OpenAI’s CEO, Sam Altman, is intensifying the heat in the search engine battleground with his recent call to “make search great again,” following ChatGPT’s expanded search functionalities that no longer require sign-ups.
Altman’s tweet on Thursday came shortly after OpenAI unveiled that its ChatGPT search, previously limited to certain users, is now accessible to everyone, without a need to have an account with the company.
OpenAI’s SearchGPT was launched in October 2024 for paying users and expanded to free users in December.
This move marks a significant effort to chip away at Google’s dominance in the search industry as the experience comes close to the tech giant’s flagship search engine, which doesn’t require users to sign up t be able to use the product.
While OpenAI accelerates its efforts, Google is not sitting idle. The tech giant recently pushed the Gemini 2.0 Flash model into production mode alongside a new flash model, while launching the Pro version in experimental mode.
Jeff Bezos-backed AI startup Perplexity, which pitches itself as a more focused alternative to Google Search, also integrated the Gemini model into its platform.
Google is also working on improving its “AI overviews” — which in turn bring LLMs to Search interface — by tying its responses to more and more authoritative sources.
The essential race now is whether Google Search with its LLM integrations continues to dominate in post-AI world or companies like OpenAI or Perplexity manage to disrupt with their LLM-first experiences integrating Search functionalities.
China’s DeepSeek, which has made waves following the launch of its R1 model, is also in the race, with a Search functionality in its native interfaces.