I’ve heard the narrative over and over again, plagiarized from that one NYT : a chatbot interface will “cannibalize” Google’s business model.
Why? Because it reduces click through?
Well, first of all, users don’t actually want a verbose chatbot experience for 99% of searches. Second of all they’re very weird, Bing chat is totally out of the media now since it’s super creepy
But ignoring that for a moment, let’s pretend a chatbot does gain traction and users use it for search, and there’s some links embedded (they absolutely have to do that) —— the idea is that reduced click through rate will kill the business
Let’s see if this stands up to scrutiny…
In the year 2020, “zero-click searches” made up two thirds of ALL Google searches. Up from 50% the year prior.
https://sparktoro.com/blog/in-2020-two-thirds-of-google-searches-ended-without-a-click/
Fair to assume that as BERT is getting better and better at providing summaries, this number has increased since 2020.
What’s happened financially? Surely their business model collapsed as a majority of their searches now involve no click??
Nope. Blowout earnings for Search again and again and all time records set YoY
Can someone explain to me how this cannibalize theory makes sense, given that?
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