Big Tech is on the back foot once again.
Following the Web3 uprising of 2021, the FAANG set – Facebook (NASDAQ:META) (now Meta Platforms), Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN), Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL), Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX) and Google parent Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL) – found itself playing catch up to what was seen at the time as the next big thing
Web3 is a nebulous term encompassing cryptocurrency, metaverse technology, decentralised autonomous organisations (DAOs), decentralised finance (DeFi) and a litany of *insert activity here*-to-earn platforms.
Mark Zuckerberg was – and by all accounts still is – convinced that Web3 is the future, having already tossed over US$13bn into developing Meta's own version of the metaverse.
Apple has been quietly plugging along with its own augmented reality (AR) offering, while Alphabet chief Sundar Pichai told investors in early 2022 that “we are definitely looking at” blockchain and Web3 applications.
Web3 quickly became the talk of the Silicone Valley, but has the uprising already been usurped?
Move aside Web3, make way for GPT-3
To say ChatGPT has taken the world by storm is a huge understatement.
With 100 million users gained in just a couple of months, it is the fastest-growing consumer app of all time.
Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:NASDAQ:MSFT) is integrating it into its Edge browser, while Google parent Alphabet has been clamouring to tout the benefits of its own generative text application Bard.
As the market tries to make heads and tails of the investment potential in generative text, more rivals will surely come.
Google is facing another existential crisis: how does something like Bard square with the search giant’s main source of income, advertising?
Google Search brought over US$42bn (£35bn) in revenues in the last quarter alone; clearly, Alphabet has the most to lose should generative text revolutionise the way we interact with search engines.
And with Microsoft capturing the ChatGPT monopoly, could Google’s huge market share be in trouble?
Perhaps the most telling statistic proving the extent that ChatGPT has stolen the Big Tech conversation is shown below.
In the latest earnings season, mentions of ‘AI’ among Big Tech earnings calls have nearly tripled. Surely many if not most of these mentions are in reference to generative text, whether through the prism of anxiety or excitement.
So has ChatGPT already killed off the Web3 revolution? Perhaps not.
According to ChatGPT: “No, ChatGPT has not killed off the Web3 revolution. The Web3 revolution is a growing and evolving concept in the field of decentralized technology and the internet. It refers to a future where the internet is more open, transparent, and controlled by users rather than centralized entities. The development of Web3 technologies, such as blockchain and decentralized applications, is ongoing and has not been impacted by ChatGPT.”
Perhaps they can coexist after all.
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