Here’s our take on ChatGPT / AI…..

Before Google, the 1990s search engines like Lycos, Yahoo! Search, WebCrawler, AltaVista, LookSmart all had Cost Per 1000 IMpression banner ad business models. Then along came Google and their Adwords Cost Per Click model. In 2022, Google did over $250B in revenue.

Earlier this month, Microsoft said publicly that 40% of search queries don’t bring back a relevant answer and as Google search hasn’t changed in 20+ years, search is antiquated. But it’s not broken. Google & Bing work well. Do I need to talk to my internet browser to do advanced searches? Do I want ChatGPT to write large documents for me?

Do you know Google has recently updated their search algorithm updates to catch badly written and unhelpful content.

50% of US households have a smart device (Alexa, Google Home) that you can talk to. That took many years. How often do you use your smart device each day. I bet the usage was more when you first got the device right? Like most gadgets, their usage over time diminishes.

So we installed the new Bing here in the office at SearchForecast. We found we don’t need to speak questions to the Bing Search Engine all the time and typing is fine as we have a supercomputer installed in our heads. It’s called a brain!

And Bing’s new layout with the summary on the Right Hand Side of their results pages is just playing catch up to the Google ‘knowledge graph’ which has been around for years.

We’ve been using Firefox ever since version 1.0 came out in 2003 as it was born out of Mozilla Corp based here in Silicon Valley.

We did because we felt (before Chrome existed) that because 90% of their revenue came from royalties revenue paid by Google, we would glean insights into Google for our clients. In 2006, the Mozilla received US$61.5 million from Google and for 2011-2014, Google paid Mozilla nearly US$300 million annually! From 2015 to 2017, Yahoo Search became the default search engine for Firefox until they cratered as a business and finally in November 2017, Mozilla announced that it was switching back to Google as the default search engine. History lesson over.

What is alarming is the below pop up shown to Firefox browser users this week! As a colleague noted about Facebook not liking all the talk about regulators breaking their business up, “its a bit like an arsonist who doesn’t like the sound of fire engines!”