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Google Search has needed to be disrupted, for years. ChatGPT Search is a new AI search engine that has demonstrated the capability to do that. This article was originally written in July 2024 when ChatGPT Search was first announced in beta state. It has now been modified to provide up-to-date information about OpenAI’s new search engine .
October 2024 update : On the 31st of October 2024, ChatGPT Search went live and began to be available to users of the mobile app, as well as via the chatgpt.com website and the ChatGPT desktop app.
ChatGPT Search is OpenAI’s long-awaited answer to Google Search. It is an AI search engine powered by the GPT-4 model family with real-time summarized information from the web with links to relevant sources, so users can click through to go read up in details.
The juicy part of this new AI search engine, it is that it gives you answers with relevant sources. This means, it includes links back to the websites that it pulls its answers from. This is similar to how Microsoft’s Copilot AI chat works. As a Web publisher, I love this approach that values, respects, and protects my hard work. I imagine that many other publishers will appreciate it too.
What stands out in the press release from OpenAI is that it says thy want to enhance the conversational capabilities of their AI chats with real-time information from the Web. This is significant. If you have used ChatGPT and some other AI chatbots , you will be all too familiar with how the information presented in response to your questions and prompts is often out of date – years old. By incorporating the ability to respond with real-time information, along with recognition of context and nuances, what we have is a powerful modern search engine that anyone will enjoy using.
It isn’t news that Google Search has been a monopoly for a long time. No other search engine has come close to it in terms of reach and scale, and that needs to change. I do not want Google Search to die. Replacing one monopoly with another is counterproductive. But like many other people, I want there to be an alternative that matches it in terms of power and scale. Having everyone dependent on the whims and caprices of only one player in a field is always a bad idea. History has proven that again and again.
In recent times, online journalism and Web publishing has taken a hit from Google Search’s unpredictability. Overnight, thousands of Web publishers had valuable traffic that they built up from years of work wiped out. I have seen the devastation that some of them have had to deal with. It has been a bloodbath. That has to change, and it can’t as long as Google remains a monopoly in the world of Web search.
If there is any technology that provides the needed leverage for Google to have serious competition, it is artificial intelligence (AI), and if there is one AI company that has a good chance of pulling it off, it is OpenAI, the developers of ChatGPT Search. Yahoo once was the top search engine. It got disrupted. Nobody stays on top forever. Even almighty Google can and will be disrupted, and I can’t wait for the day it will happen, because right now, the search giant is messing too many things up.
OpenAI says that ChatGPT Search will quickly and directly respond to your questions with up-to-date information from the web while giving you clear links to relevant sources. Fabulous. Music to my ears. In addition, you will be able to ask follow-up questions, like you would in a conversation with a person, with the shared context building with each query. Exactly as search should be – a natural interaction between the user and the search engine.
ChatGPT Search is currently in beta state now out of beta and open to the public , and OpenAI is currently testing it with a small group of users and publishers to get feedback to improve the service. The objective is to eventually integrate this new search engine into ChatGPT .
It is clear that OpenAI is looking to improve how ChatGPT Search works to benefit everyone – those searching for answers and the publishers that work hard to provide those answers. I look forward to seeing ChatGPT Search get it right and succeed.
With ChatGPT Search now officially live, it is time for me to make that switch and stop using Google Search for good. Adios!
Author:Mister Mobility
Digital Skills and Communication Coach | Mobile Phone Connoisseur since 2001 | Tech Blogging since 2004
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Mark Zuckerberg says there are now 100 million WhatsApp users in the USA. That’s a major milestone.
Traditionally, Americans were never fans of WhatsApp. Being predominantly iPhone-dominated territory, iMessage has been the preferred instant messaging app in the US. So, while the Meta-owned instant messaging app ramped up huge numbers elsewhere, its initial adoption in the United States was abysmal. But that looks to be changing.
Yesterday, Mark Zuckerberg shared via his WhatsApp channel a one-line announcement that there are now 100 million WhatsApp users in the USA. That is big news. For context, the population of the United States as at 26th of July 2024 is 342 million. About 300 million of them own a smartphone.
This means that one third of Americans now use WhatsApp messenger. That’s massive. Finally, WhatsApp is gaining traction in God’s own country.
About half of all smartphone users in the US are iPhone users. That’s about 150 million users. Not all of them use iMessage, so iMessage does not have 150 million users there. As a matter of sct, Statista says that only 26% of iPhone users are iMessagers. That sounds off; I’d have expected the share of iMessage users to be higher.
If Statista’s figures are accurate, then there were only 39 million iMessage users in the US in 2022. Interesting. Even if we generously assume that the number has grown to 50 million now in 2024, WhatsApp Messenger has twice that number now.
If we assume, again generously, that all iPhone users in the United States use iMessage, then we can peg the number of iMessage users in the country in 2024 to about 150 million. The fact that WhatsApp has clocked 100 million users means that it is catching up fast and will likely overtake iMessage soon.
It looks like WhatsApp is on the path to winning the instant messaging war in the US, however we slice things.
References
Share of smartphone users that use an Apple iPhone in the United States from 2014 to 2022: source .
Author:Mister Mobility
Digital Skills and Communication Coach | Mobile Phone Connoisseur since 2001 | Tech Blogging since 2004
