Between telling people to put glue in their pizza sauce and generating media storms over "woke" images of America's Founding Fathers, Google's generative AI products have had a rocky start.
Still, according to Google analyst Mark Mahaney and other analysts at Evercore, Google's new generative search engine is starting to hit with users, many of whom seem fairly satisfied with the experience so far.
Evercore ISI surveyed 1,000 respondents in the US—not a huge sample size, but big enough to pay attention to. Of the users who used Google's AI search, 60% believed their search results with Google's generative AI were more effective than before.
Meanwhile, 56% of Google AI search users said they were "Extremely/Very satisfied" with Google's AI experience, which the analysts say is similar to Netflix's satisfaction score in the US.
Evercore's survey discovered that ChatGPT was the most popular generative AI tool across all age demographics, while Google came in second.
There are some caveats to bear in mind. When asked about their AI diets, 60% of respondents said they hadn't used any generative AI tools at all. Also, the researchers lumped Google's Gemini chatbox and its AI Overviews — the generated summaries that show up in Google Search results — into one category, and it's not clear if users trend in one direction more than the other.
This survey also took place before Apple's WWDC event on Monday, during which the company unveiled a lineup of AI features and announced a partnership with OpenAI.
Google's transformation of search continues to be a huge and risky endeavor for the company, which relies on search advertising for the lion's share of its revenue. Over the years, Google became increasingly scared of hurting this cash cow—until ChatGPT came along and set off panic alarms across Silicon Valley.
If Google's AI search is good enough that more users try it and return to it — even with the occasional suggestion that they should be eating more rocks — Google may be able to transform its prized product without ceding much ground to rivals. So far, Evercore analysts say that Google's AI competitors (like Perplexity and OpenAI) "have not shown a material disparity in the quality of their search results, and this gives us some confidence in Google's ability to defend its market share."
Evercore's analysts say Google still holds a strong number 1 position in the search engine rankings, with 80% of respondents choosing Google as their go-to search engine. They added that Gen Zs showed a higher preference for social platforms like TikTok and Instagram over older generations, yet remained consistent in turning to Google as their default search engine.
"In a word, Social Media is taking market share, just not from Google," the analysts noted.
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