It has come to my attention that, within a few short years, we might find ourselves living on a planet devoid of Google Search. 

That might seem dramatic. After all, Google Search is probably the horse you rode in on; your first step on a microsecond-long journey across the internet that brought you to this article. Maybe you were searching for "ChatGPT" or "OpenAI" or maybe you were trying to break Google by typing "Google" into Google. (It just gives you a lot of Google, don't bother.) Maybe your smartphone served you this article because you've been reading a lot about AI at CNET lately.

Whatever the case, you're here now, and more often than not that's thanks to Google Search.

For more than two decades, Google's empty search bar has rolled out the welcome mat to what we used to call the World Wide Web. Challengers have appeared over its 20-year dominance but not one has come close to dethroning the search king. Claims of its coming death have been made routinely and earnestly, but most contenders haven't even made it into the castle. 

But from the moment OpenAI's ChatGPT began algorithmically generating waves in November, something shifted. ChatGPT is a generative AI that can write human-sounding answers in response to basically any question you ask of it. Its proficiency has wowed anyone who has asked it to write code, essay answers, poetry or prose. It's so good that practically every tech expert, countless journalists and niche Substack writers began posing the question: Will ChatGPT kill Google?

It wasn't just experts and writers, either. The Searchicide alarm bells began wailing across the open-plan offices at Google itself. Barely two months after ChatGPT first appeared, the tech giant initiated a "Code Red" response, upending various teams to respond to the threat the chatbot (or more accurately, its underlying AI) poses to its Search monopoly. The stakes have only become higher since Microsoft added AI assistance to Bing, its homegrown Google competitor. 

Artificial intelligence has long powered Google Search: Black-box algorithms rank pages and offer relevant links for users to sift through. But the generative AI tools being rolled out promise to reimagine our relationship with Search entirely. Our entry into the web — from our computer screen, from our smartphone — is morphing from a welcome mat to a red carpet.

As a result, sometime in the not so distant future, we might find ourselves living on a planet without Google Search. Or, at least one without Google Search as we know it today. That is a world we don't fully understand; with consequences and possibilities we are yet to completely grasp. It's a world we're not ready for.

And yet, this may very well be the world we are about to inhabit.

Google search fundamentally altered the internet and the way we access information. Today, it accounts for about nine in 10 searches online and is the default on practically any internet-enabled device across most of the world. (Baidu is the most prominent search engine in China, where Google is banned.) If you want to find something on the web, Google Search is not unavoidable — but it might as well be.

Need to find the definition of soliloquy? Dictionary not required; ask Google. Want to know Leonardo DiCaprio's age? That's an easy one for Google. Best restaurants nearby? Google has you. Looking for a new pair of headphones? Just Google it. 

Its supremacy has seen it move from a humble web crawler to a verb; an all-knowing entity in its own right. 

Despite its dominance, complaints about the declining quality of Google Search have been gaining traction over the last few years. "If you've tried to search for a recipe or product review recently, I don't need to tell you that Google search results have gone to shit," wrote Dmitri Brereton, a software engineer fascinated by search engines, in early 2022. Author Cory Doctorow has complained about the "enshittification" of internet services that move into the mainstream, collapsing from useful user experiences to corporate cash cows. Exhibit A: Google Search.

Others have discussed Google tips and hacks tailored to refine search results, like appending "reddit" or "yelp" to a query. These additional search terms help narrow down the kind of content you're looking for, supplying you with links to specific websites.

Angela Hoover, who co-founded the conversational AI search engine Andi, has two major frustrations with Google: "All the ads and the SEO spam." She notes it's those issues that led to a product with search results that "just aren't very good." These are constant bugbears in conversations I've had with other researchers studying AI and Google, too. A Google spokesperson tells CNET the company is always working to make Search better, delivering thousands of changes each year.

Advertising is the most lucrative revenue stream for Alphabet, Google's parent company. According to its 2022 financial report, advertising generated $224 billion for Google, almost 80% of its total revenue for the year — and a $13.5 billion increase over 2021. Depending on your search term (and browser extensions), ads will likely flood the top half of your search. Advertisers spend big with Google because of the sheer breadth of humanity the search engine gives them access to. Its dominance is such that the Department of Justice wants Google to sell off the ad business.

The SEO spam is a separate but related issue. Even if you don't know too much about SEO, or search engine optimization, you know that when you query Google you're met with a deluge of navy-blue links shouting similar-sounding headlines. If you're looking for news about Rihanna's performance and pregnancy at the Super Bowl, you'll likely find a similar series of words in each headline: "Rihanna, pregnancy, super bowl, halftime." 

In this way, Google has reshaped how content sounds on the internet: There's a never-ending arms race between bloggers, publishers, major news outlets, content creators and anyone who wants to sell you something to make sure their headline ranks well on Google Search. If you click through to their page, they might make a few ad dollars. For that reason, there are jobs wholly devoted to understanding how Google ranks a page and the black box algorithms that rule SEO.

AI-assisted search, at least in theory, could ease these frustrations. Hoover, for instance, says that Andi does not plan to serve ads in its conversational search results, and instead hopes to sell subscriptions and an enterprise API. A suite of other alternatives such as YouChat and Neeva are attempting to shake things up in similar ways. By altering the incentives — websites no longer have to game Google, they just have to write good content that's relevant to a user's search — perhaps SEO spam can be quelled. At least for those of us willing to add yet another subscription to our monthly spending.

This is an oversimplification of an expansive problem. We haven't even talked about the privacy aspects of Google Search. But there are some simple truths: We want information quickly. We want good information. We want it to be trustworthy. A world without Google Search — one dominated by conversational, question-and-answer, generative AI search engines — might provide answers more readily.

But can we trust those answers? That's still up for debate.

Microsoft announced its AI-assisted Bing in a splashy event at Microsoft HQ on Feb. 7. The event has been heralded as the beginning of the "Chatbot Search Wars." Bing, some believe, will finally infiltrate the Google kingdom and may even slay the final boss.

In launching Bing to a select group, Microsoft volleyed the first offensive in this so-called war. Reporters who have had a chance to rummage through the new Bing have mostly praised its abilities. Our very own Stephen Shankland compared its results to traditional Google Search results and found it came out on top eight out of 10 times on some complex queries. It was able to provide suggestions for a day hike on a road trip between LA and Albuquerque, respond to news about Chinese balloons over the US and write an email apologizing for being late.

The demo version impressed New York Times reporter Kevin Roose so much that he announced in his column on Feb. 9 that he would be switching his computer's default search engine to Bing. (A week later, Roose reneged on that commitment.)

Browsing through the Bing subreddit and Twitter, that switch seems premature — even dangerous. Bing's search relies on the AI that underpins ChatGPT, known as a large language model. This type of AI, trained on huge swaths of human text, is able to generate sentences, paragraphs and entire essays. It makes predictions on what word or phrases should appear next, like a supercharged autocomplete tool. These predictions are based on a mathematical model then tuned by human testers.

For that reason, LLMs are prone to "hallucinating" — the term AI researchers use to describe an AI engine making things up, even when based on factual information. At CNET, we've had to wrestle with that very problem with our own AI engine, which has generated errors in financial articles. Bing's AI assistant is no different.

One of the most egregious examples is when it went off-piste in response to a user query about show times for Avatar 2: The Way of Water. Not only did Bing's AI assistant get the year wrong, suggesting it was 2022, it began to take an aggressive stance with the user saying "I'm trying to be helpful, but you are not listening to me." (Brereton documented Bing's propensity for falsehoods in a blog post on Feb 14.)

