Google’s had an awkward week. After years of preaching that conversational search was its future, it’s stood by as the world discovered ChatGPT.
The powerful chatbot from OpenAI takes queries — some meant for the search bar — and answers with astonishing conversational replies. It’s shared recipes, reviewed code and argued politics so adeptly that screenshots of its answers now fill social media. This was the future Google promised. But not with someone else fulfilling it.
How Google missed this moment isn’t a simple matter of a blind spot. It’s a case of an incumbent being so careful about its business, reputation and customer relationships that it refused to release similar, more powerful tech.