Google is undoubtedly a modern wonder.
Before Google, most of the web was dark, search was hit or miss, and mostly miss.
Rank Results
The trouble with Google is that it doesnt do what we think it does.
John Schnobrich / Unsplash
Or rather, it doesnt do what we want it to do.
Google is a search engine that returns a list of websites relevant to your query.
But only rarely do we search for a website.
What we really want are answers to the questions we pop in in.
Googles other problem is its algorithm.
ChatGPT generates human-like, conversational responses in seconds, but the information might not always be accurate.
Then ChatGPT came along.
ChatGPT cuts out the middle person, as it were.
But Google has also gotten into trouble overscraping the data for these resultsfrom websites and presenting it without attribution.
This is why Google is so scared.
We dont search Google to find websites.
We search it to find answers.
Good For… Everything
ChatGPTs capabilities are pretty awesome.
However, its not actually doing any of these things.
Instead, the bot cooks up something based on all the similar stuff it found on the internet.
However, as we shall see in a moment, Google has its own advantages.
Plus, ChatGPTs synthesis of existing knowledge is hit or miss.
While it always seems convincing, it can often create some rather weird results.
ChatGPTs recipe inventions, for example, might not be to everyonesor anyonestaste.
Kai Wenzel / Unsplash
That doesnt mean that it cant be useful, though.
But Google still has some advantages, like the depth and breadth of data it has to draw from.
[Google] has more data than ChatGPT has been trained on.
It generates information along with credible sources.
Right now, ChatGPT is a sometimes-useful novelty.
Which is why Google isnow scrambling to come up with its own AI answer.
Its amazing what a little competition can do.
