Marketing leader | Expert in SaaS growth, marketing strategy, brand development, and team building
In 1998, when most Internet entrepreneurs were caught in the gold-rush of viral content creation, Google was devising the broader taxonomy of all-things Internet, following the maxim, “During a gold rush, sell shovels”.
And what the Google team crafted was sheer genius. They created a search engine with indexing and classification systems that brought enduring order AND simplified navigation to the chaos of the internet.
Google’s then new “search engine” delivered SERPs (search engine results pages) to users, pairing brief topical answers with hyperlinks to websites known to subject matter experts.
The business model, algorithm, and product market fit were so good that Google’s search engine (then powering Yahoo, too) reached 200m daily searches in the year 2000, and has remained de facto “front-door” to the internet for many in the western world to this day. In 2023, Google Search revenue alone is ~$300,000,000,000. <Egad!>
Staggering stuff, but perhaps the writing on the wall…
1 QUESTION. 2 VERY DIFFERENT ANSWERS
“How could a small, family-owned Italian restaurant effectively use social media and emerging tech trends to attract more local customers, and what unique challenges might they face in this process?”
GOOGLE SEARCH ANSWER:
GOOGLE SEARCH ANSWER:
Google’s answers are served self-service style lists with brief answers and recommend links. It’s up to the user to then parse through the resulting information and sites, complete any additional research – in this case ALOT. And then draw your own conclusion.
Google’s more “self-service” search is a great exercise, as it ensures you are fully engaged in the process. But yea, it still is exercise.
On the other hand, AI answers provided a holistic, well-developed, logical, and answer – although the content would benefit from more depth, the direction was very helpful, especially with some brief Custom Instructions given to ChatGTP4:
Over the years, Google has enjoyed some significant barriers to entry into search:
But now the LLMs are countering with:
A common theme from my 20 years in e-commerce and SaaS leadership (Egad!) is that making things simple or “removing friction” accelerates adoption and revenue growth. A few examples…
Google Search, while thorough and thought provoking, it is also laden with DIY (do-it-yourself) friction. The experience reminds me of asking my favorite uncle a complex question. Rarely will he share a direct answer, instead choosing to ensure I think for myself. While this process has been invaluable to my development, more often than not, a quick, solid answer would be more appreciated.
Overall, while Google Search provides a list of on-topic resources to conclude your own research, which has been an amazingly effective gift to the world over the last 2-decades, the AI LLM offers simply offers a more-holistic, logical, and well-explained answer to many if not most all requests.
The fact that AI also requires less work to answer your question and often times with greater contextual sensitivity – leaves little doubt in my mind that Google Search – in it’s current guise – has at least a legitimate threat in AI LLM for “search” dominance.
It seems unlikely that Google will sit still and watch this happen. Perhaps that Google’s own BARD AI will be integrated with Google’s traditional Search giving users the best of both worlds – the rich indexed utilitarian data from Search, paired with the more user-friendly experience of the AI LLM model??
In the end, I expect the is new technology is simply pushing search into the future to provide a better, more valuable service to we end-users. Can’t wait!
Thanks for listening. Love to hear your opinion and thoughts.
I can be reached at DarnDigital if you’d like to discuss.
David Novick