Google Founders Approve Plans To Add Chatbot Features to Search

in response to the success of OpenAI's ChatGPT

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

Google's founders have approved plans to add chatbot features to the search engine in response to the success of OpenAI's ChatGPT.
ChatGPT provides an alternative way of searching for information and could threaten Google's search business.
Google is accelerating the development of AI and plans to launch a version of its search engine with chatbot capabilities this year.

[searchenginejournal.com...]

Google is planning to release their own AI chatbot as early as 'this year', according to Google's founders. If you own an informational site likely to be impacted by an AI chatbot giving the same information, what's your plan?

www.searchenginejournal.com Google's Founders Return: How ChatGPT Is Changing Search Google's founders re-engage with the company following the success of OpenAI's ChatGPT, which could threaten Google's search business.

[superclown2]

Presumably this will take up even more real estate at the top of the 'search results' (in other words, advertisements) page, pushing the few remaining organics even lower, which means it would be bad for every pukka website, not just the informational ones.

It would also compete with the existing ads of course, so I would expect more of them to be plastered over the chat results too.

Is this really what the public want to be looking at? How will it affect conversion rates and ROI for advertisers? Will they still claim to be a search engine? Will the chat results be impartial or biased towards those advertisers?

Running a chatbot is very expensive; could this have an adverse effect on their bottom line?

This could well be a huge gamble for Google so there are interesting days ahead.

[saladtosser]

Won't the chatbot be cannibalising website content and just spinning it essentially? It's not like the chatbot could know how to, say breed a certain type of aquarium fish unless it either tries it itself or rips it off existing web content, rewrites and makes it it's own?! Saw this coming a while ago TBh, google repackages the WWW content, makes it its own and doesn't need websites anymore!

[superclown2]

Won't the chatbot be cannibalising website content and just spinning it essentially?

ChatGPT are honest about pointing out that what they produce may be completely unreliable. Google are claiming that the answers their bot gives will be 100% accurate. If they just spin information from the web that will be unlikely - there is a lot of junk and clickbait out there.

Mind you a lot of the answers they give in PAA are inaccurate, out of date or relevant only to a different country from the one the visitor is in, so perhaps we can take that claim with a pinch of salt.

[nickZ]

What would interesting to know is the reaction of the public.
So far only webpeople are in hype, similar to that so called web3 hype.

[mhansen]

I imagine this will simply replace the Featured Snippet in search, taking the coveted #1, Position 0 away from anyone but the bot.

[superclown2]

I'm seriously wondering, will a chatbot really be useful for Google?

It seems that youngsters in particular are spending far too much time on ChatGPT and most of the time they are asking questions on subjects that are either trivial or would be really difficult for Google to monetise. I am also wondering how many advertisers are going to pay good money for ads on a medium like this; and how many people will use the bot instead of clicking on an ad (which after all is Google's lifeblood)?

Given that the cost of answering queries, with the huge processing power that is necessary, is going to be way above the cost of plastering ads all over search results, would this really be a good use of resources? Could the chatbot finish up as just another loss making 'other bet'?

[mack]

I think Google need to do this... and very quickly because every single time I use ChatGPT I see literally no reason to use Google. In a bad analogy, it reminds me of the days when search engines were appearing on the web. They outmuscled their predecessors (the web directories). Now we are seeing this new technology that just gives the end user the information they need. I can see the web as we know it becoming less and less important. Seems the web will simply be feeding the AI now.

Mack.

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

I think Google need to do this... and very quickly because every single time I use ChatGPT I see literally no reason to use Google

Mack, following that logic, the two aren't related. If you see no reason to use Google every time you use chatGPT .... then it doesn't matter what google needs to do. You can deprecate them. You're good!

[superclown2]

every single time I use ChatGPT I see literally no reason to use Google.

I absolutely agree. However, at the moment ChatGPT is free to use, and they are hemorrhaging money. It is very expensive technology to run. How many will use it when it becomes a paid model might be a different matter.

The question in my mind is: does Google transfer from a highly profitable way of making stacks of money to one which will cost mega bucks to run and which is completely untried, commercially? If they got it wrong they could destroy their company in no time.