Google has been the industry leader for search engines for quite some time. Recently, however, a major shift has been reported, in which South Korean tech and electronics major Samsung is considering to permanently ditch Google as the default search engine of its devices and replacing it with Microsoft’s Bing.
The news has caused unrest in the tech world and a sharp decline in Alphabet Inc and Google’s stock prices. This could be a major shift in power among the tech giants, and all eyes are on the negotiations between Google and Samsung to decide the fate of the search engine.
Bing has received fame since it integrated OpenAI’s ChatGPT technology and begun to grow in popularity. Google has been struggling to compete and also had to abandon its ChatGPT rival Bard, which failed to gain widespread success. All the while, the tech giant has been rapidly working on another chatbot that could potentially rival Bing’s ChatGPT, and will reportedly be making its debut soon.
Samsung is an important partner to both Microsoft and Google, with its devices offering preloaded apps from both companies. It is this partnership that has given Google a competitive edge in the past. If negotiations fail and Samsung opts to replace Google with Bing, it would be a major setback for Alphabet Inc, who would then have to answer to their dropping market shares, which have declined by as much as 4% after the news of negotiation broke out. Microsoft, on the other hand, witnessed a 1.7% rise in market shares.
Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, has been searching for an alternative for ChatGPT, and has been developing an AI-based chatbot named Maximum Truth-Seeking AI. Whether this will be a competitor or not is yet to be seen, but it is a development worth noting.
Overall, the next few months will be decisive in deciding the fate of the search engine giant, Google. Alphabet Inc has been the leader of the industry for a while, and while they have been met with challenges before, this recent news has been a strongly felt blow. We will be eagerly awaiting the results of the negotiations between Google and Samsung, though it seems that it is Bing that will be given the advantage this time around.
