The meteoric rise of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, the online chatbot, has been a cause for concern for search engine giants such as Google. Paul Buchheit, creator of Gmail, took to Twitter to suggest that Google’s business could only last another two years at most.
Launched in November 2020, ChatGPT has become increasingly popular among users due to its conversational style and ease of use when asking questions. This has led many to question whether Google’s main product – the search engine – will soon be made obsolete in the same manner as Yellow Pages was in the past.
An article by Interesting Engineering previously reported on how Google executives were scrambling to focus their efforts on artificial intelligence (A.I.) products in light of this newfound competition from ChatGPT.
If true then this could mark the beginning of the end for Google, who have built immense success around its search engine. The company makes money from charging advertisers fees for listing their products and services next to each corresponding result returned; over $250 billion revenue was generated this way in 2021 alone.
ChatGPT is quickly gaining traction amongst users thanks to its capabilities across multiple disciplines; it can compose poetry as well as pass MBA exams at Wharton School of Business. Microsoft have further backed these developments with additional financial support as they look towards integrating ChatGPT into their search engine and wresting control away from Google who hold first place right now.
Despite these advancements however, ChatGPT itself does not believe its existence will cripple Google’s search business quite yet. It is possible that engineers within OpenAI opted not to program more assertive responses into ChatGPT out of fear of coming off too narcissistic and confident, though only time will tell if this prediction holds any truth or not.
At present, it remains unclear whether A.I.-based solutions such as ChatGPT can indeed replace traditional search engines like Google or if the two solutions can coexist without any harm done to either side but one thing is certain, both parties have much riding on the outcome when it comes time for a decision to be made a couple of years down the line.
