Is Google playing catchup on search with OpenAI? | MIT Technology ...
Google has owned search for decades. But is its market dominance keeping it from innovating in the age of AI? I’ve been mulling over something that Will Heaven, our senior editor for AI, pointed out not too long ago: that all the big players in AI seem to be moving in the same directions and converging on the same things. Agents. Deep research. Lightweight versions of models. Etc. Some of this makes sense in that they’re seeing similar things and trying to solve similar problems. But when I talked to Will about this, he said, “it almost feels like a lack of imagination, right?” Yeah. It does.
Google's Catchup with OpenAI
What got me thinking about this, again, was a pair of announcements from Google over the past couple of weeks, both related to the ways search is converging with AI language models, something I’ve spent a lot of time reporting on over the past year. Google took direct aim at this intersection by adding new AI features from Gemini to search, and also by adding search features to Gemini. In using both, what struck me more than how well they work is that they are really just about catching up with OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
Despite fewer clicks, copyright fights, and sometimes iffy answers, AI could unlock new ways to summon all the world’s knowledge.
The AI Mode and Search History
Google introduced AI Mode, announced on March 5, expanding what AI Overviews can do with more advanced reasoning, thinking, and multimodal capabilities. This new Search mode offers more robust answers and allows for follow-up questions. It seems like a natural evolution, but it's curious why this is not already widely available. The second change is that it added search history to its Gemini chatbot, promising even more personalization is on the way.
Much of what these new features are doing feels like hitting feature parity with what ChatGPT has been doing for months. It’s also been compared to Perplexity, another generative AI search engine startup.
Google's Innovation Challenges
Google, despite having literal decades of user data, mostly seems to be playing catchup with OpenAI and other AI innovators. An OpenAI executive noted the freedom to innovate without the constraints of a massive legacy business that Google faces. Google can innovate in many areas, as seen with Google DeepMind’s Gemini Robotics announcement, but can it do so around its core products and business?
With Astra on the horizon, Google's attempts to match the performance of ChatGPT and other AI models may be crucial for its future success in the AI space.
