Google might finally be facing a strong competitor for the first time in years. Reports of Samsung potentially switching to Microsoft's Bing for its default search engine has caused somewhat of a panic inside Google.
Google May Lose Samsung
There have been reports of the electronics giant possibly switching to Bing as the default search engine for its devices, which is due to its ChatGPT integration. Although Google tried to rival it with the chatbot Bard, it seems that Bing is still ahead of the game.
If Samsung does officially shift to Microsoft's search engine, it will be the first time in over a decade that they will no longer use Google. This proves that in the AI race, Google may be lagging behind, and others are starting to become aware of it.
According to Gizmodo, Alphabet Inc., Google's parent company, saw a drop in its shares by almost 4%. This was around the time that the rumors about Samsung switching to Bing emerged, which had also made Google employees worried.
If the leading search engine loses Samsung, it'll shave off $3 billion in its $162 billion revenue per year. What is worse is that others may follow suit if a tech giant like Samsung was confident enough to switch to Bing.
Google has been trying to make up for the failure of its chatbot by developing new AI features. While Bing has already established a working chatbot that has become popular, Google lost $100 billion when Bard provided inaccurate information in the promotional video.
James Cordwell, an Atlantic Equities analyst, said that investors are starting to get worried that Google is becoming a "lazy monopolist." If another tech giant like Apple decides not to renew its contract as well, Google stands to lose another $20 billion.
Despite all that, the latter is still working on its AI features, both for existing and new ones. The company has a lot of projects under development with some that are set to release before the end of 2023 or as early as the 2023 Google I/O.
Google's AI Projects
One of its biggest reported projects is the new AI-powered search engine, although there's no definite release date for that yet. According to The New York Times, using the new search engine would be more conversational.
It's likely that users will see new features for the existing search engine first. Reports say that around 160 people are already working in them full-time. It will first be tested by releasing it to one million users in the US, and then 30 million globally before 2023 ends.
The project called "Magi" aims to add new features that will be more intuitive about what users need. Google employees have already tested the said features. They would ask follow-up questions to see if the AI can hold context from previous interactions.
Google is also developing an image generator called "GIFI," which can generate AI images in the result in Google Images, as well as a browser chatbot called "Searchalong," which may the way ChatGPT integration to Bing does.
