This coming on the heels of the super underwhelming Bard release makes me actually wonder for the first time if Google has the ability to keep up. Not because I doubt their technical capabilities, but because they're just getting out-launched by a big factor.
This might be the biggest threat to Google search (apart from OS vendors changing defaults) in a long long time. One problem Google faces is that they have to make money via search. Several other products are subsidized via search, so taking a hit on search revenue itself is out of the question. Compared to Microsoft which makes money on other stuff, search (and knowledge discovery) is more like a complement, on which they can easily operate on near break even point for a very long time (maybe even make it a loss leader).
If Google had to launch something similar to New Bing to general availability, the cost of search for sure would go up and margins will go down. Is the google organisational hierarchy even setup to handle a hit on search margins? AFAIK search prints money and supports several other loss making products. Even GCP was not turning a profit last I checked.
The biggest threat to Google is if people stops going to google.com.
It does not matter now if ChatGPT is successful with their product. the fact that you can take these LLMs and put them anywhere EXCEPT google.com, Google is f'd up.
The last generation was creating the habit of going to google.com before jumping off to other websites. That era is over.
I rarely go to google.com now. If the LLM is in ChatGPT + Notion + Office 365 + VSC, opening a browser to type to an address bar is silly.
