In many circles, “Ask Chat” has replaced “Google it,” and this is reflected in a new announcement from OpenAI: the volume of search queries executed through ChatGPT is now 20% of the volume executed through Google.
Adam Fry, OpenAI Consumer Product Manager for ChatGPT, made the announcement during a press event on Monday. He said the company defines a search as any time a user enters a query that results in a web search, as opposed to tasks such as defining a term or simply providing a practical explanation. (Fry did not specify the source of the Google search volume number.)
Having one-fifth the number of searches as Google is still a long way from surpassing it, but for comparison, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said during Google’s 2023 antitrust trial that Bing has about 3% of the search engine market share after trying for more than a decade. During the trial, Google portrayed AI as a potential disruptor, arguing that ChatGPT was poised to seriously compete with it – now OpenAI appears to agree. (OpenAI likely uses Microsoft Bing for a significant portion of its searches, as well as its internal search index, although there is still speculation that it routes some queries through Google.)
The news comes amid an ongoing search engine upheaval, as Google continues to reduce conventional referrals to third-party sites and invest heavily in AI tools – not just the big picture AI, but also additional generative AI capabilities, including personalized search results with visualizations and charts. But as search queries increasingly flow through OpenAI and the services of other AI labs, other companies are investing in the same types of AI-driven search experiences, even if they call it something else: for OpenAI, it’s an “intelligent user interface,” or the creation of a visual, interactive interface within a chatbot response. “This is where the future of this technology is going. You’re talking to a web,” Fry said.
Much like Google, OpenAI sees a potential path to profitability through advertising, especially as it approaches an IPO potentially planned for early next year. OpenAI has defended its ads in the past, and Fry told reporters they didn’t provoke a lasting reaction. “The ads have not had a negative impact on the product or its use,” he said, adding that “most people don’t seem to be bothered by the ads in the product.”
OpenAI announced last month that the company would begin introducing images of sponsored products and services into ChatGPT rather than just the name, logo, and a link to its product as before.
“The ads maybe showed us that we could do this more, actually,” Fry said.
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