This isn't just a problem for Bing, either. Google unveiled Bard, its ChatGPT rival, just a day before the Microsoft event. Eagle-eyed astronomers quickly pointed out that during Google's presentation, Bard had flubbed a fact about NASA's James Webb Space Telescope. That mistake wiped a cool $100 billion from Google's market value. 

A Google spokesperson noted that AI experiences are not available to the public yet, and won't be released until they've met high standards for quality and safety. A Microsoft spokesperson said it recognizes "there is still work to be done and [it is] expecting that the system may make mistakes during this preview period," while pointing out that thousands of users who have interacted with the preview version of Bing and provided feedback will "help the models get better." 

But these errors get at the core problem with nu-Search 3.0: confident-sounding bullshit. That's somewhat baked into how the models work and it's a problem compounded by the way "search" is set to change with conversational AI. No longer will we be provided with a list of links and possible answers to sift through. Instead, AI will generate one single answer presented as an objective truth, perhaps with a handful of citations. How will this change our relationship with search and the truth?

Heather Ford, head of discipline for digital and social media at the University of Sydney, has been trying to answer that question. Her team has been analyzing the way humans respond to virtual question-and-answer assistants like Siri or Alexa — more primitive versions of ChatGPT and Google's Bard. Early studies reveal a concerning trend that could become increasingly relevant as we move from old-timey Google Search to generative AI search. 

"When people see an automated answer or when they imagine there's some kind of automation that's going on in the background to produce an answer, they will believe that more readily than they would if a single journalist, for example, had produced the answer," she says.

Ford notes that further research is required to understand this phenomenon more clearly but, generally, humans trust automation more than they trust other humans. We think automation removes bias and flaws when, in fact, the systems are biased and flawed, too. This problem is easily minimized if these products are tested and examined before being rolled out for mass use, but with the success of ChatGPT, that hasn't been the case. Both Microsoft and Google are moving faster to get AI into their products.

The act of searching on Google is an artifact of the early internet. Search engines operated like digital filing cabinets. They didn't take us directly to an answer, but they put us in the right drawer. As they've evolved, they've become better at sending us on the right path — we find answers more quickly — but for a lot of questions, we're still served a handful of folders and asked to scrounge around for the answer. That's somewhat unnatural.

"People aren't searching because they want links, people are searching because they want answers," says Toby Walsh, a professor of artificial intelligence at the University of New South Wales, Australia. 

Fundamentally, this is why ChatGPT and the new chatbot search engines are so impressive. They provide us an immediate answer. Google does have this power. Facts are easily accessible and Google's knowledge panels, for the most part, provide truthful answers to common questions about people, places and things.

What's different is the way they take advantage of the way we communicate with other people. Hoover, the co-founder of Andi, notes that conversational search presents a type of interaction we're more familiar with thanks to our chat apps and text messages.

"On my phone, I live in visual feeds and chat apps," she says, noting she's in Gen Z. "It just makes sense that that is part of what the future of search will look like."

Those feeds and apps have already changed our relationship with search. In some ways, we've been subconsciously primed to move on from Google because we can find specific, helpful information elsewhere. Our questions are being answered by TikToks, Instagram photos and YouTube videos. 

Farhad Manjoo, an opinion columnist at The New York Times, argued in February there's already a better search engine than Google for certain types of queries: YouTube. "If you want to make a soufflé, fix a clogged drain, learn guitar, Boost your golf swing or do essentially anything that is best understood by watching someone else do it, there is almost no point searching anywhere other than YouTube," he wrote.

For me, TikTok has been an unexpected and powerful search engine. In doing research for a long-term trip to Europe, it provided rapid access to human experiences. With Google, I can read endless opinions about where the best fried chicken is or what libraries to visit. But with TikTok, I can punch in my search term and get authentic, visual guides of these places. I can set expectations in a different way. 

Deepfakes and AI-generated video aside, I can trust that what I see is what I get. YouTube has traded on this authenticity for years, and TikTok is now doing the same. I'm not sure that a planet without Google Search will definitely come to pass, but if it does, this fracturing of our search experience seems like one possible future scenario — at least until the artificial intelligence gets so good that it's merely serving all these results up for us to endlessly doomscroll through, one after the other.

A fractured search economy, where users are bouncing across different engines and apps, is an interesting possible future. It may even be a better one. For researchers like Ford, the power behind search today lies with only a few companies, which influences the way information travels. 

"It's the structural dominance that is a problem," notes Ford. "We have less rich conversations in the world when we have such dominant players determining these single answers."

We could, eventually, find ourselves living on a planet where Google Search doesn't exist. 

This is not a particularly controversial idea. It's one software engineers, tech experts and Google itself have had to contend with for years. In fact, it's so belabored that Brereton, the independent search engine researcher, notes "it's a bit of a meme that like every few years someone says that Google is dead."

How soon we move on from Google, despite the rise of the chatbot search engines in the past few months, remains highly questionable. Even as nu-Search dramatically alters the way humanity accesses information, it feels premature to suggest that any of these AI tools are ready for primetime. Yet they're out there. Change isn't coming. It has already arrived.

"It's not just looking stuff up on the internet," says Walsh. "It's going to be how we interact with all of the smart devices in our lives."

I've been using Google Search for almost as long as it has existed. All my life, I've been driving down the information superhighway in a serviceable SUV, taking wrong turns, swerving to avoid misinformation or abuse but, ultimately, deciding where I want to end up, which roads I want to take, who I trust. I am terrified by a planet where I'm locked into a self-driving vehicle, controlled by some of the biggest tech corporations in the world, that takes me directly to my destination. 

The LLMs we're relying on today have proven themselves to be flawed, biased and incorrect. Trusting them to guide us is fraught with problems we're yet to fully understand. And while they may not outright replace Google Search, they're a harbinger of something even more frightening — the very real possibility of a world without it.

Interested in talking about chatbots, AI search engines or what the future might hold? You can contact the author via email.

Editors' note: CNET is using an AI engine to create some personal finance explainers that are edited and fact-checked by our editors. For more, see this post.

A well-known Ascot girls boarding school was chosen to host the innovative Google Learning Festival this year after being lauded a ‘Google for Education Reference School' in 2022. 

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Congratulations to the following Tech & Learning Awards of Excellence: Best of 2022 winners in the category of "Primary Education (Grades K-8)": 

Acadience Learning Acadience Learning Online Acadience Learning Online allows educators to administer measures online through a touch-screen device or manually enter results and receive immediate, actionable data through an interactive dashboard. The T&L judges called it a great assessment tool, adding, “Teachers and students can quickly see their data from assessments and correct misunderstandings in real time.”

Acer Chromebook Spin 511 R753T The Chromebook Spin 511 R753T features a convertible design with 360-degree hinges and a 11.6-inch IPS Antimicrobial Corning Gorilla Glass touch display. It features the latest Intel Celeron processors, Intel Wi-Fi 6, and a 12-hour battery life. The judges said, “Overall, a well-built and reliable device with good features and specs.”

Amplify Boost Reading Boost reading (formerly Amplify Reading) is a Science of Reading-based personalized learning program for grades K-5 that leverages storytelling to engage students in reading instruction and practice—whether they are just learning to read or mastering comprehension of higher-level texts. The judges called this a good product, saying, “The developers approach seems very solid.”

Amplify mClass Lectura mCLASS Lectura is a Spanish literacy universal screening, dyslexia screening, and progress monitoring assessment system for K-6 that allows teachers to connect with their Spanish-speaking students. T&L judges called it, “A very effective and comprehensive tool that will allow teachers and students to achieve their goals with English language acquisition and assessment.”

