Looking for answers
Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin almost sold the search engine for one million dollars in 1999.
Today, as Google is valued at $1.35 trillion1, an arms race takes place between Microsoft and Google to dominate online search.
Unless you are an employee or shareholder of either of these companies, you likely don't care much about who wins. Yet this is one of Google's primary revenue sources.
The business model of Google search and Bing (Microsoft's search engine) is to provide results for our web searches, not for free, but in exchange for the consumption of paid ads.
The war is taking place because Microsoft recently announced Bing AI, a new version of their search engine powered by a next-generation OpenAI large language model that is faster, more accurate, and more capable than ChatGPT and has been customized for search2.
In case you’ve been living under a rock, OpenAI released its cutting-edge human language AI model, GPT-3, through an interface intuitive to all of us—text messages—as ChatGPT. This app set a new record for the fastest-growing user base in online applications: 100 million active users in January 202334.
ChatGPT can hold conversations, answer questions, and solve problems.
In this battle, we are mere spectators waiting to see who wins.
We're not searching the internet anymore. We're looking for answers.
Google: My Top Stock For 2023. Seeking Alpha. Accessed February 13, 2023. ↩
Reinventing search with a new AI-powered Microsoft Bing and Edge, your copilot for the web. Microsoft. Accessed February 13, 2023. ↩
ChatGPT sets record for fastest-growing user base. Reuters. Accessed February 13, 2023. ↩
As Dylan Patel and Afzal Ahmad point out, ChatGPT surpassed TikTok and Instagram in fastest growth, which achieved 100 million active users in 9 months and 2.5 years, respectively. ↩
