It started off with a rather simple and innocuous tweet. "today we launched ChatGPT. try talking with it here:", wrote Sam Altman, CEO, OpenAI three years ago and shared the link. Initially, it felt like a novelty. A clever party trick. Something you tried once and told a friend about. In five days, it blew up and had garnered one million users.
What it actually became, in the span of three years, is the new starting point for how hundreds of millions of people find information online. It is not a search engine, but it has eaten the part of search that people used most. It is not a browser, but it has reshaped how we move through websites.
We are arguably talking about "changed the world" territory. Or at least changed the internet territory. Google hasn't gone anywhere but has reinvented quite a lot. YouTube still remains wildly popular but somehow ChatGPT has changed how we interact with the internet.
From search queries to chat windows
"Google it" was the buzzword for anyone and everyone who wanted information from the web. Be it buying a new phone or looking for a quick DIY fix for something that's broken at home, you just Googled it.
ChatGPT split that behaviour in two. It peeled off the quick questions, the clarifications, the definitions and the everyday “explain this to me” queries that made up a large share of search traffic. Instead of skimming links, people now ask a chatbot that answers in plain English, gets to the point and does not make them scroll past ads.
The rise of zero-click behaviour
Google remains the backbone of online discovery, but it is facing a strange new problem. The results page has become so packed with AI overviews and monetised distractions that many users never reach the organic links beneath. The surge in zero-click searches tells the story. Data from Similarweb shows that traffic from Google to news sites has fallen sharply in the past year, while the percentage of searches that end without a click has jumped from 56 percent to 69 percent.
Part of this is Google’s own AI summaries, which often answer the question before a user scrolls. The other part is ChatGPT, which users often consult instead of searching. People are not abandoning search engines. They are bypassing the parts of them that feel slow, cluttered or repetitive. ChatGPT rewards curiosity without demanding context. It turns vague thoughts into usable information without pushing users through a funnel of hyperlinks.
When explanation beats exploration
What is fascinating is not that people use ChatGPT. It is the kind of tasks they use it for. Many of them are tasks that search engines never handled particularly well. Unlike search, ChatGPT feels conversational and definitive. It shapes answers around intent rather than keywords. It can write a checklist, a summary or a tactful message without drowning you in effort. It does not replace rigorous research -- though it has come a long way in doing that as well. It replaces the friction between a question and an understandable answer.
Accuracy is still the tricky part. Google’s strength has always been transparency, offering multiple sources for cross verification. ChatGPT relies on how well a user can sense when to double check. But the convenience is so strong that most people simply prefer to start here.
The internet is becoming conversational
Three years in, the most important shift is philosophical. The web used to be a library. You asked, it pointed. ChatGPT turned it into a conversation. You ask, it explains. You refine, it reacts. The back-and-forth is the product.
This is the real disruption. Not dominance. Not the death of search. A change in posture. People no longer go online to retrieve information. They go online to engage with it.
Google has been trying to counter this by infusing Gemini directly into its search results. OpenAI is pushing deeper into browsing and multimodal tasks. Meta has taken its open-source route into everything from smartphones to VR. Yet despite the noise, the centre of gravity has shifted to an unexpected place. Not the biggest model. Not the company with the most GPUs. The shift is behavioural.
ChatGPT created a habit that is now baked into daily life. Need something explained. Need context. Need a script. Need to check a thought. Ask the chatbot. The frictionless nature of this interaction has made it the new default for tens of millions of people.
Search still matters. YouTube still dominates culture. Forums (Reddit, zindabad!) still solve problems. Social media still steers conversations. What has changed is the order. Instead of typing into a search bar, millions prefer to start with a chat. Instead of clicking through results, they ask for synthesis. Instead of scanning a dozen links, they ask for one answer and refine it with follow up prompts.
Three years is not a long time. Yet the global infrastructure of information feels different. ChatGPT did not crush the old internet. It reorganised the hierarchy. In many ways, it became the front door.
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