Google panics because Samsung "eyes" Microsoft

No company in this world is invincible. After years of maintaining its monopoly on information retrieval, Google is now under threat of being overtaken by Bing, the search engine developed and operated by Microsoft.

The integration of ChatGPT artificial intelligence chatbot technology into Bing has made the tool smarter and more attractive than before, as some companies, including Samsung, think it's time to abandon Google Search for Bing after 12 years of cooperation with Google.

Google has been rumored since March that the South Korean tech giant is considering making Bing the default search engine on its devices, The New York Times reported. Currently, Google is the default search engine on iPhones, Samsung Galaxy phones, and Samsung tablets.

Samsung is just the beginning?

Samsung could be the first crack in Google's seemingly impregnable search business, which is expected to be valued at $162 billion by 2022.

Google's search engine is the most widely used website in the world, with billions of people using its search engine every day to find information on everything from where to eat to a doctor's diagnosis. So few people can imagine that any search engine could actually challenge Google's dominance.

World - Google panics because Samsung — Samsung just launched the Galaxy S23 smartphone in mid-February. Google is the default search engine on the company's phones and tablets. Photo: Samsung

While it's unclear whether Samsung's move to Bing is due to the engine's built-in artificial intelligence, that's the assumption Google has made.

Samsung is the world's number one smartphone maker, selling 259 million units in 2022. The South Korean giant's phones and tablets run Google's Android operating system, so employees were shocked when Samsung wanted to switch to another search engine after more than a decade.

The South Korean company has long-standing partnerships with both Microsoft and Google, so its devices come pre-installed with a library of apps and services from both companies, such as OneDrive and Google Maps. According to the New York Times, talks are still ongoing, and Samsung may still decide to keep Google as its default provider.

A Google spokesperson said the company is constantly improving its search engine to give users and partners more reasons to choose Google. Android phone makers are free to adopt technology from different companies to improve the user experience.

The Samsung deal brings Google an estimated $3 billion in annual revenue. If Apple follows Samsung, Google could lose a much larger chunk of revenue — $20 billion a year — when its contract with the iPhone maker expires this year.

Magi Project

Google has been worried about the development of artificial intelligence after OpenAI, a Microsoft-backed startup, launched a chatbot called ChatGPT in November 2022.

Just two weeks after the chatbot was launched, Google formed a team to build its own AI products, the New York Times reported.

The tech giant is racing to protect its core business with a series of projects, including updates to its Google Search engine and plans to launch an entirely new tool.

Google has been researching AI for years. Its DeepMind lab in London is considered one of the world's leading AI research centers, and the company has also been at the forefront of many AI projects, such as self-driving cars and large language models used to develop chatbots.

In recent years, Google has used large language models to improve the quality of its search results, but has yet to fully apply AI to the tool because it does not always give accurate and neutral answers.

In February, the company also released its own chatbot called Bard, but that app was not as well received as ChatGPT because it gave wrong answers in its first launch, causing parent company Alphabet to lose $100 billion in market capitalization.

According to the New York Times, Google also hopes to develop a new AI-powered search engine with a much more personalized experience than the company's current tool by predicting user needs. However, this idea is still in its early stages, so it is not clear when it will be launched.

In the meantime, Google is working on Project Magi to enhance its existing search engine with new AI features. Google designers, engineers, and executives are working hard to refine and test these features before introducing them to the public in May and adding more features in the fall.

The company plans to roll out these features to the US market only, with up to 1 million users initially, then ramping up to 30 million users by the end of the year .

Nguyen Tuyet (According to NY Times, Phone Arena)

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