Adam Fry, who leads OpenAI's consumer ChatGPT product, said at a media event on Monday that the volume of search queries ChatGPT processes is now equivalent to 20% of Google's.
He also drew a boundary around what counts as a "search": only queries where a user's input triggers a web lookup are included, while tasks like checking a word's meaning or asking for simple how-to steps are not. The numerator was defined; the denominator was not. The Verge specifically noted that Fry did not say where the Google search figure comes from. We also found no public response from Google to the ratio, and no third-party firm has produced like-for-like data to check it against.
A back-of-envelope check using Google's public number
Google last disclosed its total in March 2025, saying it handles more than 5 trillion searches a year. Used as the denominator, that works out to about 13.7 billion a day, and a fifth of that is roughly 2.7 billion, which is the order of magnitude implied by OpenAI's claim. The Google figure is already 20 months old; if it has grown since, the 2.7 billion has to move up with it, and if OpenAI used some other third-party estimate, the arithmetic would need to be redone.
Nor is 20% the same as a "20% market share." Fry was describing a ratio of query volumes. If only these two players existed, ChatGPT's share would come to about 16.7% (20 divided by 120). Nadella's 2023 testimony in Google's antitrust trial concerned market share, with Bing at about 3% at the time. The gap between the two numbers looks huge, but strictly speaking they measure different things.
Looking back two years makes the gap starker. SparkToro founder Rand Fishkin used SimilarWeb and Datos data to estimate that in October 2024 ChatGPT held 4.33% and Google 83.54%. That method was looser, counting every prompt as a search, but it looked only at web traffic. OpenAI's current definition is narrower, yet the number is several times higher. Because the data sources differ, the jump is only good as a directional signal, not as a growth rate.
Two ends of the search business
The Verge noted that OpenAI's retrieval very likely leans heavily on Microsoft Bing and its own index, and there has long been speculation that some queries are routed through Google. OpenAI has never disclosed the split. If the speculation is true, part of ChatGPT's growth is still being propped up by a competitor's index.
On the product side, Fry calls the direction "Intelligent UI": generating visual, interactive interfaces inside chat replies.
"That's where the future of this technology goes. You're talking to a canvas."
Google is on a similar path: beyond AI Overviews, it has added personalized results with charts and visualizations, while continuing to cut back on traditional third-party click-throughs.
Who is this number for
Last month OpenAI began showing images of sponsored products in ChatGPT; before that, ads carried only a company name, a logo and a link. Reports say an IPO could come as early as the start of next year. At the event, Fry said: "Ads have not negatively impacted the product or the usage of the product." He added that most people don't seem to mind ads in the product. Neither statement came with retention or click-through data.
In terms of timing, search scale is exactly the number advertisers and investors ask about, so it makes sense for a product lead to offer it at a media event. It also comes with a constraint: at the end of August, the European Commission designated ChatGPT a very large online search engine, partly because it performs web retrieval. Our assessment is that the more OpenAI stresses its search scale in the market, the harder it will be to argue in the EU that it is merely a chatbot. If it later contests that designation, watch how it explains this 20%.
Sources: The Verge, CocoLoop, Search Engine Roundtable; Google's annual search volume follows its own public statements, the 20% ratio is OpenAI's own claim, and the source of the denominator has not been disclosed.