An article in The New York Times has recently revealed that Google is in a state of ‘shock’ and ‘panic’ over Samsung’s consideration to replace Google Search with a rival such as Bing and ChatGPT. It is no secret that multi-billion dollar deals are involved when it comes to the preinstalled search engine of the device; Google reportedly pays Samsung a sky-high $3.5 billion per year just to be considered the default search engine of their phones. On the other hand, Apple pays Google $20 billion per year to have the same privilege on iOS and macOS. It is unclear as to whether this is part of Samsung’s negotiation tactic in order to obtain a higher share of revenue from Google or if the corporation is genuinely considering changing the device’s default search engine to Bing and ChatGPT.
Google has had the online search market to itself for many years up until now. With the integration of ChatGPT, the AI-based chatbot under the umbrella of Microsoft, Bing has become a more credible threat to Google’s searchers and manufacturers have taken notice. In 2010, Samsung took the initiative and some models of Galaxy S II had Bing as their only search engine as an experiment. Still, even after Bing soared to nearly a 100 million daily user rate, Microsoft itself declared that they remain a “small, low, single digit share player” and had no intention to overtake Google’s market share – at least not for the time being.
Yusuf Mehdi is the corporate Vice President at Microsoft leading the team in charge of modern consumer services, such as Bing, MSN Products and Services, Office 365 Consumer, and Windows Store. He is known to have said that Microsoft is “fully aware” of their situation and “it feels good to be at the dance!”. This statement seems to indicate that the company is content with being a distant second place and that may not be willing to put in the resources it would take to put them on the same level as Google in terms of search engine market share.
The potential switch of Samsung’s default search engine may just be a negotiating tactic in order to get a better deal from Google. Ultimately, it is all dependent on Microsoft’s willingness to match Google’s high demands in order to make the transition possible. If a successful agreement is made between Samsung and Microsoft, the smartphone industry will never be the same again.
