New finding: ChatGPT sources 83% of its carousel products from Google Shopping via shopping query fan-outs

Has OpenAI’s increasing independence from Microsoft and, by extension, Bing, become an overly dependent relationship with Google?

Our study comparing shopping query fan-outs (QFOs) in ChatGPT from both Google and Bing carousels appears to have provided at least a partial answer to that question. Let’s take a look at how this study was conceived and what we found.

In November 2025, a few researchers in the AI research space, including myself, detected a mysterious field in ChatGPT’s source code: id_to_token_map. But what that field revealed when decoded was even more intriguing.

This field is what’s called base64 encoded, but when we decoded it, it revealed what looked to be Google Shopping parameters, such as productid, and offerid, but also language/locale parameters. Even more interesting? This field revealed a query used to look up that particular product. 

To categorically prove this was indeed a Google Shopping link, we would have to be able to…