Is This New AI Tool the End for Alphabet?
If you are old enough to remember the search engine Ask Jeeves (now Ask.com) or recall the epigrammatic responses from Data on Star Trek: The Next Generation, then you may find this article amusing. If you don't understand these references, then buckle up for a history lesson. It seems like just yesterday users could ask the all-knowing butler, Jeeves, just about any question that popped into their heads. However, in the early 2000s Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOG) (NASDAQ: GOOGL), then just known as Google, came on the scene and quickly dethroned Ask Jeeves, Yahoo!, and others as the dominant search engine. How did Alphabet do this?
Well, without getting into too much tech jargon, the simple answer is that Alphabet developed a more robust and sophisticated algorithm. In other words, Alphabet created a better mouse trap. Over the last several years, investors have witnessed Alphabet grow from a search engine to a video sharing platform (YouTube), a hardware business (Android mobile phones), and a cloud computing leader. Now, however, Alphabet may have reason to believe that its search business, which is its primary revenue stream, is at risk.
A company called OpenAI, which was co-founded by serial entrepreneur Elon Musk and start-up savant Sam Altman, has released a tool called ChatGPT. In a matter of days, ChatGPT seems to have taken over the internet. Let's explore what this means for Alphabet, and how the company may respond.
Source Fool.com
