Google needs to worry about Google Search, not ChatGPT

Tldr; ChatGPT is less likely to kill Google Search than Google but they should worry that ChatGPT, TikTok, and Instagram are just as uneven but way more fun.

What happens when you put a question in Google? I searched for "what is chatgpt" on the desktop version of Google.com and got infinite results back. At the top is a blog post about optimizing language models above a "People also ask" pack and then some results, a knowledge panel on the right, some YouTube videos, and then as many results as I want to doomscroll through.

You type "what is chatgpt" into ChatGPT and you get an answer. It may not be a high quality answer, but it’s an easy, definitive answer with a fun interface.

It is worth noting that the results are uneven, for both products. Google has lots of solid results on the first page all from authoritative sources. ChatGPT has a solid, but awkward response to most questions. I could learn what ChatGPT is from both places. I would just learn it faster on ChatGPT and without the tyranny of choice problem. After many years of experience I know which results to look for in Google searches. Generations older and younger than me have no clue what to click on in the Google scrum, and don't like the company. The NBC story making the rounds explains that most young people just prefer a better visual search engine. The rest don't really like Google.

Google has reached a kind of hypersaturation where their market share is now significantly affected by the feels they give prospective users. Millennials and Zoomers feel like they are working for Google, in the same way a sheep feels like its working for the shearer. Whether this is rational or not doesn't matter and I'm not judging. I have definitely seen it affect consumer behavior.

The young people rarely use Google, with Instagram, TikTok, DuckDuckGo, Reddit, and a variety of random search engines like Brave dominating Gen Z. In part it's because people born after 2002 have only known Evil Google, who officially removed "don't be evil" from the Terms of Service in 2018. Why would they use the confusing, evil search that is literally watching your every step when a fun chatbot is faster? AI is only theoretically evil at the moment (M3gan was excellent, btw).

ChatGPT feels like magic for the user and is too new to have any corporate baggage. Open AI and Sam Altman haven't created a duopoly in a single market, aren't known to have killed a single good chat product, and sound cool. Sam Altman has read tech street cred through YCombinator. And the kids nowadays love Nadella's Microsoft, who they have only ever known as the Word, and Xbox company; Xbox's Phil Spencer is really f'ing cool. Microsoft is cool again and Open AI makes them cooler. It also helps that no one has attached a real business model to ChatGPT yet, so it feels extra benevolent at the moment.

Frankly, Serge and Larry ain't gonna fix Google Search either. I'm sure they are both as capable as Satya Nadella, Phil Spencer, Sam Altman, Vanessa Pappas, and Shou Zi Chew, but they don't have the juice anymore. Web 3.0 has changed three times since Google decimated the Web 1.0 search engines. People don't blog, they don't link, and the invisible-to-Google social networks have never been more popular. I don't think two 50ish year old billionaires are going to get ahead of Chew's TikTok. Online culture has changed. And TikTok gives you one, entertaining answer quickly just like ChatGPT.

So if you have two equally iffy places to search, but one is the new hotness while the other is old, busted, and watching you 24/7, whom do you choose?

I still use Google Search and personally don't think ChatGPT is gonna kill Google. The $42 membership, a rapidly aging database, and a few months of terrible ChatGPT powered blog posts will probably kill the ChatGPT momentum. But someone still needs to fix Google Search or it will gradually die. I nominate Kevin Rose or Caterina Fake. Rose is one of the Digg guys and gifted at productizing the zeitgeist. Fake is one of the Flikr guys and former Etsy chairwoman with unparalleled vision and experience in visual search. Both have the credibility and experience necessary to reboot Google Search into something vital and fun to use again. Is there a better candidate to fix Google Search? I'll ask ChatGPT.