In November 2022, ChatGPT - the free version - burst into the scene. To get to 100 million users, it took just two months. At the time, TikTok was a legend - it took nine months to get to that milestone. [It was broken by Threads - it got there in two days but then again, it was intimately linked to Instagram.]
But, it alarmed Google as it saw ChatGPT as a threat to its search engine. It was not throwing out just a set of results to the search query but it is actually writing a set of answers with complete sentences and paragraphs. It was much more than a search facility that Google had. What drove Google to the wall was that it had been incorporating Large Language Models to the Search Engine but then pruning them to *not* produce verbose responses! [Google was creating the models that ChatGPT used.]
Google hits the panic button
Google saw it as a threat to its own business. It hurriedly trotted out the innovations going on behind the scenes. It splashed a “Live From Paris” show for the world to see. It was such an amateurish production that it set a benchmark for how *not* to showcase your product. While doing the live demo, they could not find the phone - nervous laughter followed. If my MBA students did a presentation like that, I would give them a failing grade. [You don’t have to see the whole thing. Fast forward it at 10 min and 15 sec or 615 sec.]
The threat from ChatGPT was not direct. But it was to come from Bing that incorporates ChatGPT in the search engine. Every time you update your Windows, the first thing it does is to take you to a Bing page and say how good Bing Search is!
How did it all play out?
Now the dust has settled. It has become clearer that ChatGPT has created a niche that is not a competition of Google Search as such. People are still flocking to Google Search.
Here is what happened to ChatGPT. It is getting billions of visits per month. But it hardly seems like a Google killer.
[Bounce rate refers to how often a user bounces off the site after seeing the first page.]
After a spectacular start, ChatGPT has found a plateau.
What it meant in practical terms
Microsoft bet big on ChatGPT incorporating it on Bing (and Edge). But the execution has been clumsy. If you fire up Edge and try to search for something, it is hard to find what is going on. It has a scam website feel to it.
Here is what happens when I open my page:
It is showing me an AI generated fake colored page with the lure of a Microsoft Gift Card!
Compare that with what I get when I open my Google Search page.
It is still a Zen page. I rest my case!
Not surprisingly, others have noticed it too. A few days ago, Bloomberg released the latest market share for search engines at the end of 2023. [A year ago, Google had 92 percent market share.]
Executive conclusion: At the end of 2023, Google is still the King.
Postscript: In my next muse, I will slice and dice what is going on under the hood for Google Search - from the point of view of a discerning user. It is not pretty.