The race to bring the best abilities of AI to web search has heated up. After ChatGPT-powered Bing was recently launched, South Korean electronics giant Samsung is considering using Bing’s AI system as the default search engine on its smartphones, replacing long-time partner Google. Internal messages reviewed by The New York Times suggest Google’s initial response to the plan was “panic”.
Google’s search engine has seen its dominance being threatened by Microsoft Bing. Previous reports suggest collaboration with Samsung brings Google about $3bn annually from the partnership, and experts have warned that AI-enabled Bing could be Microsoft’s biggest-ever play to take on the search engine giant.
This came as a sudden shock to Google and its employees after they learned about Samsung’s new plan in March. Having Google as the default search engine on all Samsung devices is there because of a contract agreement between both tech giants. As it stands now, negotiation is still ongoing to renew the contract.
Google is rushing to introduce and upgrade its existing search engine with AI features. It will reportedly be known as Project ‘Magi’ and is said to provide a far more personalized experience than the company’s current service.
Alphabet’s market share dropped by 4% when the market opened in New York, witnessing the biggest drop for the company since February this year. On the other side, Microsoft saw a 1.7% hike.
Samsung is currently in the negotiation stages with Microsoft to make Bing the default search engine on its Galaxy devices. This includes Android-based smartphones and tablets.
Meanwhile, Google accelerates bringing the Magi AI to its search engine and comes up with a counter-pitch of its own to Samsung. There are chances that Samsung may skip Microsoft’s ship for Google, but only if Google manages to bring something lucrative to the table, such as lower pricing for Google Mobile Services licensing.
