Search and Destroy:
The Imminent Threat to Google's Existence

If reports are true, OpenAI will release its “Google-killer” search engine on Monday. How much will that change the game?

Today's News

GOOGLE • Will Monday Be the Worst Day of Its Life?

INFLUENCERS • Pros and Cons of Going Virtual

COMMERCE • U.S. Spend Up 8% So Far in 2024

COMMERCE • Google to Expose Your Sales Numbers

OOPS • Apple Apologizes for Its ‘Off the Mark’ Ad

GOOGLE • Will Monday Be the Worst Day of Its Life?

Monday could be a pivotal day in the history of the Internet.

Google’s dominance as the defacto search engine for the world has been in place for decades now.

While competitors have arrived — Microsoft’s Bing, probably being the most notable — there hasn’t really been a challenger big enough to shake Google off its perch. Not a search engine, anyway.

Sure, AI is able to look stuff up on the web and give you a summary of what it finds. And sure, sometimes it even gets it right.

But AIs like ChatGPT have never been a search engine, in the true sense of the word.

Industry analysts have said if companies like OpenAI do manage to put an actual search engine together, that could have disastrous consequences to Google’s entire business model.

If reports are true, that’s what’s about to happen.

Is Monday the end of Google?

Reuters quotes two sources saying that OpenAI will announce the launch of its AI-powered search engine on Monday.

Both Bloomberg and The Information previously reported that OpenAI had been working on it.

Does Google understand the significance?

At a staff meeting recently, Google’s head of search told employees:

Uh… okay?

Sure, that was certainly the case in the earlier days of ChatGPT, but the engine is getting smarter, with fewer hallucinations.

And new models, like Meta’s challenger, are also jumping the industry forward.

To be fair, that executive also told his team: “It’s not like life is going to be hunky-dory, forever.”

OpenAI poaching Google search team members

Certainly not, especially when OpenAI has been actively hiring Google search engineers for months now.

Oh, and one more small kick in the teeth: OpenAI’s rumoured search engine launch Monday is scheduled one day before Google’s big I/O conference.

INFLUENCERS • Pros and Cons of Going Virtual

You don’t need to be in this business long to realize that picking the right influencer to rep your product could make a huge difference in sales.

Until now, there have really only been two choices: Influencer or no influencer.

Now, though, marketers have another option: Fake influencer. Or, perhaps more charitably: AI influencer.

These aren’t new — people my age might remember Max Headroom pitching Coca-Cola:

A great piece this morning in Digiday has the pros and cons of using a virtual ambassador in your marketing campaigns.

The Pros

Among the pros cited: More control over content, lower production cost, and — perhaps, for agencies, the best benefit: More flexible scheduling.

The Cons

You might also think that a pro would be the cost of the talent.

But that’s not quite what it used to be.

Other cons include: A lack of authenticity or emotion.

And the piece also discusses how AI influencers could drive human influencer rates down.

The whole Digiday piece is worth a read, though. You’ll find it on their site; look for the post called Inside the debate among marketers for and against virtual influencers.

COMMERCE • U.S. Spend Up 8% So Far in 2024

From January through April this year, e-commerce spending in the U.S. rose 7% from the same period last year.

[The numbers are from Adobe Analytics — which, it should be noted, can only measure those sites which use its measurement tools.]

This upward trend is expected to help push total online spending for the first half of the year over a half trillion dollars.

The greatest hits

Steady spending on electronics and clothing, along with a big rise in online grocery shopping, led to this growth.

Electronics and clothing accounted for 34% of total online spending.

Cheaper goods, spread out

Adobe says it has noticed that people are buying cheaper goods online because of inflation, especially in personal care and electronics.

The “buy now, pay later” option is also becoming more popular, up about 12% than last year.

COMMERCE • Google to Expose Your Sales Numbers

Yesterday, we reported on Threads’ plan to expose your posts’ view counts publicly; now, Google says it will do the same with your sales data.

But not quite as drastically as it sounds.

Some Merchant Center managers have been receiving emails from Google saying that search results might start showing how many people who searched for a product you sell went on to buy it from you.

Google said it would probably read something like “1K shopped here recently.”

You can opt-out

In case you’re thinking “Wait, I actually don’t want that,” Google will provide an opt-out in your settings. It says it’ll still use your data to power various annotations, but won’t display your exact number of conversions.

OOPS • Apple Apologizes for Its ‘Off the Mark’ Ad

Apple has apologized for the ad we reported on yesterday — the one where dozens of creative tools are crushed into a thin iPad.

Creatives took to social media to tell Apple they found the ad offensive to their profession.

Apple told Ad Age it agrees that the spot “missed the mark.”

The ad was viewed by millions online. Plans for it to run on TV have been scrapped.

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