Another downside to consider: ChatGPT is computationally expensive. OpenAI has struggled to keep it online as its popularity has grown, and there have been reports that the cost of doing so is significant. Google certainly has more resources to deliver true conversational search, but at what cost? The economics of powering Google-scale search with a large language model are likely quite different from the current search infrastructure. What is the cost of delivering conversational search at 100,000 results per second?
This is a great point. I did some calculations in another post around ChatGPT that estimates a conversation in ChatGPT likely costs at least 1000x more than a Google search. It is one thing to deliver a new solution that provided added value. It is a different thing to do that cost effectively at scale.
However, I'm not sure how much was actually implemented. This was expanded to Android later in 2020 but Google is known for rolling things out and then pulling them back without telling anyone. Regardless, it makes sense to use their investment in Google Assistant in more places, and if (when?) the move into conversational search their multimodal Google Assistant investment will definitely be an assset.
Another downside to consider: ChatGPT is computationally expensive. OpenAI has struggled to keep it online as its popularity has grown, and there have been reports that the cost of doing so is significant. Google certainly has more resources to deliver true conversational search, but at what cost? The economics of powering Google-scale search with a large language model are likely quite different from the current search infrastructure. What is the cost of delivering conversational search at 100,000 results per second?
This is a great point. I did some calculations in another post around ChatGPT that estimates a conversation in ChatGPT likely costs at least 1000x more than a Google search. It is one thing to deliver a new solution that provided added value. It is a different thing to do that cost effectively at scale.
I expect Google to add the Google Assistant to their search bar at some point, but not before they've worked out how they can keep the ads flowing :)
Definitely something to keep an eye on. Voice search thought Google on Chrome does tap into Google Assistant from search.
https://voicebot.ai/2020/01/16/google-assistant-will-replace-voice-search-in-chrome-this-year/
However, I'm not sure how much was actually implemented. This was expanded to Android later in 2020 but Google is known for rolling things out and then pulling them back without telling anyone. Regardless, it makes sense to use their investment in Google Assistant in more places, and if (when?) the move into conversational search their multimodal Google Assistant investment will definitely be an assset.