OpenAI Emerges as Google’s Top Rival, Surpassing US Regulatory Threats

OpenAI is quickly becoming a threat to Google’s search domination as AI tools like ChatGPT become more popular faster than US laws can change them.

OpenAI, which is run by Sam Altman, is a bigger threat to Google while it waits for the government to decide how to level the playing field in the internet search business.

On Monday, the US said that Google had an illegal monopoly on search results. This is seen as a big win for officials. Sources, investors, and analysts say that Google’s dominance is already being eroded by the growing number of people using AI tools like OpenAI’s famous ChatGPT chatbot.

In contrast to these rulings, which are appealed and take a long time to affect the market, Arvind Jain, who now runs search company called Glean, said AI’s effect happened right away.

Because it has about 90% of the world market share and makes about $175 billion a year from its business, Google has long been associated with search. Apple is one of the few companies that likes to make its own hardware and software, but it has paid Google a lot of money to be its preferred search engine.

A lot of trade court cases are still going on, but getting special treatment for a fee is no longer possible. Apple joined forces with OpenAI to add ChatGPT to its future devices as part of its AI push. In it, it was made clear that the deal wasn’t exclusive and that Google could become a partner as well.

Experts say that if Google is found guilty, Apple will move faster towards AI-powered search services if it has to end its deal with Google for Search. OpenAI, which is backed by Microsoft, said last month that it was also getting into the search game with a slow launch of SearchGPT, an AI-powered search engine that can get information from the internet in real time.

Google’s Struggle to Compete with OpenAI’s AI Innovations

Many Wall Street analysts and former Google executives think that Google has what it takes to be a leader in AI: a search engine and a large language model to train its AI. But the company’s efforts don’t seem to be coordinated with OpenAI’s attack, which is bringing in younger people.

Google was shocked by how popular generative AI became. Even though it did the early study that led to the technology, it didn’t come out with a consumer product until early 2023, long after ChatGPT had become the fastest-growing consumer app.

Rebecca Wettemann talked about Google’s new AI Overviews tool, which uses AI to answer search queries that show up before links. Publishers who saw their Google link traffic drop were angry about it. It was also criticised for making mistakes like telling users to eat glue and saying Barack Obama was a Muslim. This year, Google took away some of the feature’s benefits.

That antitrust decision might not have a big effect on Google just yet, but Richard Socher, CEO and founder of AI search engine startup You.com and former chief scientist at Salesforce, said it should let more companies compete in the search market.