I've seen more search labs in the last 24 months than probably the full decade before that.
Not sure if there's actually been that many more search labs out of Google, but there's certainly been a lot more worth talking about. Impressive to see to be honest.
A ton of the early discourse about ChatGPT was as an outright Google killer. It mostly hasn't really panned out that way; there's some overlap but the web ain't dead yet. If nothing else, search is a necessary input to the machine.
Still, nice that Google has woken up, even if the search result quality hasn't improved much.
I can't be the only one that will reach for ChatGPT first over Google for most of my search needs. Stuff like looking for recipes, guides on how to do certain things. From a user perspective, ChatGPT is 100% a Google killer. Search engines may still be powering the AI (for now), but if we aren't exposed to their ads, that's a losing proposition for the incumbants.
Not sure if there's actually been that many more search labs out of Google, but there's certainly been a lot more worth talking about. Impressive to see to be honest.