Something is going on in search. First, Google reported strong earnings in Q2 2024, with revenue from Search and cloud computing businesses contributing significantly. The company’s generative AI solutions for Cloud customers have generated billions in revenue and are being used by over 2 million developers. Google’s cloud division hit $10 million for the first time and achieved $1 billion in operating profit.
Google has also secured exclusive access to Reddit’s content, becoming the only search engine able to surface results from the platform following a multi-million dollar deal. This move limits other search engines’ ability to compete and is part of Reddit’s efforts to control data scraping by AI companies. Reddit’s updated robots.txt file blocks all bots from accessing its content, reflecting its stance against unauthorized scraping while allowing select partners access for non-commercial use.
Microsoft has launched an AI-enhanced update to Bing Search, featuring AI-generated answers at the top of the search results page and traditional results in a sidebar. This new experience aims to provide more accurate answers by reviewing millions of sources and includes a document index for further information. While currently available to a limited user group, Microsoft claims it maintains traditional click-through rates to websites, addressing industry concerns about AI scraping content.
OpenAI has announced SearchGPT, an AI-powered search engine that organizes and summarizes information instead of providing a simple list of links. Currently a prototype, it will be available to 10,000 test users and aims to compete with Google and Perplexity by offering real-time information and clear attribution to sources. OpenAI emphasizes collaboration with news partners to ensure responsible content usage and seeks to monetize the service in the future.
Why do we care?
There are two reasons to care. First, search is an essential marketing driver for IT services and customers, so changes here are significant.
Second, this technology has been somewhat static for a while and is now seeing disruption. I’m not sure what that means beyond the marketing impacts, but it’s worth considering the downstream impacts. There’s something to it.