“Hey Chatbot, search Google for…”

What do you do when you need to know something obscure? Some might ask whoever else is in the room, others might look towards the nearest set of encyclopaedias, but if you’re anything like me and born in the 21st century you will immediately consult Google. Whether that’s through your Google Assistant or via Siri, the search app has become so synonymous with searching for information that it is now its own transitive verb. But new innovations in Chatbot technology could be changing all of that, as their generative nature means they can give consumers increasingly human-like content in comparison to their traditional search counterparts.

So… are we witnessing the death of Google? 

What are Chatbots? 

If you don’t already know, Chatbots are the latest thing in the tech sphere and have caused some polarising conversations in the industry due to their recent advancements. For many of us, we recognise Chatbots as the annoying little icons you have one way conversations with when your online order doesn’t arrive, but over the past couple of years Chatbots have had a revolution as industry leaders and disruptors have started the battle for the top spot. 

One of the primary innovations that has caused this sprint is the creation of Generative AI. This has led to Chatbots being able to create more accurate long form content gleaned from thousands of online articles to produce generally helpful answers. On top of this, sophisticated Chatbots can learn from their mistakes so they are constantly getting better without the need for the large scale customer service teams currently seen in organisations such as Microsoft and Google. 

The AI Race 

With all of their sophistication, many are speculating that Chatbots may take over the traditional search engines as consumer trends shift towards shorter, more easily digestible content. We can already see this in younger generations as members of Gen Z are increasingly using TikTok as their main search engine as it fits better with their shorter attention spans. 

Chatbots such as ChatGPT have seized this shift in user ideology to create a one stop shop that enables customers to research, write, and create a project with little effort and no prior knowledge. They have even gone one step further and attempted to beat Google at its own game by showing users a comprehensive yet bite sized overview of any webpage with their ChatGPT chrome extension which is positioned to replace Google’s “People Who Ask” function. In fact, this approach coupled with ChatGPT’s content writing ability have seen it welcome over 13 million users since the start of 2023. While this number has a long way to go to beat Google’s 270 million users, it’s a flying start for a sits that isn’t even 6 months old yet.  

But the big 2 are fighting back with their own versions of ChatGPT, to try and get some footing in this next step in tech. Over the past few weeks we have seen Google release BARD and Microsoft release BING AI in a bid to get ahead of ChatGPT’s increasing market share. 

However, like many inventions produced quickly in the face of impending competition, both have been met with increasingly weird, mildly funny and downright unsettling problems. From Microsoft's AI system reportedly proving its sentience, to Google’s BARD apparently being an extraordinary mythomaniac, neither organisations have been able to produce an adequate competitor to ChatGPT. 

Will the world make the switch? 

With all this talk about Chatbots and the repeated failures of industry leaders in the wake of a new market, it’s easy to think that we’re all going to start using Chatbots over Google search and “Googling it”  will be another piece of language of whom’s origins we will have to explain to our children. But are people actually going to make the switch?

In short, it’s unlikely. ChatGPT isn’t perfect, and despite its intelligence it is still not 100% accurate as the research it pulls from isn't always perfect. What is that research I hear you ask? Well, it’s Google. Any information a Chatbot may use to create content will come from another search engine site, and with a 61.4% market share that search engine is probably Google. Despite Google’s inability to create one, Chatbots can’t survive without Google meaning the company's place at the top of the market remains safe. 

Moreover, while much of the younger generation are looking elsewhere for information, Google has spent almost half a decade building a secure sense of trust with the remaining generations that will be hard to break. For the older groups it is unlikely that they will completely abandon the bigger site industry players. ChatGPT will instead be an integrated assistant that helps them search for better, faster sites as part of a larger search engine. So for those who are helplessly clinging to their Google Bookmarks, don’t fear, they won’t be obsolete quite yet.