Older viewers may recall (others, ask your parents) the battle for videotape supremacy back in the last Century between Betamax - developed and released into the world in 1975 by Sony - and VHS, launched a year later by JVC. 

There was a time when they ran on our home video players neck and neck for market lead, with JVC winning out in the long run - as literally you could tape an entire film in one go. Betamax, while technically (arguably) more proficient only had an hour’s worth of magnetic magic tape.

Manufacturers plumped to support VHS, so infrastructure won the war. Sony got trumped by trying to be too clever.

Now, remind you of anything happening right now? If anyone said to me last year that Google would be on the back-tech-foot to Microsoft, I’d have to had asked “I’ll have what you’re drinking please.” 

Watching the behemoths go toe to toe with their ChatSHT apps is funny, but more interestingly is watching in how important these corporations think that the approach to search using it, is. And most notably, how they frame the offer, which could be far more revealing when it comes to seeing who’s going to end up Betamax toast.

Google, for starters, appears to have a snappy answer - “making it easier for people to get to the heart of what they’re looking for and get things done.” Ok, that sounds good.

Now, Microsoft. Oh boy. 

“…allows developers to discover the art-of-the-possible with cutting-edge models from OpenAI and take their use-cases to production with the enterprise-grade reliability, security and global availability that comes with Microsoft Azure. “

Sure, one swipe won’t make for an accurate picture, but if the idea is that we looking for ‘search’ to be more ‘conversational’ (are we? I must have missed that memo), well I think we can see where success might be sending its money. 

I realise some see AI of whichever flavours as a solution looking for a problem. It’s very diverting and clearly for many, as additive as all the other types online activities that seem to be about interaction, while pushing us further away from the real world of interacting. 

Maybe making it seem like being online is even more human than humans with humans is an interesting idea, certainly to run as a thought experiment. Seems like BigTech thinks we agree. 

I wonder what the prompt ‘Do you really want to give up your agency without a fight?’ would return?