OpenAI is a bigger threat to Google than US regulators

tech.hindustantimes.com:

Google is facing a bigger threat from Sam Altman's OpenAI even as it awaits a decision on how antitrust regulators in Washington plan to level the playing field in the internet search business.

A US ruling on Monday, which found that Google built an illegal search monopoly, is being considered a big win for regulators. But an increasing number of people using AI tools including OpenAI's popular ChatGPT chatbot is already eroding Google's dominance, sources, investors and analysts said.

"I think for Google right now, AI (is) a much bigger deal than the ruling. AI is fundamentally changing how the search product also works," said Arvind Jain, a former Google engineer who worked on products including Search for a decade. 

Jain, who now runs an enterprise search firm called Glean, said AI's impact was immediate compared with any impact from these rulings that get appealed and take a long time to affect a market. 

Google has long been synonymous with search, commanding around 90% of the global market share and bringing in about $175 billion in annual revenue through the business. Even Apple, which prefers to build all the software and much of the hardware that goes into its devices, has allowed Google to be its default search engine for a handsome fee.

But the days of preferential treatment for a fee are over even before slew of antitrust court cases resolve. In its AI foray, Apple announced a partnership with OpenAI to bring ChatGPT to its upcoming devices. It emphasized the deal's non-exclusive basis and talked up the likelihood of bringing on Google as another partner. 

A ruling against Google will speed up Apple's move towards AI-powered search services, if it is forced to end its Search deal with Google, analysts have said.

Microsoft-backed OpenAI said last month it was also breaking into the search game with a slow launch of SearchGPT, an AI-powered search engine with real-time access to information from the internet.

One former senior Google executive predicted, "AI is