Can ChatGPT replace Google?
My personal opinion on replacing google search by chatGPT. Is it really possible or just a temporary thought.
Disclaimers
This is purely my personal opinion based on my thoughts, knowledge & analysis done by me. Others’ opinions might vary.
Here we will analyze chatGPT capabilities from the search point of view. We will not discuss other capabilities of chatGPT here.
Some starting contexts
Well, then let’s start by simply stating my opinion. So, in my opinion, NO, chatGPT can’t replace google search. Although this is a very straightforward answer, there are various aspects and analyses that we can discuss in this post.
First thing first. What is chatGPT?
Let’s hear out the answers from both the competitors (Google & chatGPT)
Chat Generative Pre-Trained Transformer, commonly called ChatGPT, is a chatbot launched by OpenAI in November 2022. It is built on top of OpenAI's GPT-3 family of large language models and is fine-tuned with both supervised and reinforcement learning techniques.
ChatGPT is a conversational Al model developed by OpenAI, designed to generate human-like responses to text-based inputs. It's a variant of the original GPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer) architecture, specifically fine-tuned for chat- oriented tasks. The model is trained on large amounts of conversational data to produce natural language responses to various prompts and questions.
In short, chatGPT is an AI model that generates near-human-like responses based on mostly below three things.
The user provides the input (often called a prompt).
The architecture and style of training the model.
The training data that has been used.
So, it’s of course not designed for search engines. But we also can’t eliminate the fact that sometimes it provides some good responses that even google search can’t provide (or at least it takes some time to find similar results through google search).
Let’s move to, Google Search.
What was the history of the working principle of search engines and how it becomes more and more sophisticated and advanced is a whole new topic itself. So, let’s understand how Google’s search engine works intuitively in the three stages mentioned in the Google developers guide.
Crawling: Google downloads text, images, and videos from pages it found on the internet with automated programs called crawlers.
Indexing: Google analyzes the text, images, and video files on the page, and stores the information in the Google index, which is a large database.
Serving search results: When a user searches on Google, Google returns information that's relevant to the user's query.
Although, the above contents are quite in-depth and the advent of Natural Language Processing, Natural Language Understanding the search becomes more flexible and accurate.
Today our search adaptation on google is quite interesting where the search queries are nothing, but a question and we don’t want some random links or URLs, rather we need some answers based on the question (search query). That’s how Google captured the market not as a search engine but as a knowledge engine.
Why Google search has advantages?
Google search does have some significant advantages over chatGPT and some of them we will discuss here.
Game of validation
Once searched on google, it do provides answers along with it, the complicated underlying algorithm lists down the best webpages that one can refer to. So the attribution here makes the google search reliable, trustworthy, and proof of validation. The decision-making becomes more and more easy and streamlined as google search results provide knowledge (remember the knowledge engine I referred back to).
On the other hand, chatGPT produces human-like responses, but it’s difficult to decide on the response, as the responses are not collected from a source directly, but is generated by the AI system. I am not doubting the correctness of the response, rather it’s more from the validation point.
Dynamic - Internet Connectivity
Well, this is very intuitive. Google updates its data and in turn the search capabilities every day (rather than every minute) so real-time information and knowledge are propagated to everyone. For instance, if we want to take some financial decision based on investment or by trading to equities, it’s available at the very moment which can be helpful all the time.
chatGPT is not connected to the internet so no recent information or real-time information we can’t expect. Check on the below example.
We should appreciate the way chatGPT is accepting the fact of not processing real-time data which is good and building trust with the user (by not providing garbage responses). But as a matter of fact, if you want to trade on NASDAQ for your financial goal may be, then this chatGPT response is not useful, so Google search is the only option (in most cases).
Customization
Google search has really some cool features (most of us don’t know about) which I encourage you to use it. Which not only provides excellent customization but also provides pinpoint results and better user experiences. Some of the features are listed below.
Tightly coupled ecosystem
Google has its search tightly coupled with all its products to keep track of important pieces of stuff. Like booking and keeping track of your tickets through Gmail.
Search as a service
Quick calculator (even advanced calculations like Log)
Quick mathematical plotting of graphs
Timer
And many more…
Search suggestions
Based on the query google search also suggests similar search options navigate better in the ‘People also ask’ section.
So the possibilities are endless.
Having such customization is quite difficult to achieve in chatGPT. Although some of the customizations can be done using highly engaging instructions often called prompt engineering & prompt optimization. But, these are not that trivial to achieve.
Where chatGPT wins?
chatGPT is a great product also with endless possibilities and there is no denial on that. Microsoft didn’t invest billions of dollars just like that. Isn’t it? So let’s see where chatGPT can give a tough time to google search.