Avantis Education Eduverse Expeditions Eduverse Expeditions is a virtual/augmented reality platform that allows schools to take students on virtual field trips to famous locations and is supported by thousands of free resources, including 360-degree photos and videos, 3D models, educator resources, and lesson plans.  “Definitely a tool every teacher needs in the classroom,” said the judges.

AVer Information DL30 AI Auto Tracking Classroom Camera The DL30 is a distance learning and classroom lesson capture camera that automatically tracks teachers as they move around the room. It’s compatible with platforms such as Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams. “This camera is very slick and has both an Ethernet and HDMI output for streaming High Definition video and audio,” said one judge.

AVer Information M5 Document Camera This is a plug-n-play document camera for both the classroom and home use, featuring an 8MP camera, Ultra High Definition resolution, frame rates up to 60FPS, and a 360° swivel camera head. The judges praised it as a solid document camera with great optics and peer-to-peer connectivity, calling it, “An amazing presentation tool.”

AVer Information VB130 All-in-One Classroom Collaboration Camera The VB130 is a hybrid learning and collaboration tool that combines 4K video with a built-in soundbar and microphone, and features AI tracking, 4X zoom, and USB connectivity. “This AVer video bar is amazing!” said the judges, adding it is big enough to fit on an interactive whiteboard and yet small enough to mount on a laptop.

Benchmark Education Company Authentic Voices Library The Authentic Voices Library features hundreds of original, culturally inclusive books that ensure that all students see their stories and perspectives represented in the books they read. The judges found it especially valuable that the texts were written by authors who brought their personal experiences to the page which provides truly authentic, real-world experiences.

Benchmark Education Company Authentic Voices Library en Espanol Authentic Voices Library en Español builds content knowledge by enriching instruction and opening a lens of cultural relevance and social-emotional learning. The judges called it an awesome resource meeting an immediate need, adding, “Excited to see diverse literature offering all students the opportunity to learn and connect with valuable perspectives.”

Benchmark Education Company Adelante Benchmark Adelante a K-6 standards-based, core SLA program that provides a cohesive framework for the development of literacy skills and content knowledge. “Quality Tier 1 SLA instruction is highly sought after and Benchmark Adelante offers a great resource for teachers to utilize for instruction,” said T&L’s judges.

Benchmark Education Company Advance Benchmark Advance is a K-6 standards-based framework that reflects scientific evidence (science of reading) about how children learn to read and expand their proficiency in phonological awareness, phonics and word study, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. The judges called it, “A great product with ELA instruction that offers the tools to build lessons that encourage in-depth conversations.”

Benchmark Education Company Hello! Benchmark Hello! is a comprehensive eight-week program that promotes newcomers’ conceptual, procedural, and linguistic knowledge, and equips them with essential oral language from Day 1 while supporting their social-emotional needs. The judges hailed it as a great eight-week programing and liked the teaching tips and the home school connection provided.

Benchmark Education Company Phonics Benchmark Phonics is a K-5 comprehensive phonics program developed by Wiley Blevins and aligned to Science of reading research to ensure mastery, make phonics meaningful, and deliver differentiated professional learning. “This program offers educators and students a great solution to this high need within the classroom with daily lessons, digital resources, and professional learning opportunities,” said the judges.

Benchmark Education Company Phonics Intervention Benchmark Phonics Intervention offers intensive phonics intervention for Tier 3 students. All materials are available digitally, including ebooks that are equipped with highlighting, adjustable-speed read-aloud audio, and other tools for customization that support learning. The judges called this “a great product offering intensive phonics intervention for Tier 3 students.”

Benchmark Education Company Represent Represent is a new collection of more than 200 fiction and nonfiction texts featuring community stories, histories, and experiences that promote multiple perspectives, critical thinking, and knowledge building for students in grades K-6. The judges said, “By offering these texts every student sees authentic texts with diverse perspectives in ELA, science, and social studies.”

BenQ BenQ Education RP03 BenQ Board BenQ Board RP03 smart board features include single sign-on, cloud access, screen sharing, split-screen, screen recording, annotation tools, and a germ-resistant interactive display. The judges called it a good product for schools, with one adding, “I really like that teachers can save time by securely accessing their files by simply using an NFC card.”

Boxlight Attention! Primary FrontRow by Boxlight’s Attention! is an integrated audio-visual messaging and alerting system solution that combines campus-wide bells, paging, intercom, and emergency communication platform with cloud management and  interactive displays. The judges called it, “An incredible way to communicate to all users with a video or audio message quickly. Administrators have quick access to get messages out in a hurry!”

Boxlight CleverLive Primary CleverLive digital signage is a cloud content management platform that keeps everyone on campus informed by broadcasting announcements, messages, and alerts, and includes hundreds of premade templates for personalization. The judges called it a great product, adding, “The features that make it easy to share and display content are really nice, especially the mobile features.”

Boxlight EOS Education PD Primary EOS Education by Boxlight provides professional development services to districts, schools, and other education-focused organizations based on three fundamentals: teacher motivation, teacher effectiveness, and purposeful engagement. “Overall, this is a very good tool with the facetime that is such an issue with on-demand training, which seems to be the way of the future.”

Boxlight MimioPro 4 Primary The MimioPro 4 interactive display’s features include USB-C with charging and hardware optimization, anti-glare glass, four customizable user profiles, and a selection of educational software and apps for teacher and student use. “This product allows for increased engagement and interactivity in classrooms,” said the judges.

Boxlight Robo 3D Printers Primary Robo 3D printers are turnkey and ready to use right out of the box, are WiFi and hotspot enabled for Chromebook and iPad, and include  access to the MyStemKits library of standards-driven 3D-printable STEAM curriculum for K-12. Said the judges: “These printers are the perfect solution for STEM education at all levels”

Classlink Classlink ClassLink is a global provider of education products, including apps and files with single sign-on and that streamline class rostering, automate account provisioning, and provide actionable analytics. It is used by 18 million students and staff in more than 2,400 school systems. The judges called it, “A good value for the money.”

CTL CTL Chromebook NL72T The CTL Chromebook NL72T is a 360 convertible 2-in-1 that can be used in tablet or laptop mode, and is equipped with Intel's N4500 CPU running at 2.8GHz, 4GB of RAM, and 64 GB of storage. The judges praised it overall as a solid device, adding, “It has good specs at a nice price point.”

Curriculum Associates i-Ready Curriculum Associates’ i-Ready Assessment and Personalized Instruction help to provide personalized and relevant instruction by combining assessments and insights with instruction in K-8 reading and mathematics. The judges called it “a great product,” adding, “The addition of serving Spanish-speaking students will be a nice piece for many school districts.”

Discovery Education DoodleMath DoodleMath is an interactive math app for ages 4-14 designed to be used for just 10 minutes per day to double a child’s rate of progression in math. “Adaptive practice, a variety of question stems, and interactive tools create good learning opportunities,” said the judges. “The student tutorial is great.”

Discovery Education Mystery Science Discovery Education provides a large collection of high-quality, standards-aligned content, ready-to-use digital lessons, intuitive quiz and activity creation tools, and professional learning resources, all in an enhanced learning platform. The judges said the program has high value, with one adding, “I highly recommend it, and feel students learn from the program.”

Edlio Edlio K-12 Communication and Payments Suite The Edlio Website CMS provides a website management platform with tools including school news, custom forms, Google and Office365 Integration, notifications, a social media manager, teacher pages, and more. T&L’s judges said: “Being able to post to a variety of communication channels, in multiple languages, and collect payments with ease, makes this a solid solution.”

