On March 23, OpenAI officially submitted an application to the UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), requesting that ChatGPT be included in the list of optional default search engines for Google's Android system and Chrome browser. This move is seen as a strong intervention by AI-native applications into traditional search entry points.

According to the CMA's regulatory framework for the open search market, Google must provide users with a "choice interface" that allows them to set their preferred default search service. In the application document, OpenAI clearly stated that as consumers increasingly tend to obtain information through conversational, multimodal interactions, AI chatbots with internet search capabilities have effectively taken on the role of search engines. OpenAI proposed that the eligibility criteria should evolve to include AI platforms capable of providing a "generative search experience," rather than being limited to traditional index-based engines such as Bing.

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Currently, ChatGPT has 900 million weekly active users. Although users can manually replace the engine in Chrome by installing additional plugins, it has not yet received a native official option at the system level. As Google has extensively integrated the AI Overviews feature into search results, OpenAI believes ChatGPT should be granted a fair market access right as an equivalent alternative.

If approved, this application would break the long-standing confrontation between Google and traditional search engines at core traffic entry points, marking the formal infiltration of generative AI from third-party applications to the underlying operating system interface. This not only will reshape the mobile search ecosystem but may also force regulatory authorities to redefine the scope of "search services" in the digital age, further accelerating the trend of decentralization in the global search market.