According to brokerage Evercore ISI, in a survey of 1,000 people, 5% said OpenAI's ChatGPT was their top search engine, up from 1% in June. Evercore said millennials (born between 1981 and 1995) are the biggest users.

Google still dominates the search market, but its share has fallen. According to the survey, 78% of respondents said Google was their first choice, down from 80% in June.

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OpenAI CEO Sam Altman (left) and Google CEO Sundar Pichai. Photo: Insider

A few percentage points may not seem like much, but controlling how people access the world's information online is a big deal.

This is what drives Google’s advertising business, which accounts for the bulk of its revenue and profits. Microsoft Bing has just 4% of the search market, according to Evercore, but generates billions of dollars in revenue each year.

ChatGPT's increase, though small, is a sign that Google's position as the "gatekeeper" of the internet may be under threat from generative AI.

The new technology is changing the way millions of people access information online, sparking a rare debate about Google's dominance.

OpenAI announced a search feature for ChatGPT in late October. This year, the startup also reached a deal with Apple to bring ChatGPT to new iPhones.

When Evercore analysts dug into the “usefulness” of Google’s AI tools, ChatGPT, and Microsoft Copilot across 10 different scenarios, the results were quite interesting.

There are a few situations where ChatGPT beats Google in satisfaction by a wide margin: people learning specific skills or jobs, helping with writing and programming, looking for ways to be more productive. It even leads in online product search and pricing categories.

Still, Google is far ahead of ChatGPT, and the company itself benefits from generative AI.

Earlier this year, Google launched its Gemini chatbot and AI Overview, a feature that uses generative AI to summarize multiple search results. In an Evercore survey, 71% of Google users said these tools were more effective than their previous search experience.

Additionally, of those who use tools like ChatGPT and Gemini, 53% say they are searching more, which helps Google as well as OpenAI.

Even 1% of the search market is worth about $2 billion a year, according to Evercore analyst Mark Mahaney. But that only works if search queries can be monetized like Google, which is unlikely in the short or medium term.

(According to Insider)