Coding examples
This is my favorite. As a professional software engineer and technology enthusiast this feature is just awesome. It can generate almost exact and quite accurate code blocks for you and the way you want. Which is very much useful for learning and experimenting as a professional as well as coders. Although, a big NO for students if they are using it for any exam or related pieces stuff. And one very interesting thing is that chatGPT not only generates the code but also gives a great explanation of it.
On the contrary, getting the exact code examples is quite difficult in google search. We have to really find it hard to get some similar code blocks that we can experiment with.
Natural language queries
Yes, Google search surely does have capabilities to understand natural language queries and provide results. But sometimes the search query becomes too long and google search results might not be perfect. But, chatGPT is designed to understand long and complicated natural language queries which generate fairly good results as compared to google search.
In such cases, the information by google search may be presented in a dry, factual manner. On the other hand, chatGPT can provide a more conversational response that is easier to understand and provides context to the information. Additionally, chatGPT can continue the conversation and provide more specific information or recommendations based on the user's needs.
No harm ideas
chatGPT is very useful in generating ideas and plans for you and we can consider it (just as an opinion maybe) to evaluate more. There are many times we need quick ideas or plans to try out which will not harm drastically if it fails. In such a scenario, chatGPT is of great help.
Google search information in this case quite boring and time taking. For instance, if you want a quick recipe for food, a google search will overwhelm you with a lot of blog posts and videos. after long reading and watching the long videos, you will get some idea. chatGPT will at least give you a ballpark idea or plan which you can easily evaluate.
The analytics
Now I am going a little bit deeper to explore the search trends at Google search. I will take help of the Google Trends. Roughly chatGPT exploded from the first week of December 2022, so let’s see how the trends in Google search from that day till today (3rd February 2023).
That’s interesting! We are thinking chatGPT might replace Google search, now we are the one who is searching for it in Google search. But, of course, the hype is real.
Let’s see the trend of chatGPT more visually.
So, the increase in trend is clear.
Here you are smart enough to understand the Blue regions. But in short, it is searched worldwide and this shows its potential.
Now, let’s do some comparative analysis. Because of its many potentials and capabilities, chatGPT is searched heavily during the period as we have seen above. Does it imply that nothing else is searched on Google after chatGPT got so popular? Everyone then started searching for their answers on chatGPT. Let’s have an analysis with its close competitor Stack Overflow (Now software engineers are happy!!).
Wow! It seems true. During the period (enclosed in brown box) no one went for our very own Stack Overflow. So we can conclude that everyone (even software engineers) is searching on chatGPT. Even programmers ditched their very own Stack Overflow. Right? Well not really!
I believe you have already noticed that All categories (enclosed in the purple box). Okay, so Stack Overflow in short is very closely related to programmers, coders, and software engineers. Just a fact, Stack Overflow was introduced in 2008 and chatGPT was introduced at the end of 2022. Now let’s have a look at the below visuals.
I have changed it to Programming. Now again everything fits into its place. Isn’t it? So, even after 14 years, people (from the programming field) are searching on Google for Stack Overflow and it is giving a tough time to chatGPT in its hyping period (December 2022 to date). So it’s tough to replace Google search. And it makes sense.
Now you might be asking then why in All categories chatGPT outperformed? It’s obvious, chatGPT has its application and versatility in almost every category. It’s not bounded by any domain, unlike Stack Overflow. And that’s why it’s a great product and the hype is real!
For your analysis let’s see below the comparison with Python (Not the snake).
It’s time for you to exercise and play with different values to get more insights. Okay in case if anyone wonders why there is an oscillation in the Python graph (red color). Let me help you. Those dips in the graph are on the weekends, and no coders and no software engineers search for Python on weekends they go to a bar to grab a drink :) :)
As we have seen the comparative analysis between Stack Overflow and chatGPT in the category of Computer Science, Programming.
Let’s do a similar analysis on a different domain. Finance will be my go-to domain.
Can you see a similar picture? Does it really mean that after chatGPT got popular everyone forgot to do Google Search for NASDAQ? Of course not. Again NASDAQ is not meant for All categories, it is from the Finance domain. But, chatGPT is Jack of all trades!
Let’s change the domain to Finance and see it again.
Now again it’s very evident. You can also play with such trends and understand the point of view. (The dips in the red graph are on weekends!)
So, it’s not that easy to replace Google search very quickly.
Conclusion
As in the top disclaimer I have already mentioned, I only discussed the chatGPT capabilities from the search engine point of view. chatGPT is a great product and has a lot of potentials to create great pieces of stuff. As a data scientist, I use LLMs (Large Language Models) like chatGPT, GPT3 (predecessor of chatGPT), etc. quite frequently to create values for different businesses. Also, I am eagerly waiting for the release of chatGPT API for programmatic access so that I can harness its immense potential.
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