- A new report suggests that OpenAI might launch a search engine in May, an alternative to Google Search.
- The announcement may come just before the Google I/O event.
- Currently, the subdomain for OpenAI's search engine throws a "Not found" error.
While people are waiting for the next flagship model from OpenAI, new reports suggest that the hot startup might be looking to launch a search engine soon. Jimmy Apples on X (formerly Twitter) shared some information in this regard. He says OpenAI might be looking to release a search engine instead of a model at an in-house event on 9th May at 10 am.
If you are unaware, Google is scheduled to hold its Google I/O event on 14th May. This might be a strategy by OpenAI to upstage Google before its annual developer conference where the search giant is expected to make big AI announcements.
To back his claim, Jimmy Apples has shared a log file on Pastebin that shows search.chatgpt.com as the subdomain. However, he goes on to say that it “could be something real boring / generic” so don’t read too much into it. The subdomain currently displays “Not found” instead of throwing a 404 or NXDOMAIN error. I did inspect the page but there’s nothing currently.
To probe further, I checked the SSL certificate for search.chatgpt.com and it seems it was issued on April 25, 2024 and expires on July 24, 2024. Next, I checked Google, and search.chatgpt.com is indeed indexed by Google, but not by Bing and DuckDuckGo.
Earlier in February, The Information reported that OpenAI is developing a web search product challenging Google on its turf. The report further says the search product will be partly powered by Bing. Apparently, some people use ChatGPT like a search engine which has motivated OpenAI to build a Google Search alternative.
On a podcast with Lex Fridman, Sam Altman recently said the following when asked how people are going to access information and whether OpenAI is ready to take on Google Search.
“I find that boring. I mean if the question is if we can build a better search engine than Google or whatever then sure, we should go, like you know, people should use a better product. But I think that would be so understate what this can be. Google shows you like 10 blue links, like 13 ads and then 10 blue links and that’s like one way to find information. But the thing that’s exciting to me is not that we can go build a better copy of Google Search, but that maybe there is just some much better way to help people find and act on and synthesize information. “
He ended by saying, “I don’t think the world needs another copy of Google.” Now, it’s left to be seen what OpenAI is cooking and whether there will be an event in May. What are your thoughts on this development? Let us know in the comments below.
