OpenAI Says ChatGPT Now Fields One Search for Every Five Google Gets

One in every five. That is the number OpenAI wants you to remember. Adam Fry, who leads ChatGPT's consumer product, told reporters in New York on Monday that the volume of search-like queries running through ChatGPT is now roughly one-fifth of what Google handles.

It is a big claim. It is also OpenAI grading its own homework.

Start with the definition. According to The Verge, OpenAI counts a search as any time a user enters a query that results in a web search. Writing help, coding help, defining a term and simple how-to questions are out. In a separate interview with Big Technology, Fry was blunt about the counting method: "Every time you ask a question and go search the web, that's a search."

Now the denominator. Fry did not say where the Google figure comes from, The Verge reports. I could find no published methodology, so nobody outside the company can check the ratio. Treat it as a marketing number until someone shows the maths.

"It's basically anything that a user would have traditionally gone to a traditional search engine for, but is now deciding to go to ChatGPT for." Adam Fry, ChatGPT consumer product lead at OpenAI, to Big Technology

That quote is the whole pitch. It is also wide enough to blur a search and a chat that happens to fetch a fact. Fry named people, places, finance and health questions.

One-fifth is not one-fifth of the market

Do not read this as ChatGPT owning 20 percent of search. OpenAI did not claim that, and the figures do not measure it. StatCounter's October 2026 data still has Google at 91.05 percent of worldwide search engine share and Bing at 4.8 percent, and ChatGPT does not appear in that ranking at all. The Big Technology interviewer raised Bing's roughly 5 percent figure and asked whether ChatGPT is now several times bigger. Fry answered by pivoting to user growth.

The Verge reaches for an older yardstick. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said in Google's 2023 antitrust trial that Bing had about 3 percent of the market after more than a decade of trying. By that measure, a fifth of Google's volume is a real number. It is still, as The Verge puts it, a long way from overtaking Google.

Independent data points to a quieter story. Similarweb's 2026 generative AI report found that 95 percent of ChatGPT's users also used Google in May 2026, the same share as in September 2025. Similarweb reads that as people adding ChatGPT to a Google habit, not swapping one for the other. Similarweb admits the overlap cannot show what happens to individual query types.

There is a plumbing question too. The Verge notes that OpenAI likely uses Microsoft Bing for a significant part of its searches alongside its own index, with some speculation that it routes some queries through Google. That is speculation, not a finding.

Timing matters. The Verge reports that OpenAI is approaching a possible IPO, potentially early next year, and sees a path to profit through ads. Fry told reporters ads have not caused a lasting backlash.

"Ads have not negatively impacted the product or the usage of the product." Adam Fry, OpenAI, as quoted by The Verge

That is a claim, not an audit. OpenAI said last month it would show images of sponsored products and services in ChatGPT, and we covered the global ads rollout earlier. Advertisers pay for proof of volume. A search figure that sits next to Google's, arriving as the company eyes a possible IPO, is a handy piece of proof.

OpenAI also said weekly users rose from 1 billion to 1.2 billion in about 60 days, per Big Technology. Also the company's figure, and unverified.

My read is simple. Something real is happening, because people do now ask a chatbot things they once typed into Google. But the 20 percent comes from one company, with a loose definition and an unnamed comparison. Until OpenAI shows its working, or Similarweb and StatCounter catch up, call it what it is. A bold opening bid in the fight for Google's crown.