Back in 2017, Google introduced Google Duplex, a tool that could make phone calls and sound incredibly human-like. It was impressive, but Google decided not to continue the project. While some said it was technically challenging, others thought there wasn’t a clear use for it. An insider told me its first use was to automatically check business hours. Especially around holidays it proves very difficult to have accurate hours in Google Maps.
Imagine having a voice assistant that can answer anything you ask. You'd rely less on screens, which might hurt Google's main money-maker: online search. It would have cannibalized Google Search, which is a big reason to shut it down. At that time, Google seemed confident that no one else could match them, being so far ahead, so there was no urge to release something that would cannibalize their own business.
But by 2023, the tech scene has shifted. While people still ask commercial questions in Google Search, many people now turn to ChatGPT for casual answers. Then there's Perplexity AI. The last time I checked it was 6 months ago, where the results were already impressive. Having tested it again a few days ago - the results blew my mind. For me, the results far surpass Google’s results, but also ChatGPT, as you get a very quick answer that is very factual. Perplexity did a great job in building a model that reduces hallucination to nearly zero. While they offer using GPT-4 or Claude 2 in the pro version, I’m personally getting more factual results with their own default model.
The way you get a comprehensive answer with multiple sources, very quickly, and being able to ask follow up questions allows you to ask more complex questions with very precise answers, like “What are the 5 most recent investments of Sam Altman?”.
It provides answers that often surpass Google's, gives you a comprehensive, well written answer with sources and the possibility to ask follow up questions. Some facts are incorrect, but I’m sure that they’ll fix that over time. In this case, Instacart for instance is seen as a recent investment of Sam Altman.
Nevertheless, right now, it feels like Perplexity AI is both a superior option to ChatGPT and Google Search when asking about recent information, having a research assistant at the finger tips.
What will be Google’s next move? When will Bard become the default experience?
I hear about the decay of (google) search a lot but I disagree with it. I think search is still great and chatgpt is better for certain use cases, like coding questions.
However, the google search labs generative experience (SGE) has been a game changer for me and has pulled a lot of my chatgpt “search” usage back to google search?
Why? Because googles stuff has high accuracy with all sources embedded throughout the answer. I’ve gotten enough wrong answers from ChatGPT that I know I usually have to verify manually.