Why Walmart’s quick success in generative AI search should have Google worried.
Walmart is talking up its ability to use generative AI as a one-stop shop to search when you need to plan an event, rather than online destination to search for individual items. During a call with analysts after its February earnings, Walmart CEO Doug McMillon talked about the gen AI search capabilities in its app.
“The thing we’re most excited about that’s already happened is the way search has improved, and the way generative AI helped us really improve a solution-oriented search experience for customers and members,” McMillon said on the earnings call. “And it happened pretty quickly.”
It also adds to the questions about future use of a search engine like Google.
Walmart long ago established itself as a major tech player, successfully fending off years of anxiety over Amazon and remaining a leader in the retail space whose shares are now trading at an all-time high. The tech narrative is one the company has been spinning since it bought Jet.com, started by a former Amazon executive Marc Lore, noted Forrester vice president, principal analyst Sucharita Kodali. As a technology company, Walmart has to experiment a lot, and in the case of adding generative AI search capabilities, there’s a very low cost for failure, she said.
“It establishes them as an innovator in the space,” Kodali said. “They’re better to be a leader than a follower in their shoes. They’re operating from a position of strength.”
Google’s worst enemy is actually Google: “Experiments can go wrong, though, as happened to Alphabet recently when it launched the Gemini gen AI into the market before it was ready.”
Except that isn’t true. Gemini was ready and performed exactly as it was designed to perform.
Google created a trust issue that search upstarts like Walmart don’t have.
h/t Stephen Green