Ben Gilbert: prediction

Transcript context

…And as far as anyone else is concerned before ChatGPT, they are an AI-first company, and they’re launching all this amazing AI stuff. It’s just within the vector of their existing products. So ChatGPT comes out, becomes the fastest product in history to 100 million users. It is immediately obvious to Sundar, Larry, Sergey, all of Google leadership, that this is an existential threat to Google. ChatGPT is a better user experience to do the same job function that Google Search does. And to underscore this, if you didn’t know it in November of 2022, you sure knew it by February of 2023 because good old Microsoft, our biggest scariest enemy. announces a new Bing powered by OpenAI. Satya has a quote, “It’s a new day for search. The race starts today.” There is an announcement of a new AI-powered search page. He says, “We want to rethink what search was meant to be in the first place. In fact, Google’s success in the initial days came by re-imagining what could be done in search. I think the AI era we’re entering gets us to think about it.” This is the worst possible thing that could happen to Google, that now Microsoft can actually challenge Google on their own turf, intent on the Internet with a legitimately different, better, differentiated product vector. Not what Bing was trying to do copycat. This is the full leapfrog, and they have the technology partnership to do it. Or so everybody thinks at the moment.…

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