(Reuters) – Google is facing a bigger threat from Sam Altman’s OpenAI even as it awaits a decision on how antitrust regulators in Washington plan to level the playing field in the internet search business. #OpenAIThreatToGoogle
A US ruling on Monday found that Google built an illegal search monopoly, marking a significant win for regulators. However, the growing use of AI tools, including OpenAI’s popular ChatGPT, is eroding Google’s dominance. Sources, investors, and analysts noted that this shift is already impacting Google’s market position.
“I think for Google right now, AI (is) a much bigger deal than the ruling. AI is fundamentally changing how the search product also works,” said Arvind Jain, a former Google engineer who worked on products including Search for a decade.
Jain, who now runs an enterprise search firm called Glean, said AI’s impact was immediate compared with any impact from these rulings that get appealed and take a long time to affect a market.
Google has long been synonymous with search, commanding around 90% of the global market share and bringing in about $175 billion in annual revenue through the business. Even Apple, which prefers to build all the software and much of the hardware that goes into its devices, has allowed Google to be its default search engine for a handsome fee.
But the days of preferential treatment for a fee are over even before slew of antitrust court cases resolve. In its AI foray, Apple announced a partnership with OpenAI to bring ChatGPT to its upcoming devices. It emphasized the deal’s non-exclusive basis and talked up the likelihood of bringing on Google as another partner. #OpenAIThreatToGoogle
Moreover, OpenAI’s capabilities in AI research and applications are evolving quickly. The OpenAI threat to Google has prompted Google to accelerate its AI developments.