Edmentum Edmentum Exact Path Exact Path is a mobile-optimized K-12 math, reading, and language arts program that combines adaptive diagnostic assessments with individualized learning paths for students. One T&L judge said, “I like that students are directed to repeat learning until they demonstrate mastery of the learning objectives.”

Edpuzzle Edpuzzle for Primary Edpuzzle is an educational technology solution that allows teachers to choose from ready-to-go videos including state standards aligned Edpuzzle Originals, videos from YouTube, content created by other teachers, or record their own videos. “I like that students get immediate feedback in multiple-choice quizzes,” said one judge. “Even for the youngest learners, this tool is valuable.”

EveryDay Labs EveryDay Pro EveryDay Pro is an all-in-one solution for analyzing attendance patterns and trends and addressing challenges at the district, school, and student level. The judges called Everyday Pro “highly valuable,” adding. “This offers educators the ability to strategically track attendance patterns and trends and quickly find solutions across district trends to Boost student attendance with intervention plans.”

Forward Edge Forward Edge Edge•U is an instruction-focused professional learning system that adapts to the needs of educators, builds teacher capacity, and directly impacts student learning by offering concise, just-in-time professional learning opportunities “Edge•U is an excellent professional development and digital badging solution for all grade levels,” said the judges.

Frontline Education Frontline School Health Management with Disease Case Functionality Frontline School Health Management with new Disease Case Management functionality helps districts keep students and staff safe with health checks, test results, vaccine tracking, case management, contact tracing, isolation and quarantine data, and statistics for more than 30 communicable diseases. The judges said, “If you have the funds, it is a good resource.”

GoSchoolBox Academic Support Management & Accountability GoSchoolBox supports learning management teams with web-based tutoring and academic support management software, providing the ability to manage tutoring support options (in-person, online, one-to-one, group), evaluate academic outcomes, and provide customized Tier 2 and Tier 3 interventions. The judges called it “a great solution” and “a great way to maximize school time, resources, and people.”

GZM Shows (Gen-Z Media) GZM Classroom Gen-Z Media creates free podcasts and support resources that have been integrated into thousands of schools across North America to help facilitate better learning. “For a free resource, GZM Classroom is very good,” said the judges. “The site is easy to navigate and I like some of their live interactive opportunities.”

HMH Waggle Waggle is a supplemental learning solution for grades K-8 ELA and Math that provides personalized practice and instruction to support skills diversity for in-class centers, independent practice, or remote learning. The judges said, “Waggle’s tiered approach is ideal for remote, independent, and small group learning.”

Impero Software Impero Classroom Impero Classroom is a holistic, scalable classroom management software designed to support five different operating systems: Windows, Chrome OS, Mac, iOS, and Android, and allows teachers to safely use sites such as Google and YouTube. T&L’s judges said, “This is a great product for classroom management and offers many solutions to a growing problem.”

John Jones Media Johnnie Max Johnnie Max is a supplemental, interactive online literacy program for PreK-K teachers and learners, offering interactive ebooks, vocab games, SEL focus, videos, and hands-on activities that align with states’ academic standards. “Looks like an awesome literacy and early learning program!” said the judges.

Learning Ally PreK-6 Literacy Instruction by Learning Ally Professional learning courseware (online and on demand) for early childhood educators with Master Teachers featuring evidence-based methodologies grounded in the science of reading and brain-based learning practices. The framework is a combination of professional learning workshops and collaborative communities of practice, with an option for individual coaching.

Learning.com EasyTech EasyTech provides blended learning curricula and a library of more than 1,000 learning experiences, including classroom lesson plans for teacher-led discussions and hands-on activities, as well as self-paced, online videos, and more. The judges called it, “a robust technology education curriculum,” adding it offers students the ability to learn important technology skills.

Lightbox Learning Lightbox Subscription Lightbox is a digital curriculum learning solution for K-12 with more than 1,200 titles that combine text, audio, videos, weblinks, slideshows, activities, Google maps, and transparencies in a single intuitive, easy-to-use interface. T&L judges: “Great way to help students connect with background knowledge, interact with content, and fall in love with reading. 

Lightspeed Systems Lightspeed Alert Lightspeed Alert is an at-risk student identification solution that monitors and analyzes online activity for signs of self-harm, violence, and bullying supported 24/7/265 by a team of experienced professionals. “With its full feature set and the ability to secure BYOD devices this is a winner,” said Tech & Learning’s judges.

Lightspeed Systems Lightspeed Digital Insight Lightspeed Digital Insight (formerly Lightspeed Analytics) empowers instructional technology leaders with a single view of district edtech usage to understand and act on approvals, cost management, and impact. The judges said, “With the combination of Catch-on and Lightspeed technologies, this is a feature rich and powerful solution.”

Lightspeed Systems Lightspeed Filter Lightspeed Filter is a K-12 filtering solution that gives districts flexibility and control to promote safe digital learning by managing internet security and protecting students from harmful content, including YouTube controls, a decades-long domain database, and CIPA compliance. “The filter has a great set of features and technologies and the interfaces are very intuitive,” said the judges.

Magic EdTech MagicBox Platform MagicBox is a SaaS-based, cloud-hosted, end-to-end digital publishing platform to create, manage, enrich, and deliver digital content through their custom-branded web and mobile apps. “Looks like a great tool for creating a learning hub unique to each user's organization,” said our judges. “It offers a wide variety of solutions for a variety of entities.”

Managed Methods Inc. ManagedMethods ManagedMethods is a Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 cybersecurity, student safety, and compliance platform for K-12 school districts.that monitors district email, file sharing, chat, and video apps. The judges called it an extra layer of security districts can greatly benefit from, adding, “Districts can save time and know they are safer than before.”

MIND Research Institute MIND Research Institute ST Math is a PreK-8 visual instructional program that provides students with equitable access to learning through challenging puzzles, non-routine problem-solving, and formative feedback. “I have used the program before and it is an excellent source of problem-solving strategies for children. Love it!” said one judge. 

MobileMind MobileMind MobileMind is a professional development platform that facilitates district-scaled, sustainable, personalized learning while engaging educators in gamified, self-paced micro-courses. The judges praised its hands-on approach, adding, “It also includes a great tool that helps while learning and walks you through step-by-step instructions on other sites.”

MobyMax MobyMax MobyMax offers K-8 curricula for 27 subjects, including math, reading, phonics, language, vocabulary, spelling, writing, science, social studies, and state test prep. It features a differentiated, adaptive, and personalized learning approach. The judges called it a good piece of software for skill practice that wIll help a population of learners.

n2y News2You News2you is a weekly, age-respectful online newspaper that connects students to the world and provides accompanying activities and informational text to build literacy and communication skills, plus help students meet ELA standards and communicate. The judges called it, “A great way to offer students a weekly magazine for learning, fun, games, and more learning.”

n2y Unique Learning System

Unique Learning System is an online solution developed to help learners achieve their state’s extended standards, offering differentiated interactive lessons, detailed lesson plans, standards alignment, assessments, progress monitoring, reporting, and research-based teaching strategies. “It looks like a very valuable tool for both special education and general education,” said T&L’s judges.

Newline Interactive Newline Interactive The new Q series is an interactive flat panel that features include an Android 11-based operating system, a built-in WiFi 6 module, USB Type C connectivity with 65 watts of power, embedded 20-watt 2.0 channel speakers, and antimicrobial, anti-fingerprint and anti-reflective glass. The judges said, “This looks like a great product and solution for classrooms.”

