Does ChatGPT Compete With Google?
No matter how hard other search engines try, Google simply dominates search . Search is the company’s bread and butter ( and it spends billions to keep it that way ). But the future of search is all but sealed, and other companies are looking to get in, including some big names in artificial intelligence.
According to rumors , OpenAI may be about to launch its own search engine. One Redditor discovered SSL certificates (required to use HTTPS) created for the site search.chatgpt.com . Indeed, when you visit the URL, the site returns a “Not Found” message rather than a message that the domain is available. Android Authority discovered a tweet from an AI podcast host that also cryptically mentioned a URL and the date May 9th.
In truth, that’s all we really know about the situation at the moment. In fact, it’s entirely possible that OpenAI isn’t planning anything to do with search: perhaps they just registered the domain to have it, or are planning to use the URL for another purpose. But search.chatgpt.com does sound like the kind of address a company would want you to go to for web searches, so let’s think about what this might mean for the industry.
Fighting Google
Again, when it comes to search engines, you have a choice: Bing, DuckDuckGo, even Ecosia if you’re interested in tree planting searches. But if you think about who dominates the market, it is undoubtedly Google.
So OpenAI could really take on the search king if it wanted to get into this business. It would be very difficult, but perhaps not impossible. While Google does have a near-monopoly in the search market, the quality of its results has not been excellent lately . Sites that actually answer the question you’re looking for accumulate low-quality posts, ads, and other irrelevant content. Sure, Google needs to make money, but if all you get when you search are ads and spam, what’s the use of their services?
For its part, Google is making changes to its algorithm and spam policies to reduce the number of such results. But there is an opportunity for another company to step in and offer a better experience. ChatGPT may be one of the biggest names in popular tech culture right now, so if OpenAI can combine that popularity with good search, they might have a chance.
But what will this experience look like? Well, I guess it’s not that far off from the current AI search on Google. When you search for something on Google today with Gemini enabled, you still get the organic search results we’ve all come to know and love for the last 25 years. At the top of the results, however, you’ll see an “AI response” that takes the “best” sources from your results and turns them into an AI-generated summary.
Sometimes this is quite useful: without having to browse multiple websites, you get the answer to your question, complete with key ideas, images, bullet points, and sources that you can check to fact-check the AI. You should too, because the AI is always making things up . But this applies to all aspects of AI, not just search, so if you’re going to start using AI-powered search, it’s just included in the package.
How can ChatGPT Search improve the situation?
OpenAI will need to do two things to improve their experience: they will need to return more accurate and relevant search results, and also offer an improved AI adder. They may not challenge Google overnight, but with this combination, it could be enough to entice some techies to make the switch.
The company certainly has the AI technology to offer a decent AI search result adder, but I obviously can’t speak to their search capabilities. What I can say is that OpenAI doesn’t have the same financial incentives as Google, at least not yet. OpenAI doesn’t need to prioritize SEO spam and advertising because that’s not where their money comes from: they have paying subscribers and big investors investing in them. From where I sit, they could focus on the search that produces the most relevant results, rather than what the search engine thinks will bring it the most profit. This can also help with AI review: if the AI is pulling information from sources without thinking about how it might affect a company’s bottom line, it may tend to select higher quality links. Here’s your best product.
Of course, this is all speculation based on the URL, which OpenAI has not publicly commented on. May 9th may come and go, and we may never hear about the ChatGPT search again. But if the company plans to take on Google here, it will be interesting.