Surprisingly, Google Is Thriving In The GenAI Era

Instead of surrendering to ChatGPT, Google is thriving as dark prophesies around its future haven’t come to fruition — at least not yet.

If not dead, Google was supposed to be in a tailspin by now. The rise of generative AI promised new, improved ways to seek and investigate information online. And the old keeper of blue links was meant to be on borrowed time.

Except it hasn’t worked out that way — at least not yet. Google today is thriving. It’s turned in double-digit percentage sales growth this year and hasn’t given up its dominant lead in search. Its cloud business just hit $10 billion in quarterly revenue for the first time, partly thanks to a surge in generative AI interest. And over the past year, it’s been a better investment than Microsoft, the consensus AI leader. Google’s stock is up 37% across the past twelve months against Microsoft’s 19%, and it leads Microsoft 21% to 12% year to date.

Google owes its stable position as much to Generative AI’s slow progress as its own innovations. While OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta, and others have built more powerful AI models into their chatbots, people haven’t substituted those bots for traditional search. As of February, Bing still had less than 4% of search market share worldwide compared to Google’s 91%. ChatGPT, for context, debuted nearly two years ago.

This week, when OpenAI introduced its own search engine, called SearchGPT, it didn’t exactly strike fear in the halls of Mountain View. ...

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© 2024 Alex Kantrowitz
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