Sam Altman pre announced it will not be a search engine https://twitter.com/sama/status/1788989777452408943

It's possible they want to position it as something other than a search engine, like "answer engine" or "personal agent" or whatever, even if what it's meant to do is replace the traditional search engine.

OpenAI doesn't have enough brand credibility to pull an Apple and try to arbitrarily redefine a foundational terminology.