Although we didn’t know it would be called SearchGPT, We have been waiting a long time for the arrival of OpenAI and its generative models in such a difficult and at the same time such an attractive market as the web search engine market. And it’s complicated because, as you know, Google has absolutely undisputedly dominated it for many years. In fact, if we look at StatCounter’s historical series starting in January 2009, we see that it has maintained approximately 90% market share over the past 15 years.

Source: StatCounter Global Stats – Search Engine Market Share

During all these years, We have seen several attempts to close the loophole with Google from its competitors, some as ambitious as Bing’s AI revamp last year, but nothing at all right now, Mountain View’s still haven’t dipped below 90%. However, on this occasion, and according to the criteria of many analysts, we may find ourselves facing the biggest threat that Google has experienced since its launch.

As I said at the beginning, we were already expecting the launch of a search engine from OpenAI. In mid-May, it was leaked that his presentation was coming, in an already announced event, which will take place a few days later. In the end, this event was dedicated to the presentation of GPT-4o, not the search engine, but the large number of signals we have seen about it up to that point, Even then, they made it clear to us that its launch was only a matter of time.

Well, the wait is surprisingly over… more or less, and the fact is that OpenAI Announces SearchGPT, Its Unsurprisingly Artificial Intelligence-Based Internet Search Engine. Of course, I say the wait is half over, because although the search engine is already official, at the moment only around 10,000 users are allowed access for this test phase, and a waiting list is allowed for the rest of people interested in trying it.

As you might have guessed, SearchGPT allows you to perform searches using natural languageas in conversations with ChatGPT, and instead of providing a list of websites related to the query we entered, it will provide us with an answer accompanied by links, images and other online resources, in accordance with what Google shows, its Search Generative Experience, at Google I/O last year.

So now there are some doubts. The first, of course, is whether OpenAI will adequately fine-tune SearchGPT to make the experience comfortable and reliable. And the second and most important thing is if Google gives its SGE a good boostto ensure the ability to face what, as we said at the beginning, may be the toughest opponent in its entire history.