There's AI-research supremacy and there's AI-product supremacy. Google has many brains (pun intended) on the former, but lacks incentive/structure for the latter.
Or it'll get dropped within a year.
This is a make it or break it problem for Google and they will get it right or they won’t get it at all.
I use Google for basic bitch things like finding a company website or what time is it in Tokyo.
In that respect it's not replacing all my searches, but it seems to be replacing the "hard ones" where it's hard to compete with Google at a disproportional rate. If that is actually the case, it'd spell bad news for Google whether or not it kills search - if it becomes cheaper/easier to compete by offering a mix of less complete search with an OpenAI integration, it opens the door for far more attempts at competing with them.
Similarly, product searches are second largest category in which they make tonnes of money. This is also done by people as they don't really like to search on amazon or other ecommerce sites. This is also a huge money spinner for them.
Both of these are not going anywhere as both of these are tactical spends.
Now let us come to long tail. These are again big money and are at risk for Google. However, you have to understand that Goog ads are clicked by most tier 2 users. We, techies, do not really click at ads. We go for organic ranking (mostly). We are the base of chatGPT right now. Tier 2 and lower users don't really use chatgpt.
Even if they do, they would not do it for product discovery or site discovery as it has too much friction: go to chat.openai.com, type in your question, it responds in slow, jerky manner vs just type in browser bar what you are thinking.
To top it, Chatgpt also has stale data. Moreover, it is heavily lobotomized to not give any controversial or edgy answers. This curtails usefulness of chatgpt.
It's worth mentioning that the Google you're talking about was way way different than it is today. Google Search was a startup. Google Search + Email was a small company. Google Search + Email + YouTube was a midsize firm. Now they're a humungous megacorp that's slow to make necessary changes when there's a paradigm shift like LLMs.
OAI had a big head start for sure.
Edit: Apple is certainly taking the lion's share of profits in the phone space. Since Google isn't investing as heavily anymore in Android, the development has slowed considerably.
0: https://www.statista.com/statistics/272698/global-market-sha...
Lately you could argue they're being overtaken by their competitors, especially in terms of productization. But they still hold pretty cards IMO.
In AI they were giants in what looks post-ChatGPT like a mediocre field. Their search now is looking very jaded.
The trajectory here isn't remotely like their past performances; it's not a safe bet to assume they'll win through with Bard or anything else.
The agility of OpenAI and the revolutionary impact of gpt3+ has made the former incumbents like Google look like posturing, self-satisfied, giant lumbering has-beens. They aren't getting back on top without massive internal changes.
Acquisition doesn't count