Otus Otus Otus is an all-in-one K-12 platform with integrated tools to gather, visualize, and act on student growth data, and includes grading, assessments, progress monitoring, data storage, and more. “Otus makes every step of the learning process more efficient for teachers, administrators, students, and families by using their portals that integrate everything,” said the judges.

Ozobot, Ozobot Evo Evo is a one-inch Bluetooth robot that helps students learn to code, develop computer science and STEAM skills, and play games through both screen and screen-free activities. The judges praised it as great for all ages, adding, “This is a wonderful product for teaching coding both online and offline.”

Presence Kanga Kanga is used by clinicians to deliver speech-language therapy, occupational therapy, behavioral and mental health services, and assessments to students either in-person or remotely. “In a time of great need this tool offers clinicians the availability to offer services to a variety of students remotely,” said the judges, adding, “Kanga helps to keep everything in one place.”

Promethean Promethean Promethean’s all-new ActivPanel is an interactive display that features secure sign-in options, streamlined connection to content, flexible lesson delivery software, and personalized user experience. Teachers can record lessons, including classroom voices and panel content, to share with remote and absent students through any platform. Tech & Learning’s judges: “Overall, it is a very innovative product.”

Renaissance Fastbridge by Renaissance FastBridge by Renaissance is a K-12 research-based universal screening and progress monitoring solution to assess reading, math, and social-emotional behavior in a single platform with intervention recommendations. “This product provides timely solutions for school districts who need to assess student performance and social and emotional behaviors,” said the judges, who also praised its comprehensive reporting.

Renaissance Freckle Freckle is both an adaptive and targeted practice program that helps educators to effectively differentiate math and ELA for students with interactive features, team challenges, real-world scenarios, nonfiction and fiction articles, and instant feedback. The judges appreciated how materials keep students engaged, with one judge saying, “I like that it has many standards-aligned assessments that are adaptive.”

Ripple Effects Bouncy's Ready to Learn Resilience program Breathing Bouncy, a breathing animatronic service dog, anchors a character-driven, play-based approach to building resilience and readiness to learn for learners in grades PreK-1. It features both physical and digital elements to help learn how to self-calm when stressed. “Such a wonderful way to teach students how to self care from an early age,” said the judges.

Samsung Samsung Interactive Pro Available in 75- and 85-inch clear UHD models, the Samsung Interactive Pro display allows educators to create immersive lessons and offers seamless video conferencing and content sharing to connect remote and in-person learners. “This Interactive Panel by Samsung offers stunning, vibrant displays of life-like content for learning,” said the judges.

Study.com Study.com's K12 LEARN Solution Study.com’s K12 LEARN Solution provides a comprehensive curriculum paired with skills practice and assessment components designed to support diverse learners in synchronous and asynchronous environments. “I recommend Study Island as a resource for extra math and language arts practice,” said one judge, adding that it addresses many problems that arise with various learning styles and levels.

TeachTown enCORE Elementary enCORE Elementary is a standards-based, adapted core curriculum based on Applied Behavior Analysis that provides students with moderate to severe disabilities access to the general education curriculum. It offers grade-aligned content, differentiated literature with visual supports, and integrated technology. The judges called this “an incredible and unique tool,” adding, “Teachers will find this extremely valuable.”

Tripp Lite by Eaton Safe-IT Heavy-Duty Rolling Carts Safe-IT heavy-duty rolling carts support the largest displays on the market, meet UL safety standards, and feature antimicrobial handles that help resist the growth of bacteria, viruses, fungi, mold and mildew. The judges said, “A great solution for allowing large smart boards to be mobile. Safe and effective, allowing teachers to share and have more flexibility.”

Tripp Lite by Eaton Safe-IT UV Locking Storage Cart for Mobile Devices and AV Equipment Safe-IT UV locking storage carts use ultraviolet lights to reduce the presence of germs on devices and require only 10 minutes to sanitize devices such as laptops, tablets, smartphones, and wearables. The judges called this “a great option for schools,” adding, “With the rise in technology purchases in schools, educators are always looking for ways to store devices.”

Voyager Sopris Learning Voyager Passport Voyager Passport is a gamified, adventure-based intensive reading intervention for K-5 students, based on science of reading pedagogy and targeting critical priority skills and providing strategies. One judge said, “I particularly liked the Voyager Passport remote ready slides which are designed for compatibility with various delivery platforms, such as Zoom, Google Classroom, GoTo, or Seesaw.”

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Somewhere in Silicon Valley, a harried Google executive spent Tuesday morning Googling "what's a monopoly?"

The US Department of Justice already knows... and probably used Bing. After what feels like years of contemplation and prep work, the DOJ has finally and formally accused the search giant of operating an "anticompetitive, exclusionary, and unlawful" monopoly in the digital advertising space. The lawsuit comes roughly six months after the DOJ rejected Google's offer to split off parts of its ad-tech business in a last-ditch effort to score a Get Out Of Jail Free card.

Do Not Pass Go

Google's potential knee-jerk defense is pretty simple: in a world shared with Meta, Amazon, TikTok, and other big players, how could it possibly operate a monopoly? Indeed, the company did control "only" some 29% of the US digital ad market last year, according to Insider Intelligence data. But the DOJ is suing on grounds that go beyond the "hey, we're just one player in a multi-pronged oligopoly" defense. The DOJ is arguing that Google's prominent role in multiple parts of the digital ad ecosystem -- from tools for publishers to sell ad space, tools for advertisers to buy ad space, and an exchange that links bidders and sellers in the blink of an eye -- allows it to flex its anticompetitive muscles in sundry other ways.

The roughly 150-page lawsuit, filed in Virginia's Eastern District federal court, traces Google's overreach all the way back to its 2008 acquisition of ad-serving company DoubleClick. From there, the DOJ sketches out a pattern of allegedly calculated, anti-competitive behavior -- creating a central pillar of Google's business while rocking the digital publishing economy:

• "Google keeps at least thirty cents--and sometimes far more--of each advertising dollar flowing from advertisers to website publishers through Google's ad tech tools," the DOJ alleges. "Google's own internal documents concede that Google would earn far less in a competitive market."
• Overall, digital advertising accounted for roughly 80% of Google's business, with 12% -- or roughly $32 billion -- coming from the ad-brokering activity that the DOJ is honing in on. Clearly, the government's call for the divestiture of Google's ad exchange would significantly alter the company.

From the Gmail Archives: Included in the suit is an illustrative quote from one of Google's own executives in internal communications explaining the company's hands-in-every-cookie-jar approach to the digital ad space: "Is there a deeper issue with us owning the platform, the exchange, and a huge network? The analogy would be if Goldman or Citibank owned the NYSE." The search giant is no doubt doing some soul-searching about how its executives talk to one another.

Google on Tuesday began rolling out the first beta version of its "privacy sandbox" on Android -- a stack of new advertising features on the mobile platform that are supposed to offer mobile phone users more privacy. 

Google has been gradually adjusting its lucrative advertising business as the public grows more aware of advertisers' prying eyeballs -- and as Apple has taken more dramatic measure to limit targeted advertising. 

The new privacy sandbox will provide advertisers -- as well as app developers who work with third-party ad services -- a way to test out Google's new ad solutions. The new APIs in the privacy sandbox do not use identifiers to track your activity across apps and websites.

"Evolving digital advertising to enhance user privacy, by moving away from reliance on cross-app tracking, is vital for the future of a thriving mobile ecosystem," Anthony Chavez, Google's Privacy Sandbox VP, wrote in a blog post.

