Google's I/O Announcements Shows It Will Continue to Innovate in AI and Retail
The narrative in advertising and retail in the last 20 years has been a battle between Google owning search share, and Amazon slowly taking "first search" share of eCommerce.
While Microsoft has seized the initiative with ChatGPT, Google's quick response mostly likely means the next 10 years could be the same as it ever was.
Google is likely not going to lose share of consumer searches. (i.e. ChatGPT into Bing only works if Google doesn't respond halfway decent - that thought lasted about 5 minutes).
Microsoft is more likely to push its advantage in the business world. The average consumer isn't going to use ChatGPT unless it is embedded in their life, but the average business will, regardless of the size. The technology will be a labor-saver and productivity enhancer... at least a better one than the old Clippy ;-)
A few new things I saw from Google's push of AI into the front of consumer search:
- We have potentially seen the beginning of the end of the Google "Answer Box" to be replaced by AI responses.
- Google will help users by users not having to filter as much, and the ability for their engine to understand multiple dimensions of user intent at the same time, and translate that to "meaning" better than ever.
At the end of the day, though, Google is reliant on the data you give it. And so the dynamic of brands needing to give high quality data to Google Shopping to feed the engine will have not changed, and people aren't going to start giving that data to Microsoft unless there is some existential reason to -- which does not exist.
I think the losers will be the fat middle of the content publisher market who were in the middle to bottom of the first page. A lot of this content is people trying to tell you how to make a decision and evaluate whatever your query was about (shopping, solving a problem, you name it).
Instead, the AI will tell you straightaway how to evaluate your query -- including the things you used to rely on Consumer Reports on Wirecutter for -- what evaluation criteria are even important to begin with.
This does not cut out Amazon. Everyone needs solid logistics. But Amazon could lose some "first search share" back to Google (Amazon has already been losing some to Tiktok) if it does not have a great response in the next 3-6 months.
