It’s a WONDERful life with ChatGPT
It’s well understood that there’s a class of search queries that we all used to perform in Google that we now perform in ChatGPT. It occurs to me lately, however, that not only is ChatGPT taking Google marketshare, it’s actually expanding the TAM of the already enormous search market.
There’s a class of search queries that I’d broadly categorize as “wonder” that are not utilitarian in any way. Particularly on mobile, “wonder queries” are low enough value that if the answer is not going to be easily accessible, it historically hasn’t been worth the time to prosecute them at all.
“Is there regulation that prevents buildings from keeping scaffolding up in NYC for long periods of time?” I wonder that every time I walk by the annoyingly persistent scaffolding on my block, but I can visualize the government website I’d have to navigate on my phone to satisfy that wonder, and repeatedly the trade doesn’t clear to Google it. I wonder…but I don’t NEED to know.
Lately, I’ve realized that my mental model around wonder has shifted, and all of the sudden nearly every wonder I have is actionable. I’m generating net-new queries that never would have happened before because the value exchange didn’t clear in a world where Google’s response asked even the slightest effort from me (i.e. clicking through, or parsing an article). At a business level, I find it fascinating that a market I perceived to be fully mature is starting to expand again, but at a user level I’m even more excited that my brain and behavior has been rewired to prosecute any and all wonder before it dissipates. Wonder is ephemeral…it’s so easy to let it go. But with ChatGPT at my side I’m actually wondering more and more, pulling inklings of thought into the conscious, because ChatGPT has created a reward function for my brain to wonder.
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