Last week ChatGPT launched its much awaited search engine, allowing for the first time its users to get the latest information and content available on the Internet. ChatGPT is not the first generative AI company to try and rival Google with an AI-powered search engine. Perplexity, a Jeff Bezos-backed startup, also calls itself Some industry experts called this latest developments Here is my take on this hot topic. ChatGPT is making progress, that’s for sure. The question is - how fast and in what direction? To begin with, Google is not sitting still in the midst of this genAI craze - it has the most advanced AI R&D on this planet and had been using AI one way or another for over 15 years. Google has already launched its Gemini AI as part of its search engine results. Google features Gemini AI answers to questions and content summaries at the top of the SERPS (search engine results pages), in the Gemini AI and its latest version Gemini 1.5-pro-002 is comparable to OpenAI’s GPT-4o. While both OpenAI’s GPT-4o and Gemini 1.5-pro-002 models are very competent at various tasks, Gemini 1.5 Pro clearly demonstrates stronger overall performance, especially in more complex tasks like coding and problem-solving. It is also surprisingly cheaper. Gemini AI has already been made available to Google’s 84 billion monthly users - compare this to ChatGPT’s 121 million users! Over 684 times difference! How is ChatGPT going to make money? By charging subscription fees for its premium versions or by featuring Sponsored Listings in the search engine results pages (SERP) like Google? Or by following Perplexity’s arrangement with Fortune Magazine for revenue-sharing of fees generated from search results that feature the publication’s articles. Last year Google generated $238 billion in revenue from its advertising. $238 billion! This is serious dough! Plus, the Google Ecosystem is more than just search! Google has become a fully integrated advertising ecosystem, where all advertising formats are intertwined and work in concert. User engagements in the upper funnel (SEO, content marketing, YouTube TrueView, Gmail Ads, etc.) influences conversions in the lower funnel (Google Ads, Google Hotel Ads, Google Display Network, RLSA, Customer Match, etc.), and a campaign in one advertising format directly influences the results from all other formats. Advertisers are loving it! No wonder, out of $1 trillion spent on global advertising this year, almost half of this (43.6%) will be spent with Alphabet (parent company of Google, YouTube, etc) and Meta (parent company of Facebook, Instagram, etc). In conclusion, ChatGPT Search, in my view, is not a viable threat to Google, at least not at this point. It may chip a percentage or two from Google’s gigantic user base, but this is it. Never underestimate Google, one of the top three smartest companies on this planet!an AI search engine.
a significant threat to Google.
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