It has now been three years since OpenAI released ChatGPT to the public on November 30, 2022, and it’s interesting to look back at how quickly things have changed. What originally arrived as a simple research preview ended up reshaping how people look for information online. Before this chatbot showed up, most of us were still typing fragmented keywords into a search engine and scrolling through pages of blue links. Now many people just ask a question in plain, everyday language and get a direct response. This gradual shift from searching to asking has nudged companies like Google to rethink and even rebuild parts of their products to match how people behave today.
Key Takeaways
- ChatGPT now serves over 800 million weekly active users as of November 2025.
- The platform processes approximately 2 billion queries per day, challenging traditional search methods.
- Education and coding platforms like Chegg and Stack Overflow have seen significant traffic declines as users switch to AI.
- Gartner predicts traditional search engine volume will drop 25% by 2026 due to AI chatbots.
- Google has responded by integrating its own AI, Gemini, directly into search results.
The Shift to “Answer Engines”
Perhaps the clearest change in the last three years is the move toward what many people now call answer engines. For roughly two decades, Google trained everyone to search with keyword strings like “best pasta recipe NYC.” ChatGPT completely altered that rhythm by letting people speak naturally instead. Someone can easily ask, “I need a pasta place in NYC that is open right now, has gluten-free options, and is quiet enough for a date,” and the AI understands the full context. It offers a specific recommendation rather than making the user sift through a list of websites.
This sort of experience has led to remarkably fast adoption. Data from November 2025 shows ChatGPT at 800 million weekly active users, which still feels like an almost surreal number even though it has been repeated often. Google continues to handle most commercial searches, like when someone wants to buy something or book travel. Still, ChatGPT has taken over a huge share of informational questions. People use it to summarize long documents, fix broken code, plan trips, and sometimes just to sort out everyday tasks they don’t feel like researching manually.
Impact on Specialized Sites
The rise of the chatbot has created challenges for platforms that once had a tight grip on certain types of information. Stack Overflow, the long-standing home for programmer Q&A, has watched its traffic decline steadily since 2022. Instead of waiting for a reply from another developer, many users simply paste their buggy code into ChatGPT and get an answer right away. Even if the AI occasionally gets something slightly off, the speed alone changes user habits.
Education companies felt a similar shock. Chegg, known for helping students with homework, experienced a dramatic moment in May 2023 when its stock price dropped nearly 50 percent in a single day. The company acknowledged that students were choosing ChatGPT as a free alternative to its paid tools. That shift has continued into 2025, and these platforms are still trying to figure out how to adjust, though the path forward seems a little uncertain.
Google Adapts to the Competition
Google, of course, has not stayed quiet throughout all of this. In response to the rise of conversational search, the company sped up development of its own AI features. Search results now display what Google calls AI Overviews, which give a quick summary almost identical to what a chatbot might provide. It’s a sign that the conversational style isn’t a trend but rather the new default for how people want to interact with information.
OpenAI has kept moving as well. With ChatGPT Search, the company connected the chatbot directly to the live internet, solving one of the most frustrating limitations of the early models. Suddenly it could check news, stock prices, and other real-time information. As these tools become more capable, the difference between a chatbot and a search engine becomes harder to define. In a way, the line has already blurred, and it may continue fading as the technology evolves.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q. Is ChatGPT considered a search engine now?
A. With the recent addition of web search capabilities, ChatGPT functions like a search engine. It can browse the internet to find current information, sports scores, and news, citing its sources just like a traditional search engine.
Q. How does ChatGPT’s user base compare to Google?
A. Google is still much larger, processing roughly 8.5 billion searches per day compared to ChatGPT’s estimated 2 billion daily queries. However, ChatGPT’s user base is growing rapidly, having doubled its weekly users in 2025 alone.
Q. Is ChatGPT free to use for searching?
A. Yes, the basic version of ChatGPT is free and includes access to web search features. OpenAI also offers paid subscriptions that provide faster response times and access to more advanced AI models.
Q. Why did people stop using sites like Stack Overflow?
A. Many users found that asking an AI for help with coding errors was faster than posting on a forum. The AI provides an immediate explanation and solution, whereas forum posts often require waiting for a human volunteer to answer.