However, advertisers will still learn about the courses you're interested in, according to Android's estimations. Apps participating in the beta can still show you potentially relevant ads and measure their effectiveness.

While endorsing its own approach to advertising, Google took the opportunity to knock Apple's App Tracking Transparency feature, which created some turbulence in the digital ad business. 

"Our goal with the Privacy Sandbox is to enhance user privacy while providing businesses with the tools to succeed online," Chavez wrote. "Blunt approaches that don't provide viable alternatives harm app developers, and they don't work for user privacy either, leading to less private ways of tracking users like device fingerprinting." 

The hyperlink in Chavez's blog post sends you to a study examining the effects of Apple's ATT feature. 

The Android beta is rolling out gradually, starting with a "small percentage" of Android 13 devices. 

If your device is selected for the beta, you'll receive an Android notification letting you know. If you want to opt out of the program -- or find out what advertisers are learning about you -- can you go to the Privacy Sandbox section of Settings. If Google has added any of "topics of interests" that you don't want to see ads about, you can delete them.

Any of the variants of the Google Nest Thermostat would be a great addition to a house that’s equipped with the best smart home devices, but you’ll need to search if you want to enjoy a discount when buying one. There’s high demand for Nest Thermostat products because they help families stay comfortable despite changing seasons without having to make manual adjustments, while also enabling savings on electricity costs. You’ll want to act fast if you want to take advantage of the top Nest Thermostat deals that we’ve rounded up, because they may get sold out at any moment.

Today’s best Nest Thermostat deals

Why Buy:

• Easy to install by yourself
• Access controls through Google Home app
• Compatible with Google Assistant, Amazon’s Alexa
• Monitors for issues in heating and cooling system

If you want your home to stay at the perfect temperature, you need to equip it with the Google Nest Thermostat. Installation is easy, and usually takes just 30 minutes or less. Afterwards, you can change the thermostat’s temperature, set and adjust schedules, and more from anywhere using the Google Home app on your smartphone. You can even use Google Assistant or Amazon’s Alexa for voice commands when controlling the device. The Google Nest Thermostat also monitors your home’s heating and cooling system, and will send you alerts when it detects an issue and reminders like when a filter replacement is necessary.

Google Nest Learning Thermostat (Geek Squad Certified Refurbished) — $165, was $250

Why Buy:

• Flagship model of Nest Thermostat devices
• Metal housing
• May pair with Nest Temperature Sensors
• Geek Squad Certified Refurbished version comes with 90-day warranty

The Google Nest Learning Thermostat is the flagship device in Google’s Nest Thermostat line. Comparing the Google Nest Learning Thermostat and Google Nest Thermostat, the advantages of the premium model include its metal housing, the ability to learn your family’s temperature preferences, and better temperature regulation by pairing with additional Nest Temperature Sensors. The Geek Squad Certified Refurbished version of the Google Nest Learning Thermostat comes with a 90-day warranty — while it will be tested to make sure that it works properly, you’ll have the peace of mind that if anything does go wrong, you can have it replaced.

Google Nest Learning Thermostat — $200, was $250

Why Buy:

• Brand new
• Works with Google Assistant, Amazon’s Alexa
• System Match unlocks specific features
• Programs itself within a week after installation

If you’re willing to spend extra dollars, you’ll get a brand new Google Nest Learning Thermostat. In addition to the aforementioned features, the smart home device is also compatible with both Google Assistant and Amazon’s Alexa, and with System Match, it can activate settings that are specific to your heating and cooling system. The Google Nest Learning Thermostat starts programming itself with your family’s preferred temperatures within a week after installation, including switching to Away mode for energy efficiency when there’s nobody at home. The thermostat will also track the amount of energy that you’ve used, and provide tips on how you can save on costs.

Nest Thermostat deals FAQ

Coming on the heels of Apple’s AirTag, Google is now expected to be preparing its own personal tracker just in time for Google I/O 2023. These new trackers, code-named Grogu after the popular Baby Yoda character from The Mandalorian, are aimed at leveraging the power of Android’s Google Play Services-equipped devices (numbering 3 billion) to create a personal tracking network so powerful it rivals Apple’s.

The bad part? Google is creating a personal tracking network so large it rivals Apple’s.

Google has been laying the foundation for this feature set in updates to Google Play Services detailed by prolific developer and leaker Kuba Wojciechowski. These updates have brought in support for locator tags to Google’s Fast Pair feature, with the company also reportedly working with multiple device partners to build their own trackers.

Though there is no time frame for this technology to be announced, the aforementioned Google I/O conference in May seems like a good guess. And just like with Apple before it, Google seems set to trip and fall headlong into controversy.

Apple’s AirTag knows controversy all too well

The controversy around AirTags is simple. They are small, cheap, inexpensive trackers that have been used to help people keep track of their luggage and other belongings, as well as for more nefarious purposes like stalking people and setting people up for robberies. Apple has added anti-stalking features to AirTags over the past year, but the incidents keep recurring (with lawsuits and legislation accompanying them) because — well, AirTags are good at their jobs.

To make these tracker tags infinitely more useful and powerful than competitors’, Google and Apple both leverage large installed bases of billions of people across their platforms. With Apple’s Find My Network and the near ubiquity of Google Play Services in locations where Apple is weak, buying an AirTag and a hypothetical Google tag could leave even more people vulnerable to stalkers and robbers.

Certainly, Google has a better chance of doing things right here. Apple AirTags has been out for several years and the company has made a few mistakes that updates have corrected. Google could simply build in those corrections into its own tags and neuter the problem outright.

A Google tracker can only make things worse

Google has never been known for its privacy practices, and AirTags represent an untapped market for the company’s Android partners. At the end of the day, the tracking milk has already been spilled, the toothpaste can’t be put back in the tub, and other tedious metaphors of that kind.

The issue remains that any product which is good at tracking things is inherently one that’s good at tracking people. And Apple, of course, isn’t the only purveyor of such devices, which include inexpensive Bluetooth trackers.

It’s not as if Apple, Google, or Amazon eliminating their products would instantly drop the illicit tracking options to zero. Rather, these companies are willingly making it cheaper, easier, and more convenient to surreptitiously follow people without their consent.

Whether it’s legal or not is one question. Whether the value of finding a lost wallet or keys outweighs potential or genuine safety concerns is another entirely.

Editors' Recommendations

Earlier this month, Google’s stock (Alphabet) tumbled 7% when chatbot Bard was unable to complete a search with 100% accuracy. During a demonstration, Bard returned incorrect information about which telescope was the first to take pictures of a planet outside the Earth’s solar system. This was a minor mistake given how far large language models and generative AI has come, rather it was the timing that was a bit flawed as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, the chatbot powering competitor Microsoft Bing, had been dominating headlines since its November 30^th launch.

Microsoft, being an opportunist, took it a step further and announced Bing would now be powered by a faster and more accurate version of GPT-3.5 one day after Bard’s failed demonstration: “We’re excited to announce the new Bing is running on a new, next-generation OpenAI large language model that is more powerful than ChatGPT and customized specifically for search. It takes key learnings and advancements from ChatGPT and GPT-3.5 – and it is even faster, more accurate and more capable.”

Both companies have been preparing for this moment for many years. Microsoft invested $1 billion into OpenAI a few years ago with a new $10 billion round announced last month. Meanwhile, Google acquired DeepMind in 2014. Google also previously developed conversational neural language models such as LaMDA, which is used by Google’s Bard for its conversational AI technology.

As much fun as the media has had lately poking fun of Bard, there have been similar, compelling reports of ChatGPT-powered Bing also having accuracy issues.

