The Most Expensive Free Product on the Internet

You know when you’re out with your friends and someone says something that you know is wrong, and you’re going back and forth for a few minutes until eventually someone says alright that’s it, let’s just Google it. Except in the last few years that sentence quietly changed into let’s ask ChatGPT, and it feels like a small thing, but it’s actually one of the biggest and fastest shifts in consumer behavior we’ve seen in a long time, because a mental habit that took Google decades to build basically changed almost overnight.## When ChatGPT came out

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The Most Expensive Free Product on the Internet

It immediately looked like the next Google to most people. You type a question, you get an answer, you don’t have to scroll through links, so the assumption was simple, this is search, just better search. But behind the scenes, something very different is happening, because ChatGPT doesn’t actually behave like a search engine at all.

When you Google something

The entire product is designed around one goal, getting you the answer as fast as possible so you can leave. You get in, you get the information, you click a link, and you’re gone. That’s the whole point. ChatGPT is built in the opposite direction. The interface immediately turns everything into a conversation, and instead of pushing you out, it keeps pulling you back in, asking you to continue, to follow up, to add more context, to stay.

The Difference That Matters a Lot

Because a product that’s optimized to keep you engaged for longer sessions is not a search engine product. That’s an engagement product. And engagement at this scale is expensive, because every single interaction costs real money, which means the economics that worked for Google simply don’t work the same way here.

One of the most profitable business models

Google could afford to give everything away for free because search ads were one of the most profitable business models ever created, and because they owned their entire stack, from servers to chips to distribution. They also trained an entire generation to expect that the internet, email, maps, and search should all be free. ChatGPT is trying to build the same kind of habit, but with a product that behaves more like social media than search.

That’s why the recent moves start to make sense when you look at them together. Memory that remembers who you are, and voice that sounds human and laughs. Group chats, custom GPTs, and even hardware. These are not features designed to help you find information faster, they’re features designed to make ChatGPT something you come back to without thinking.

Not my Final Thoughts

Google answers questions and gets out of the way. Facebook keeps you scrolling. ChatGPT keeps you talking. It didn’t set out to become that kind of product, but that’s what it ended up building, and now it has to figure out how to survive as that.