether that’s because fewer people are using Google Search, according to Stratechery.
Artificial intelligence presents a new, more efficient way to retrieve information from the internet. Perplexity, a small AI search startup with backing from Jeff Bezos, is also competing for Google’s crown. Perplexity has less than 40 employees but its search service is used by 10 million people every month. If such a small team can steal 10 million people from Google, imagine what OpenAI and Microsoft can do.
Microsoft’s Bing was supercharged with ChatGPT last year. With this current report, it now seems that ChatGPT is getting supercharged with Bing. It’s a confusing switch from the company, but ultimately, Bing no longer seems like a serious competitor to Google. Perhaps, it never was one to begin with.
Google understands that AI is coming for search. That’s why the company is aggressively rolling out Gemini, and pushing it into every product it owns. However, Google’s Gemini is just now catching up to what OpenAI released nearly a year ago. Google was caught flat-footed by the AI apocalypse, and that could spell disaster for the search giant.