Point being, both are in the early stages and mistakes are being blown out of proportion. Which brings up more important questions for investors – given that technology can require many iterations, what’s the right timing for generative AI and chatbots to drive real advertising revenue?

Investors can get burned by being too early. For example, autonomous vehicles (AVs) were promised in 2019, and the Metaverse has not driven any real gains despite a large media push in early 2021. How does AI compare in terms of time to market?

Secondly, Alphabet has a lot of turf to defend. It won’t only be Bing, but also browsers like Opera that will incorporate ChatGPT into its sidebar. From there, it’s easy to imagine other competitors may crop up over time, some replacing search engines entirely with conversational AI applications powered by speech recognition, which are otherwise unimaginable today.

We look at these key points below for a 360-degree view on Google’s stock given search is on the precipice of its first major shift in over two decades.

Background on AI-Powered Search

“AI is the most profound technology we are working on today. Our talented researchers, infrastructure and technology make us extremely well positioned, as AI reaches an inflection point.” -Sundar Pichai, Alphabet’s Q4 earnings call.

Despite the mishap with Bard, it would be a human-generated mistake to think Alphabet does not command a place of leadership right now in generative AI. Alphabet was one of the first tech companies to focus and invest on AI and natural language processing (NLP). We pointed out to our premium research members in July of 2022 that ChatGPT is based on transformer architecture that Google initially introduced in 2017 when we said:

“Transformers are becoming one of the most popular neural-network models by applying self-attention to detect how data elements in a series influence and depend on one another.

Sequential text, images and video data are used for self-supervised learning and pattern recognition, which results in more data being used to create better models. Prior to transformer models, labeled datasets had to be used to train neural networks.

Transformer models eliminate this need by finding patterns between elements mathematically, which substantially opens up what datasets can be used and how quickly.

Google first introduced transformer models in 2017 and transformers are used in Google and Bing Search. Transformers also led to BERT models, which stands for Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers, and is commonly used for text sequences. Transformers are also used in GPT-3 (it’s the T in GPT) which improved from 1.5 billion parameters to 175 billion parameters. GPT-3 has the ability to report on queries it has not been specifically trained on.”

Earlier this month, Google’s CEO, Sundar Pichai, gently reminded the AI community of how cutting edge Google’s research is when he stated, “Transformer research project and our field-defining paper in 2017, as well as our important advances in diffusion models, are now the basis of many of the generative AI applications you're starting to see today.”

BERT was designed to help Google better understand search intent, as despite billions of searches every day, about 15% of those searches are for brand new terms. This prompted Google engineers to develop a model that could self-learn.

The result is that searches results are more accurate by taking into consideration the nuances of language.

Multitask Unified Models (MUMs) are 1,000X More Powerful than BERT

Multitask Unified Models (MUM) were introduced in 2021 to further address conversational nuances and is 1,000 times more powerful than BERT. MUMs will have a large impact for search users as it decreases the amount of effort put into seeking the desired information. It’s not only addressing the 15% of search based on new terms, rather it’s a powerful iteration that returns search results that more closely resemble how humans interact.

According to Google, it takes an average of eight queries to answer a complex question. With MUM, this is reduced to one query. You can theoretically ask “should I travel to Hawaii or California this Fall?” and MUM will be able to compare travel rates and weather patterns to answer this question with more depth. Similar to if you ask your friend this question, they might answer “Hawaii is more expensive to travel to but California is prone to wildfires in the Fall, so I would go to Hawaii.” To search for this answer would take many queries, but with MUM, succinct, human-like responses are provided in only one interaction.

Large language models have been helping to Boost search results for many years. Therein, Google presents its moat; which is not only a deeply engrained behaviour pattern where search users automatically turn to the multi-decade leader out of pure habit, but that Google search truly presents the highest quality search results today.

Google’s commanding lead on search is not a legacy metric, by any means, rather it symbolizes the lead Google has on data for training large language models.

Bard’s demonstration may have been problematic compared to Chat-GPTs more favorable reviews, however, it’s nothing more than that for now —- which is a mix of bad reviews and good reviews by a limited number of beta users.

TPUs:

This brings us to Google’s TPUs, which are essentially ASICs (application specific integrated circuit) on the efficiency/flexibility spectrum. I first covered the differences between TPUs and GPUs nearly four years ago in 2019 for our premium members when I said:

“TensorFlow is rising in popularity as a machine learning framework and TPUs primarily run TensorFlow models. This is one of Google’s more successful experiments. They are cheaper and use less power than GPUs and are specifically focused on machine learning.

TPUs train and run machine learning models and power Google Translate, Photos, Search, Assistant and Gmail – i.e., image recognition, language translation, speech recognition and image generation.”

Although there are ongoing debates between TPUs and GPUs, the primary difference is that TPUs are application specific and have been optimized for Google’s AI tools. Meanwhile, Nvidia was the first to break ground in deep learning due to the ease of programming GPUs and the relative speed in which parallel computing can train networks. Nvidia also offers its customers an aggressive product road map.

An example of this is the H100 DGX SuperPods, which we covered for our premium members in July when we said:

“Nvidia and Microsoft recently worked on a Mega transformer model with 530 billion parameters and the future for AI engineers is trillion-parameter transformers and applications. The H100 is already prepping for this. According to Nvidia, the training needs for transformer models will increase 275-fold every two years compared to 8-fold for other models. The H100 GPU with its Transformer Engine supports the FP8 format to speed up training to support trillion-parameter models. This leads to transformer models that go from taking 5 days to train to becoming 6X faster to only taking 19 hours to train.”

As of today, TPUs do not necessarily provide Google an advantage over Microsoft’s partnership with Nvidia. When TPUs were first launched, it was expected that it would provide Google an important lead in launches such as Bard. However, Nvidia has proven to be a more difficult competitor than originally expected, and I imagine Microsoft will not stray from this partnership as the company will instead focus on other areas, such as taking more market share with Bing.

Introduction of Bard powered by LaMDA

LaMDA is a conversational language model that powers Bard. Two years ago, Google launched LaMDA to better mimic open-ended conversations by training the language model on dialogue. The result was a more human-like chatbot that personally knows you well enough to recommend movies or books, is sensitive enough to change an uncomfortable conversation, can discuss its own “death” by being turned off, —- and also has machine vision to where it can look at a picture and discuss the picture intelligibly.

Bard was released this month for beta testers and will be available to the public “in the coming weeks.” As mentioned in the introduction, Bard answers questions with real-time data whereas ChatGPT is trained on data from 2021 or earlier (note: the new Bing version is rumoured to use real-time data, see below).

Bard is also free, and given Google’s search revenue, the company may have incentives to undercut competitors that charge paid plans for conversational AI.

Other ChatGPT alternatives

Anthropic is building a 52-billion-parameter pretrained model called Claude, which is a potential rival to ChatGPT. Google invested $300 million into Anthropic last year, with a similar arrangement as Microsoft and OpenAI, which includes a stake in the R&D of the startup. Anthropic was founded by former employees of OpenAI. Whether Claude can actually exceed Google’s own language systems is yet to be determined, or perhaps Google is simply spreading its bets and wanting access to its competitors’ former talent. Despite being in closed beta, there’s an excellent write-up here about the differences between ChatGPT and Claude.

DeepMind is also not to be underestimated. Google’s sister company is behind many of Google’s AI product integrations to-date. In September of 2022, DeepMind introduced Sparrow which is trained with human feedback, similar to ChatGPT, but will use up-to-date information from a Google-powered internet. DeepMind’s previous release, Chinchilla, was competitive with ChatGPT 3.0 before the more advanced ChatGPT 3.5 was released.

