Google’s search business doesn’t have to be killed by AI chatbots – here’s the ugly workaround

tech.hindustantimes.com:

Google's parent company Alphabet has lost a hefty US$100 billion (£83 billion) or nearly a tenth of its market value after its new AI chatbot, Bard, botched an answer to a query on an ad promoting its launch.

It claimed that the James Webb space telescope took the first pictures of planets outside the Earth's solar system when in fact it was the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope.

At the same time, Microsoft saw its shares rise 3% on announcing that it would be integrating ChatGPT into Bing, Office and Teams. Microsoft is a significant shareholder in OpenAI, maker of this much-heralded AI chatbot.

Many are asking if we are witnessing Google's Kodak moment, in reference to the American camera giant's famous demise at the hands of digital photography. That could be overstating it, but we certainly think there is some merit to investors' concerns for Google's future as a search engine company.

How disruption happens

Bard making a mistake is not a problem in itself. ChatGPT is known to give wrong answers to queries with unsettling confidence. The big market reaction against Alphabet was more because the launch debacle broke the proverbial camel's back. If Google can't even run a convincing launch ad about its new technology, went the thinking, can it really defend its search business?

In our experience, firms don't usually get disrupted because they lack the technology or the resources. More commonly it's either because they lack imagination or struggle to re-invent themselves – often out of fear that developing a new business will harm an existing one (known as cannibalisation).

Lack of imagination is mostly the problem with longstanding incumbents. Kodak, for example, couldn't imagine a world