ChatGPT Now Handles About 20% as Many Searches as Google, OpenAI Says

ChatGPT now handles roughly one-fifth as many searches as Google, according to OpenAI. ChatGPT consumer product lead Adam Fry shared the figure with Big Technology’s Alex Kantrowitz during a fireside chat at an OpenAI-hosted dinner in New York on Monday night.

“ChatGPT’s volume of search-like queries is now roughly one-fifth the volume of queries of Google,” Fry said.

What counts as a search

OpenAI’s definition matters here. Asked whether a long back-and-forth conversation counts as many queries, Fry said: “Every time you ask a question and go search the web, that’s a search.” Tasks that don’t trigger a web search, like writing or coding help, aren’t counted. Fry said search-style use has grown into looking up people, places and things, plus finance and health questions where up-to-date information matters.

OpenAI did not say how it estimated Google’s query volume, The Verge reports, and it didn’t share a raw number of searches. So the 20% figure is OpenAI’s own estimate, not an independent market-share measurement.

The other numbers

Fry also said ChatGPT went from 1 billion to 1.2 billion weekly active users in about 60 days, that users create 1.5 billion images a week, and that voice mode, counting dictation and spoken conversations, has 250 million combined weekly active users.

Why it matters

For context, Microsoft’s Bing has long held a single-digit share of search; Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said during Google’s 2023 antitrust trial that Bing had about 3%. If OpenAI’s math holds up, ChatGPT would be the strongest challenger Google Search has faced, which helps explain Google’s push to put more AI into Search.