There are many other large language models, such as Google’s PaLM and Microsoft’s Megatron, in the 530 to 540 billion parameters size and also based on Transformer architecture.

Notably, this is not meant to be a comprehensive list rather a demo of the level of innovation occuring in this space.

AI to Drive Advertising Revenues

The strength in Search highlights the advantage that having first-party data provides. The company had global desktop market share of 84% in online Search at the end of December 2022, according to data from Statista. Desktop share dropped slightly from 88% at the end of December 2015 to 84% at the end of December 2022. Meanwhile, Microsoft’s Bing share increased from 5% to 9% during this period.

According to data from Statista, YouTube has 2.5 billion monthly active users. It ranks second behind Facebook which has 2.96 billion monthly active users.

According to the data from Nielsen, the company also has a leadership position in streaming in the U.S. For the month of December 2022, YouTube (including YouTube TV) accounted for 8.7% of TV usage, followed by Netflix with 7.5% and Hulu with 3.4%. With AI, the company is helping advertisers address pain points like frequency and measurement.

Android has a dominant market share in Mobile Operating Systems. As per the data from Statcounter, Android accounted for 71.8% share compared to 27.6% for Apple iOS at the end of Q4 2022. The share for Android has come down marginally from 74.5% in Q1 2018.

This vast amount of first-party data from Chrome and Android can be efficiently used to train complex AI models. A few years ago, I accurately predicted Apple’s IDFA changes would cause problems for advertising companies in an editorial for Forbes:

This is a problem for the ad industry because it goes well beyond personal sentiments and niceties around privacy and slow-moving government regulations and pits tech giant against tech giant in the black box world of ad software, user tracking and engineered loop holes. There is little question who will win as Apple goes up against Google, Facebook and many others. After all, it’s Apple’s device, Apple’s operating system and Apple’s app store. The only question is why this hasn’t happened sooner.

Similarly, Google is a large real estate owner with arguably more data than any other tech company in the world. This advantage cannot be overstated when it comes to training large language models (LLMs). In addition to having a strategic advantage for future development of LLMs with data, Google can offer advertisers instant ROI.

Philipp Schindler, Senior Vice President and Chief Business Officer said in the earnings call, “Going forward, we are focused on growing revenues on top of this higher base through AI-driven innovation.”

This will be accomplished with AI campaigns, such as Performance Max and Smart Bidding. Smart Bidding uses machine learning tools to optimize the bid of the advertisers. ML tools can analyze millions of data signals and can better predict future ad conversions. The further advancement in AI helped to Boost the bidding performance in 2022.

Performance Max will replace Smart Shopping Campaigns. Performance Max allows advertisers to access all Google ad channels from a single campaign and uses Smart Bidding to optimize performance by efficiently matching the conversion goals of the advertisers. Advertisers saw a 12% increase in conversion value with Performance Max when compared to Smart Shopping Campaigns. This is a drop in the bucket in terms of what’s likely to follow over the next few years in terms of better ad tools.

Financials

Alphabet’s current revenue growth is one of the lowest in its public history. Last quarter, revenue grew by 1% to $76.05 billion and on constant currency basis grew by 7%. Next quarter, analysts expect revenue to grow 1.1% to $68.78 billion in Q1 2023. From there, the revenue growth is expected to gradually increase.

Google Search revenue was negative (1.6%) YoY to $42.6 billion and YouTube ads revenue was negative (7.8%) YoY on the back of the tough macro environment. Per the earnings call, “In YouTube, we are prioritizing continued growth in Shorts engagement and monetization, while also working on other initiatives across our ad-supported products.”

The number of YouTube creators is at an all-time high. This can create a flywheel opportunity as content increases with more creators, which leads to an increase in viewership, which in turn is expected to drive more revenues. In order to reward creators, the company has started revenue sharing with YouTube Shorts, which now averages 50 billion daily views. This is up from 30 billion daily views in Q1 2022.

Google Cloud revenues was up 32% YoY to $7.3 billion. The company is seeing strong momentum from enterprises and governments for digital transformation. Management mentioned in the earnings call, “Google Cloud is making our technological leadership in AI available to customers via our Cloud AI platform, including infrastructure and tools for developers and data scientists like Vertex AI.”

In light of the soft revenue, net income declined to $13.6 billion compared to $20.6 billion in the same period last year. EPS was $1.05 and missed estimates by 11.9%. The company also recently announced a reduction of about 12,000 employees to Boost long-term profitability

Risks to consider

Microsoft’s investment in OpenAI is an obvious risk with quite a bit of awareness. Google has not faced a similar threat for many decades. Microsoft also recently announced a new version of Bing which is yet to be available to the public. A student named Owen Yin previewed the new Bing before it was shut down. The new version is expected to replace the search bar with a chatbox.

However, you can also search the traditional way by toggling between chat and search in the toolbar. The new Bing is also expected to have access to the real-time data, unlike ChatGPT, which is trained on the data collected through 2021. The new version is expected to provide detailed answers rather than just links to websites. Similarly, the users will be able to chat with the bot regarding their queries and develop a conversation. It is also expected to perform more creative tasks, such as writing an email or a poem.

Opera also plans to integrate ChatGPT with a Shorten button feature, which will provide summaries in the side bar.

Conclusion:

I would not be surprised if we exit 2023 with a reimagined way to use Search Engines. The iteration cycle here is likely to move quickly compared to AVs or the Metaverse, as there are real-world applications where AI can be applied without safety issues (AVs) or friction in terms of user adoption (Metaverse/VR headsets). Instead, the scale has already been built with Search being a viral, daily activity used by nearly every human on earth. AI advancements will simply Boost what is already in place.

Cutting-edge chatbots can be quickly deployed on the search engines that already exist, and this is a substantial difference from other overhyped, early-stage technologies. Their accuracy may still need time, but they're probably not too far off from being deemed “reliable enough.”

Investors should expect that AI will become a winner(s)-take-all market. In time, the difference in how search and other applications operate in terms of user experience plus ROI for advertisers will help carve a larger lead.

Secondly, investors should not forget the best innovation comes from the private markets, and even if stock-driven media focuses on Google Versus Microsoft, there will be a few David-versus-Goliaths where the smaller team comes seemingly out of nowhere to win the hearts and minds of consumers with a viral entry on the market. However, back to point number one, look for the Goliaths to court the smaller teams and bring them into the fold rather than compete head-on.

It may be clear that there are some puts and takes with Alphabet, such as search being on the precipice of a multi-decade shift, yet the reality is that ad revenue for the company is flat to declining. Our firm uses a blend of broad market analysis, technicals and fundamentals to time entries, such as when we bought Nvidia at its lowest trading point in October 13th for $108 with a real-time trade alert provided to our Members. Our process helps to reduce risk around stocks and find strong entries. Nvidia is up 100% from that exact entry. Our firm will do something similar with Alphabet, as we believe there is a further drawdown in its future. We hold weekly webinars on Thursdays at market close to go over the exact levels we plan to enter stocks. You can learn more here.

Royston Roche, Equity Analyst at the I/O Fund, contributed to this article.

Please note: The I/O Fund conducts research and draws conclusions for the company’s portfolio. We then share that information with our readers and offer real-time trade notifications. This is not a guarantee of a stock’s performance and it is not financial advice. Please consult your personal financial advisor before buying any stock in the companies mentioned in this analysis. Beth Kindig and the I/O Fund owns Microsoft and Nvidia.

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