AlanHarmon.net

Few companies last forever. Fewer companies are dominant forever. Google has had a dominant position in the market for decades now, but I learned about a new possible competitor with significant implications. Meet Perplexity!

What is Perplexity - A Short History

Perplexity AI was founded in 2022 by Aravind Srinivas, Denis Yarats, Johnny Ho, and Andy Konwinski. The company began by bootstrapping a database through scraping Twitter and powering search over that, which became BirdSQL. Perplexity AI is a company that develops an artificial intelligence-based search engine platform, with its flagship product being a search engine that delivers answers to complex questions. Unlike traditional search engines, Perplexity offers a chatbot-like interface that allows users to ask questions in natural language, to which its AI responds by citing sites and sources from around the web. The company has raised significant funding and continues to expand its offerings, including the release of an iOS app and the introduction of features like user sign-in for personalization, persistent search history, and social sharing

Can Anything REALLY Displace Google

The answer is Yes. Google has a very well developed model. They provide search to people and sell content through Pay Per Click advertising to raise significant amount of their revenue. A company like Perplexity, although very new to the game, is able to use other companies' tools such as ChatGPT and incorporate that into their search. That gives them more flexiblity and allows them to be more nimble that the big mega corps.

Microsoft has also been pressuring Google's dominance recently, so with this new start-up Perplexity, and other Mega Corps 'taking their gloves off', it should be an interesting time in the near future to see the developments in SEARCH. I use ChatGPT for much of my internet searching, but now I will see how Perplexity compares. I think this will already displace my search preference. Stay tuned, I will update this in a future post.