The End Of "Just Google It": The Future Of Internet Search With AI

Welcome to this week’s Deep-fried Dive with Fry Guy! In these long-form articles, Fry Guy conducts in-depth analyses of cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI) developments and developers. Today, Fry Guy dives into the future of internet search. We hope you enjoy!

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For the past 20 years, the most popular phrase when someone didn’t know the answer to a question has been: “Just Google it.” With the rise of large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT and AI-powered search, the phrase “Just Google it” could soon be a thing of the past.

THE RISE OF GOOGLE MANIA

The Google search engine was launched on September 4th, 1998. Today, Google Search has become the primary portal by which people around the world navigate the internet. Google is so widely used that the search engine processes over 8.5 billion searches per day. To break that down a bit:

People run to Google with all their problems, whether it be figuring out which type of cat food to buy, looking for answers to homework, or whether it’s searching for the best local restaurants. Google functions as a companion for many people as they navigate their daily lives, helping to make life just a little bit easier by providing answers at one’s fingertips. People use Google so much, in fact, that 84% of Google searchers use the search engine three or more times each day. This means the average person searches Google around 1,095 to 1,460 times per year. That’s a lot of Googling!

Given Google’s massive usage, it’s no wonder why the company occupies 91.62% of the search engine market share. This has led to monumental profits for the tech giant. In fact, Google receives nearly $120 billion per year from advertising. That amounts to roughly 6 cents per search, which quickly adds up.

As these remarkable numbers reveal, Google runs the internet world. To many, that is no surprise. But there is a looming threat to the past 25 years of Google dominance, and its name is AI.

THE RISE OF CHATGPT

ChatGPT was launched by OpenAI on November 30, 2022. In less than two years, it has garnered over 200 million monthly visitors who are looking for a conversational way to get answers to questions and more. This number is growing at an exponential pace, as usage is up over 100% from just a year ago, with no signs of slowing down. These numbers are impressive, but they pale in comparison to Google, who makes ChatGPT’s visitors look like mere child’s play … but that’s only part of the story.

From a bird’s eye view, Google seems to be holding strong as the public’s favorite and most reliable query companion. But upon a closer look, signs point to a twist of fate—a future where “Just Google it,” is replaced by “Ask ChatGPT.” The main factor pushing this forward? Young people.

Despite ChatGPT’s massive early adoption, older people remain incredibly out of the loop and hesitant to adopt AI. According to Backlinko research, 23% of American adults have never even used ChatGPT. 43% of ChatGPT’s monthly users are between the ages of 18-29.

The amount of young people flocking to ChatGPT reflects a decline in Google’s usage by young people. Despite Google’s 91.62% control of the internet search market, Gen Z (aged 12-27) is dumping Google and turning to other alternatives like ChatGPT and social media outlets for information, as only 61% use Google as their primary search engine. What does this mean? It means a new wave is coming. As time progresses, Google will inevitably collapse under the coming storm of new tech minds and search innovations, powered by AI.

GOOGLE’S MAD PANIC

Google is the fourth largest company in the world for a reason. If you think the Google team doesn’t see this AI-fueled storm coming, you are sadly mistaken. They know that the old ways of getting answers to questions and searching the internet are on the outs, so they are doing everything in their power to transform Google Search into something young people will want to use. How? By leveraging AI.

In an effort to infuse AI into their search engine experience, the Google team recently released an AI-powered search feature called “AI Overviews.” The intent behind AI Overviews is to provide Google searchers with an AI-generated summary of the search results. In this way, users will be able to access answers to their questions and responses to their search prompts in a much more conversational, concise, and efficient way.

Despite good intentions, this feature quickly went viral for all the wrong reasons, as users reported that the AI suggested jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge for depression, putting glue on pizza, and recommended eating “at least one small rock per day.” The list of these crazy answers continues to grow … 

As a response to this debacle, a spokesperson from Google doubled down on the effectiveness of the (clearly flawed) system, stating, “The examples we’ve seen are generally very uncommon queries, and aren’t representative of most people’s experiences. The vast majority of AI overviews provide high quality information, with links to dig deeper on the web. We conducted extensive testing before launching this new experience to ensure AI Overviews meet our high bar for quality. Where there have been violations of our policies, we’ve taken action—and we’re also using these isolated examples as we continue to refine our systems overall.” 

Many believe these odd results stemmed from Google’s $60 million deal with Reddit, which allowed the AI Overviews feature to pull data from social media posts rather than from more reliable sources, thus giving users flawed responses. Others believe this is just a matter of all the “junk” that people post on the internet. Without filtering that data according to some human standard of truth, crazy answers are what you will get. The only problem with human-selected summaries, however, is that it gives rise to biased information and responses, and people don’t want that either. Needless to say, Google finds itself in a pickle.

WHILE ALL THIS WAS GOING ON …

While this AI Overviews madness unfolds, OpenAI sits back and watches. You see, before Google released their AI Overviews feature, there were rampant rumors that OpenAI was going to release GPT Search, “a web search product that would bring the Microsoft-backed startup into more direct competition with Google.”

Many reliable sources thought OpenAI was going to release GPT Search at their Spring Update on May 13th. This did not happen. Instead, OpenAI released GPT-4o and some other small updates. At first, this seemed disappointing, as many were looking forward to this novel search tool. However, as the AI Overviews incidents have played out with Google, the decision for OpenAI to withhold the release of GPT Search seems much more interesting and intentional. Although the OpenAI team has not explicitly stated why they decided not to release the highly-rumored GPT Search, it seems like they knew something about AI-powered search that Google didn’t. Maybe this AI-powered Google Search disaster serves as a nice springboard for OpenAI to learn from the mistakes of Google’s system and swoop in as the saving grace in AI-powered search.

CONTROL THE SEARCH … CONTROL THE MIND

At the end of the day, does this really matter? The answer is yes, and yes by a long shot. Whoever controls the internet search market gets to control what people see when they have a question or look for information. Google has controlled this market for years, bringing the highest paying ads and the most socially and politically biased materials to the forefront of the search results. Most people don’t go beyond this. In fact, only 0.63% of people are willing to go to the second page of Google to find search results. This means that whoever controls internet search dictates the information flowing into the minds of people across all domains. Control the search engine, and you control the minds of the public.

For now, Google dominates the internet search market. But don’t let that fool you. With the rise of AI adoption, especially in young people, this will soon change. When faced with a question, we will hear less people saying, “Just Google it,” and more people saying, “Ask ChatGPT.” If you listen closely, you can already hear this beginning to happen.