no. 2: the search industry's latest disruptor.
why google needs to get their sh!t together
perplexity ai is a LLM (large language model) similar to ChatGPT, but better for getting sources and citations for your questions. from the founders themselves (aravaind srinivas & andy konwinski) having raised $73.6 million in series b funding, including nvidia and amazon to name a few.
why disrupt the search industry?
for two decades, we’ve all been conditioned to use keywords to search the web because that’s how the leading search engines were designed. today, LLMs are changing the way that we interact with computers to both find and consume information (via perplexity)
perplexity is solving for longstanding user issues with the search experience:
ads ads ads - perplexity is focusing creating a search experience built on user trust with 0 ads, while google is literally running itself on ads; google could never make the shift to their model because it would require sacrificing their biggest source of revenue: google earned $224.47 billion through ads in 2022
ai hallucinations1 - “users were dazzled but there were issues: LLMs were difficult to continually update with the latest information, and they often provided incorrect answers or confidently 'hallucinated' incorrect responses. enter perplexity ai.”
transparency - perplexity is sourcing and finding the real sources for information that are reliable unlike the current search providers
how differentiated is it from google?
according to the founders, "Google is going to be viewed as something that's legacy and old, and Perplexity will be viewed as something that's the next generation and future," said Srinivas. Even major industry giants like Bezos, are betting on perplexity to make google “ancient”. As of 2023, the market size measured by revenue, of the search engine industry was approximately $242.8bn. of this, Google has about 90% market share in the industry. don’t get me wrong, it would be an absolutely herculean feat to make google “legacy and old” but honestly, that is where we are headed unless they gets their shit together, and fast.
a quick thought on google
google has been, in my opinion, moving too slow on the innovation front with ai. while they had their recent big launch with gemini in late 2023, one could argue that it’s not enough for them to stay afloat in the ai race. in my next blog, i’ll be running through google vs. microsoft in the ai battle - who’s winning and who’s losing (hint: microsoft is winning)
maybe perplexity can in fact make google old and a legacy provider in the future, and you heard it here first — i won’t be surprised.
sources and more reading!
https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/jeff-bezos-bets-on-a-google-challenger-using-ai-to-try-to-upend-internet-search-0859bda6
https://www.ibisworld.com/industry-statistics/market-size/search-engines-united-states/#:~:text=The%20market%20size%2C%20measured%20by,in%20the%20US%20in%202023%3F
https://www.perplexity.ai/
https://fortune.com/2024/01/06/jeff-bezos-nvidia-funding-round-ai-search-startup-google-rival-perplexity/
https://www.perplexity.ai/search/Jeff-Bezos-invests-NRSKCsy5SSCTHU5UEdyfjA
https://blog.google/technology/ai/google-ai-ml-timeline/
AI hallucinations are a phenomenon where a large language model (LLM) perceives patterns or objects that are nonexistent or imperceptible to humans, creating outputs that are nonsensical or just inaccurate (basically making shit up)