Chinanews.com, February 14th (China News Finance reporter Wu Tao) From Google to Baidu, the former search giants are now facing the challenge of ChatGPT, so that they have announced that they will launch their own ChatGPT-like services. Join the series, or is the search engine really about to change?
Will ChatGPT replace search engines?
With the popularity of ChatGPT, Baidu officially announced the ChatGPT-like project "ERNIE Bot" (ERNIE Bot) on the 7th. This product is currently in the sprint before going online. It will complete its internal testing in March and open to the public.
Subsequently, Baidu CEO Li Yanhong exposed the key tasks of OKR in the first quarter of 2023, which was "leading the intergenerational change of search experience".
Baidu told Zhongxin Finance and Economics that there is still an incremental market for search at the current stage, and Baidu’s leading AI technology will be the first to land on the search scene, bringing new increments; The interactive scene also has huge room for growth.
Google also launched its own ChatGPT-like function Bard, but the first show was "rollover".
"What new discoveries can I tell my 9-year-old about the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST)?" Bard's response included "JWST Takes First Picture of Exoplanet."
In fact, the first photo of an exoplanet was taken by the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (VLT) in 2004.
Affected by the "first show", Google's stock price fell by about 9% that day, and its market value evaporated by about 100 billion U.S. dollars.
Is ChatGPT too powerful, or Google and Baidu are outdated, will ChatGPT replace search engines?
OpenAI founder and CEO Sam Altman said in an interview a few days ago that ChatGPT is still in a very early stage and it will not replace search engines, but he believes that AI systems may be able to do it in the future.
ChatGPT answers whether it will replace search engines.
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In this regard, Zhongxin Finance also "asked" ChatGPT.
"ChatGPT cannot completely replace search engines, but it can serve as a supplement to search engines, helping users obtain information more conveniently and quickly through dialogue." ChatGPT replied.
Heavy dependence on advertising makes it difficult for search engine elephants to turn around
For a period of time, although ChatGPT cannot completely replace search engines, it does not mean that search engines will have a better life now.
Take Google as an example. According to US GAAP, Google's parent company Alphabet's net profit in the fourth quarter of 2022 will be US$13.624 billion, compared with US$20.642 billion in the same period last year, a year-on-year decrease of 34%.
Disorganized search results, mixed advertisement content, and inability to accurately capture the real search needs of users are common problems of almost all current search engines.
However, search engine revenue is strongly dependent on advertising revenue. How to balance search results and user experience is a difficult point for similar companies to consider.
Judging from the current financial situation, they have no "instant results" solution.
Digital advertising once accounted for more than 80% of Alphabet's total revenue in 2021; in the fourth quarter of 2022, Google's advertising revenue was US$59.04 billion.
Calculated in this way, advertising revenue still accounted for more than 77% of Alphabet’s total revenue in the fourth quarter.
Baidu is slightly better. In the first half of 2022, online marketing service revenue will account for more than 60% of Baidu's revenue; in the first half of 2021, this figure will be about 65%.
Even for the security company 360, the biggest source of income is advertising and Internet value-added services, among which search engines have contributed a lot.
On January 31, 360 released the 2022 pre-loss announcement showing that during the reporting period, security and other businesses achieved operating income of about 1.75 billion yuan, and the proportion of revenue increased, but only about 18.4%; while advertising and Internet value-added services Revenue was 5.79 billion yuan.
For search engines, what is more serious is that, as Google executives said in mid-2022: short videos are changing the way young people conduct Internet searches.
Domestically, Douyin is eyeing Baidu's search business, while outside Google is facing "great pressure" from Tik Tok.
Data map.
In addition, WeChat "Souyisou", Toutiao Search, and Xiaohongshu Search are all encroaching on the market of traditional search engines.
Some analysts pointed out that a search engine without content accumulation is like a "castle in the sky". It is not that the search engine is dead, but the content is gone.
Especially short video search is extremely sticky.
Take the short video "A woman received a bouquet of pork legs on her birthday" as an example. When you click on the comments, everyone is searching for "how much is a pig leg", and a "serial search" has occurred unconsciously.
"I don't know what I want to search for, but I click on the short video to read the comments. The topic everyone is searching for is really what I want to search for." Some netizens described the "magic power" of this search to a reporter from China New Finance and Economics.
What will the future of search look like, and will dialogue become the mainstream?
With the ChatGPT revolution inside and the short video encroachment outside, will traditional search engines sit still?
the answer is negative.
Whether it is Baidu or Google, they are making search engines work hard to move closer to AI.
In a recent Baidu internal speech, Li Yanhong once again emphasized that "technology has reached a critical point, how to apply technologies like ChatGPT to search scenarios, in the next year, we have great opportunities in this regard."
Alphabet CFO Ruth Porat said in the fourth quarter 2022 earnings call analysis meeting, "Currently, AI has been integrated into many of our products, such as Pmax, Smart Bidding and cloud computing. service etc."
Relevant staff of Baidu told Zhongxin Finance and Economics reporters that in the search 3.0 era, Baidu applied AI technology in search, opening the era of intelligent search that can "listen, talk and understand", and at the same time realized the "multi-scenario, multi-device, multi-entry" "everywhere" and "everything can be searched", such as smart speakers, unmanned vehicles, etc.
In addition, the good news for search engines is that although ChatGPT is amazing, it is not so "smart".
"Turning back and forth" and "listening to what you say is better than talking" are the limitations of ChatGPT that have been tested by many parties recently.
How to quickly launch a viable ChatGPT-like product is the key to the success of search engines.
Zhou Hongyi, the founder and CEO of 360, recently talked about ChatGPT and said that companies lacking computing power and other related capabilities follow suit and will consume a lot of resources, but companies with artificial intelligence and search capabilities still need to be prepared.
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