0:00

Opera, which is of course a web browser. They have

0:02

this AI assistant that they've had out for a while

0:04

I think almost a year now, but they have a

0:06

new feature released on it that I actually think is

0:09

Whether it's this or something else is the

0:11

future of search and I think this is

0:13

gonna be a massive threat to Google So

0:15

let's get into it on the podcast The

0:18

first thing that happened here is essentially they've

0:20

released a new AI feature that

0:22

can now summarize web pages right now This is

0:25

just rolling out on Android I assume that they're

0:27

gonna be rolling this out other places but you

0:29

can imagine if something of it's a web browser

0:31

like Firefox or Chrome or Microsoft Edge

0:33

and you're seeing kind of these summary features from

0:35

a bunch of different platforms now The first one

0:38

that you'll probably think about is like not necessarily

0:40

Chrome, but Google does this when you when you

0:42

make a search This is how they're doing their

0:44

their search engine. And what's interesting

0:46

to me though Is that beyond just the

0:49

search engine? This is getting baked straight into

0:51

the browser We're seeing something very similar out

0:53

of brave if you use braves like the

0:55

brave search It doesn't have to

0:57

be on the brave browser, but brave is

0:59

another popular browser does the same thing It's

1:01

got this kind of AI summarized web page

1:03

Now the reason that I think this is

1:05

important is because I think this is a

1:07

massive threat to Google's current way of doing

1:10

Business now, they've definitely tried to do something

1:12

similar when you do a search on Google

1:14

There's a little snippet that now appears at

1:16

the top generated by AI if you have

1:18

like an account enabled with their AI features

1:20

And it's gonna summarize the results The

1:22

reason that I think this is important is I

1:24

think we're gonna start moving away From

1:26

seeing these Google result pages that were so used

1:29

to for the last, you know 15 20 years

1:31

that have been really popular Things

1:33

are changing and I think people don't want to

1:35

search through You know 20 different blue

1:37

links below to try to put together whatever piece

1:39

of information and get whatever type of response they're

1:42

looking for and neither do they want to after

1:44

they've done that go and click on an article

1:46

and Have to read, you know

1:48

five page article to get the piece of

1:50

information that they're looking for So I think

1:52

the way we're doing search is completely changing

1:54

and AI is going to be you know

1:56

A massive disruptor now. Why does this matter

1:58

to Google Google? is making

2:00

hundreds of billions of dollars

2:03

exclusively from that search process.

2:05

It's kind of unfortunate

2:07

because Google is the biggest

2:10

person that benefits from the struggle of

2:12

the search. They don't want to make the search too easy

2:14

and literally just give you exactly what you want and want

2:17

right off the bat necessarily because if you do that, then

2:19

you're not scrolling around clicking on a bunch of different links

2:21

and inevitably clicking on ads, which is where they make all

2:23

of their money. So they're incentivized to show you ads, to

2:25

show you a bunch of results and make you feel like

2:27

you're on this searching process. Even when

2:29

they're implementing these AI features, it feels like

2:32

they're begrudgingly adding AI features in because they

2:34

know OpenAI is going to kind of eat

2:36

their lunch. So I think this

2:38

is interesting because people are moving to tools

2:40

like Perplexity, like u.com, and they're essentially using

2:43

them to just get when you ask a

2:45

question, it searches the web, it summarizes the

2:47

web pages, it summarizes the results, it just

2:49

gives you a snippet that gives you the

2:51

exact information you want. That is what a

2:53

user wants. They don't want to have to

2:55

do this whole search, but there's no room

2:57

in there necessarily for ads for clicking around.

3:00

You just get the answer you get. You

3:02

could argue that, oh well, maybe Google will

3:05

do something clever, like they'll have ads

3:08

embedded into the response. But if that's

3:10

the case, people are going to move to all of

3:13

the other platforms that do this for free because why

3:15

would you ever want an ad embedded in your response?

3:18

It's by definition a biased response. You want

3:20

an unbiased ad, you have a question, you

3:22

just want to know what the actual answer

3:24

is and not what someone's paying you to

3:26

put the answer in. So all of this

3:29

is really fascinating. When it comes to Opera,

3:31

they have this AI product in their browser

3:33

called Aria, and essentially this new feature they're

3:35

doing can now summarize the different pages

3:37

on Android. I'll be

3:39

curious to see if this launches on iOS as well

3:41

or if there's some sort of security issues there because

3:43

it's essentially reading what's on your screen and stuff, although

3:46

it's on their browser and their app, so they might

3:48

have the, you know, you might be able to grant

3:50

them the permission to do that. What's

3:52

really interesting to me is if you

3:54

want to use this, you got to go, you can visit

3:56

any text-based webpage, right, something that can be for like YouTube

3:59

or something. there's three dots in the

4:01

top corner, you can click on them and you

4:03

can click summarize and then essentially there's gonna be

4:05

a little pop, like a aria, their browser thing

4:07

that pops up and you

4:09

can request a summary of the page.

4:12

Now, is this actually faster than

4:14

reading the page? It seems kind of, I don't

4:16

know, annoying to me to like have to click

4:18

on something and request a summary and get it

4:20

right. I think that these features are gonna get

4:22

built straight into what we're doing. I think whether

4:24

it's this or something else, probably something like u.com

4:27

or Perplexity, you can see this is like they're

4:29

building these features because users want them and users

4:31

want them because it makes it so much easier

4:33

than having to do all the research yourself. I

4:36

think it probably is gonna move away from a

4:38

chatbot and just be more of like, boom, it'll

4:40

give you the response right away. Or maybe there'll

4:42

be a setting where you can just enable to

4:44

have this default summarize every webpage right when you

4:46

load or you don't even need to get to

4:48

the webpage, it just does it, when

4:51

you do make the search. So whatever level of

4:53

the funnel this happens, I think this is gonna

4:56

be massively disruptive to Google and their ad business.

4:58

This is way better user experience for users and

5:00

I don't think Google has a real response on

5:02

how they're gonna be able to integrate ads into

5:05

this. So as it is right now,

5:07

it seems like they're just kind of slow rolling and putting

5:09

off this inevitable doom as long as possible and just being

5:11

like, oh look, we have a little AI snippet at the

5:13

top of Google results. It's cool, you can

5:15

use it, but they still have all the ads below. They don't

5:17

wanna cannibalize their ad business. Inevitably, I

5:20

think these competitors, Perplexity, u.com, some

5:23

of these features coming on, these tools like

5:25

Opera are gonna cannibalize that or are essentially

5:27

just gonna compete away a lot of their

5:29

margins and Google is gonna have a serious

5:31

threat to their ad business in the coming

5:33

years. If you enjoyed the episode today, it

5:35

would mean the world to me if you

5:37

could leave a review or a comment or

5:39

subscribe on YouTube, follow us on Spotify, wherever

5:41

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5:43

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