But while these announcements gave a glimpse of what’s next for search, to get the full picture we need to look beyond Microsoft and Google. Although those giants will continue to dominate, for anyone looking for an alternative, search is set to become more crowded and varied.
That’s because, under the radar, a new wave of startups have been playing with many of the same chatbot-enhanced search tools for months. You.com launched a search chatbot back in December and has been rolling out updates since. A raft of other companies, such as Perplexity, Andi, and Metaphor, are also combining chatbot apps with upgrades like image search, social features that let you save or continue search threads started by others, and the ability to search for information just seconds old.
ChatGPT’s success has created a frenzy of activity as tech giants and startups alike try to figure out how to give people what they want—in ways they might never have known they wanted.
Old guard, new ideas
Google has dominated the search market for years. “It’s been pretty steady for a long time,” says Chirag Shah, who studies search technologies at the University of Washington. “Despite lots of innovations, the needle hasn’t shifted much.”
That changed with the launch of ChatGPT in November. Suddenly, the idea of searching for things by typing in a string of disconnected words felt instantly old-fashioned. Why couldn’t you just ask for what you want?
People are hooked on this idea of combining chatbots and search, says Edo Liberty, who used to lead Amazon’s AI lab and is now CEO of Pinecone, a company that makes databases for search engines: “It’s the right kind of pairing. It’s peanut butter and jelly.”
Google has been exploring the idea of using large language models (the tech behind chatbots like ChatGPT and Bard) for some time. But when ChatGPT became a mainstream hit, Google and Microsoft made their moves.
So did others. There are now several small companies competing with the big players, says Liberty. “Just five years ago, it would be a fool’s errand,” he says. “Who in their right mind would try to storm that castle?”