OpenAI is building a Search Product to take on Google

Meanwhile Google's stock is under pressure.

Hey Everyone,

While Microsoft failed to take marketshare from Google with its “Bing AI”, even with GPT-4, can OpenAI itself fair any better? In fact there are some conflicting reports on Bing’s merge with GPT-4.

Google has long been a dominant force in search engine technology, accounting for nearly 90% of global searches. However according to Statista, Google retains an 83.49% share of the global market, although this has fallen from 89.95% in the past three years; during the same timeframe, Bing's share has risen from 6.43% up to 9.19%.

Gartner recently predicted that Google would lose up to 25% marketshare by 2026. By 2026, traditional search engine volume will drop 25%, with search marketing losing market share to AI chatbots and other virtual agents, according to Gartner, Inc.  How could this be? Gartner made this prediction around February 19th, 2024.

They said:

“Organic and paid search are vital channels for tech marketers seeking to reach awareness and demand generation goals,” said Alan Antin, Vice President Analyst at Gartner. “Generative AI (GenAI) solutions are becoming substitute answer engines, replacing user queries that previously may have been executed in traditional search engines. This will force companies to rethink their marketing channels strategy as GenAI becomes more embedded across all aspects of the enterprise.” - Alan Antin

While I don’t necessarily think highly of organizations like Gartner, if OpenAI launches an alternative to Google Search at the height of its fame due to ChatGPT, could it take a bite out of the marketshare in a hurry?

Recently Alphabet’s stock sank after a report that ChatGPT owner OpenAI is developing a web search product that would compete with Google.

Gartner is making the Generative AI era out to be one of urgency.

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The Intrinsic Perspective

Art by Alexander Naughton.

• The Intrinsic Perspective is about consilience: breaking down the disciplinary barriers between science, history, literature, and cultural commentary. His critiques of the internet and AI are fabulous.

• Erik also received his PhD in neuroscience at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His essays are well received on Substack.

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Read the Masterpiece

• Title: “Here lies the internet, murdered by generative AI”

Here lies the internet, murdered by generative AI

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In this article below we’ll be diving into OpenAI’s Search competitor or however much we can find about it that it is developing to take on Google directly.

But how much has OpenAI actually revealed about their Search competitor plans with Google? How capable is OpenAI in leveraging GPT-4 and GPT-5 to take on Google really?

GOOGL 0.00%↑ Google’s stock is negative in the red this year, contrary to the majority of AI stocks in 2024. It’s a crazy moment in technology and Silicon Valley.

Google is Under Pressure

Read the comments to Andrew Ng’s LinkedIn posts.

OpenAI and AGI Sherpas?

Meanwhile OpenAI head of sales Aliisa Rosenthal says they see themselves as ‘AGI Sherpas’¹. Rosenthal, who reports to OpenAI COO Brad Lightcap, described her now 150-member go-to-market team as “AGI sherpas” who “help our customers and our users transition to the paradigm shift of AGI”.

That’s only achieved in my mind, if OpenAI can take marketshare directly away from Google Search. ChatGPT is far too niche to enable OpenAI to achieve “AGI” in GPT-5 or some future iteration. Open-source innovation also increases competition for foundation model creators.

🌈 OpenAI Needs a Search Product Independent from Bing

Will OpenAI disrupt Google in Search?

Founded in 2015 by an esteemed team including Elon Musk, Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, Ilya Sutskever, and Wojciech Zaremba, Open AI is a highly regarded research organization focused on the responsible advancement of artificial intelligence. It has recently partnered with the Pentagon.

In a late 2023 analyst note, Morgan Stanley analyst Brian Nowak pointed out that while Google will face threats from new emerging services, but they didn’t see Google Search as being under threat.

OpenAI has 2 Billion in revenue² and Google sees an estimated 4 billion daily users and answers billions more search queries. Google was founded 17 years before OpenAI.

ChatGPT gets most of its social media traffic from YouTube and openai.com only gets approximately 1.5 billion visits per month ³ (February, 2024). In comparison, Google processes over 8.5 billion searches per day. OpenAI would need to build an incredible search product to take marketshare away from Google and it is trying to do just that.

“Alphabet Inc. is falling amid renewed fears that the Google owner’s missteps in artificial intelligence are putting its search business at risk.” ⁴ - Bloomberg.