This is huge! The way you use the internet is going to change in 2023, and it’s not Google who started it…
As you can probably guess by likely having not heard of it, it’s not exactly shakin’ things up in the smartphone market. But hey, at least Microsoft still has Windows, right? Who cares that it didn’t manage to enter the smartphone market?
Well, a good company doesn’t rest on its laurels in those dynamic and ever-changing times. Apple is secretly working on AR glasses, while Google and Microsoft are currently fighting a silent war…
An AI war. One that will change the way you use the internet, and seemingly – very soon.
As some of us saw a mile away, Microsoft has now integrated ChatGPT into Bing
What’s ChatGPT? Oh, only the most popular and advanced public chatbot, that’s been scaring and impressing people since late 2022, with how capable it is to not only understand and keep a conversation, but provide complex results based on human requests.
From writing you an entire poem, to doing your math homework – it can. Or as I’ve come to appreciate the most – it can even do some of your programming for you, and save you so much time…
But OpenAI (the company behind ChatGPT) has made it so that this AI is not interested, at least right now, in replacing your Google Assistant or Siri. It’s not interested in being your emotional companion AI that “lives” in your phone as an app. It’s not even interested in remembering who you are. It’s only interested in providing helpful results to whoever asks.
And those words – “helpful results” – were my earliest hint for what was likely the real endgame for ChatGPT – to become integrated with a search engine, and provide search results conversationally, rather than what Google does – you write a few keywords, not even in a sentence, and get a list of websites where those keywords have been written before. You write “how to make s’mores” and you’ll end up on a cooking website. Or you write “how to make Windows 10 taskbar centered” and you end up on a Reddit thread, where another human has already asked the same question, and hopefully, gotten good answers.
So that’s Google for ya. Sure, it’s now evolved to sometimes deliver snippets of information based on your search query, besides just the static list of websites, but overall – that’s about it.
But one of the most popular search engines after it just suddenly changed this whole game.
And that would be Bing, Microsoft’s search engine, which has historically held way less worldwide search engine market share, currently just about 3%, right after Google’s nearly-93%. You remember that 3%, because it may change soon, if Microsoft plays its cards right, which so far – it has.
But we’ll get to how Microsoft ended up with its paws on ChatGPT a bit later on. First – here’s what Microsoft just did with Bing.
This is how your web searching experience could change very soon
The new Bing with ChatGPT
So we just covered how your average Google Search goes down. Basically, you write a word (or several), and end up browsing relevant websites.
Now imagine you write a complex question, the same way you’d ask a relative in the “old” days of the 90s, when there was no Google Search. And instantly – you get a human-like answer too. No need to open a website, no need to browse through results. Just an answer to your question, regardless of how complex and multi-layered it may be.
Well, surprise! Microsoft’s Bing web search already has ChatGPT integrated, as of yesterday, and you can try that scenario out immediately on your phone. As you can see from the screenshots above, the entire process is entirely conversational. The response you get can be as complex as your question demands. You don’t have to open a website for a detailed answer anymore. Or at all.
It’s not hard to imagine this becoming an app that you can talk to, despite ChatGPT’s own claims to me, that it’s currently not planning to become one. After all, it’s up to Microsoft, ain’t it?
But wait, how come Microsoft is the one involved in this? How come Google didn’t buy OpenAI and ChatGPT as soon as the latter started making waves, so that its competitors couldn’t use it? Well, here’s what happened…
How did Microsoft end up using an AI by a company co-founded by Elon Musk, who mocked Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft?
OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, was co-founded by none other than Elon Musk
You know what’s funny? While doing my usual research process on this topic, I discovered that the best and simplest way to find out what really went down is to… ask the AI itself. And I did, a few days ago, and ChatGPT did provide me with a very competent explanation.In any case, here are the actual, non-AI-written public facts that led to Microsoft winning over ChatGPT, as opposed to Google or anyone else…
OpenAI, the artificial intelligence research company that developed ChatGPT, was founded 7 years ago by six people, most notably Tesla, SpaceX and Twitter CEO Elon Musk, also known as the richest man in the world.
In 2018 Musk resigned from the OpenAI board, while remaining a donor for the initially non-profit organization, but as it seems – that wasn’t enough.
And in 2019, Microsoft invested a much-needed $1 billion in OpenAI. About the same time, OpenAI switched to for-profit. And whether due to said investment or not, OpenAI was becoming an ever closer partner with Microsoft.
Microsoft kept investing, and keeps investing in OpenAI to this day. As for whether the two remain in close partnership – well, you can tell by the results…
Mere hours ago Microsoft made what some of us suspected official – ChatGPT is getting integrated into its products, most notably the Bing web search, which needed this more than anything, and the Edge browser, which – ditto, has been greatly behind Google Chrome in terms of web browser market share.
And so we have it – with some foresight and clever investments, Microsoft is the one that formed a partnership with OpenAI when the latter needed it (especially the investments) the most. And now Google is running scared.
Well, that’s a bit dramatic, but reportedly, Google did declare ChatGPT “Code Red” to its employees, and it’s pushing the research and development on its own AI tech, known as LaMDA (Language Model for Dialogue Applications) more than ever.
As it should. Both Google Chrome, and way more financially importantly – Google Search – are at stake here.
So expect Google to clap back at Microsoft with a similar chatbot integration with its search engine, soon enough.
At least if that whole thing doesn’t turn out to be a fad, but honestly – it’s looking pretty real. And because of what Microsoft just did with Bing and ChatGPT, significant changes in how we use the internet might be at hand this year. All because of a new race for AI-powered search engine dominance.
In conclusion, this is a surprise to no one, right?
Even in late 2022 when I interviewed ChatGPT, I mentioned how it has the potential to threaten Google Search, and that wasn’t even such a bold or far-fetched statement. It’s pretty much what everyone, even remotely tech-savvy, who interacted with the AI, saw.
Little did we know Microsoft would attempt to integrate ChatGPT with Bing so soon – February 7, 2023. Let’s all remember this date, because we may find ourselves mentioning it quite a lot in the future.
Awesome? Are you happy with Google Search getting some AI competition, or do you prefer your soon-to-be “old way” of searching the web?
The implications of Bing with ChatGPT don’t just bode badly for Google, but pretty much every online business (which is most of them) that relies on Google Ads to promote itself, and reach new customers.
Similarly, a lot of websites that you visit currently could eventually lose you as a visitor, namely ones that provide answers and tutorials to specific questions – cooking sites, forums, etc. Because ChatGPT can just write the answer to your question, instead of leading you to a list of websites for you to browse through, looking for the answer manually, as Google currently does (most of the time).
All in all, it’s reasonable to assume that this change in how we use the internet will likely get mixed reactions. For me – it’s completely understandable why many would love what’s happening, but similarly – why many would hate it.
But hey – you let us know what you think. Join the conversation with your fellow tech enthusiasts in the comment section, while we still have the option of such human interaction online, wink wink.
Are you happy for Microsoft, and you believe this is what Bing needed to finally take on Google Search as a legitimate threat?
Or would you rather keep using simple web search engines like Google (for as long as that one stays simple), and DuckDuckGo?