Rough day for Google.
ChatGPT’s volume of “search-like queries” is now about 20% of Google’s search volume, according to OpenAI’s consumer product lead, Adam Fry.
Speaking with Big Technology’s Alex Kantrowitz at an event in NYC, Fry also revealed that ChatGPT has reached 1.2 billion weekly active users, adding 200 million in just two months.
Why This Matters
This isn’t great news for Google, of course.
Consider that on last week’s Q3 earnings call, Google said AI helped drive Search query growth to its fastest pace in five years. But AI Mode makes less money per query than legacy Search, with Search revenue growth slowing to just 12%.
Meanwhile, OpenAI is eating into searches that used to go to Google. Unsurprisingly, ChatGPT’s ad business has also hit a billion-dollar revenue run rate in just nine months, as brands recognize the shift underway.
Ultimately, Google built its advertising empire around search intent, capturing data and serving as the place people go to find things to buy or spend money on. With ChatGPT’s search-like queries now totaling 20% of Google’s volume, OpenAI is capturing those same signals. And it’s only just beginning to monetize them with ads.
Experts React
Here’s more from Fry, per Kantrowitz:
“What people came to ChatGPT for to start, if you go back about two years, is really writing help and coding help. Those wouldn’t be things that you really search for.
What we’ve seen over the last year is people have grown into all these other topics. Things like you’re looking up a person or people or a place or a thing, and it requires up-to-date information. That’s a key element.
Another big part is finance questions or health questions, where you really want to make sure it’s up-to-date information that’s quite factual, and we’ll do a web search for those questions.
It’s basically anything that a user would have traditionally gone to a traditional search engine for, but is now deciding to go to ChatGPT for.”
Our Take
Don’t bet against Google. At some point, it will flip several switches and figure out how to close the monetization gap on AI searches.
But that won’t happen in a vacuum. For the first time, Google faces a real threat, with ChatGPT increasingly becoming the app people use for… well, just about anything. And as Google figures out monetization, it can’t ignore the fact that searches are moving elsewhere. What’s a loss for Google is a gain for ChatGPT and potentially its nascent ad business.
