MS vs Google, Global Big Tech Showdown
MS Challenges with AI Chatbot... Google Defends Market Dominance with 'Bard'
Chinese Baidu and Startups Also Join the Battle
[Asia Economy Reporter Jeong Hyunjin] The AI chatbot development race sparked by the ‘ChatGPT’ craze is shifting into a direct showdown in the search engine sector between two big tech companies, Google and Microsoft (MS). MS is challenging the search engine market, which Google dominates with over 90% share, by leveraging AI chatbots, and Google has announced it will respond with its own AI chatbot, drawing attention to potential changes in the market landscape. China’s largest search engine, Baidu, has also announced plans to launch an AI chatbot, indicating that competition in the market will intensify further.
MS Integrates AI Like ChatGPT into Search Engine ‘Bing’
On the 7th (local time), MS announced at a press conference that its search engine Bing has been newly revamped with AI capabilities. The new version of Bing is equipped with an AI chatbot model developed by OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT, transforming it into a search engine that answers questions like ChatGPT.
Satya Nadella, MS CEO, said, "We want to show how we will reshape the largest software category on Earth. That is search, which we have been researching for a long time and are very excited about," adding, "This is a new day for search and a new paradigm for search. Rapid innovation will come swiftly."
Sam Altman, OpenAI CEO, who also participated in the announcement, emphasized, "ChatGPT and GPT-3.5 are helping to create the new Bing," highlighting that their developed model is incorporated. ChatGPT is an upgraded version of GPT-3, which has over 175 billion parameters, known as GPT-3.5. However, MS and OpenAI did not specify exactly which chatbot model is integrated into Bing.
The AI-powered Bing provides conversational answers alongside traditional search results when users input questions in conversational language, similar to ChatGPT. For example, if a user asks to plan a 5-day trip to Mexico, Bing will provide an itinerary. Users can then continue chatting to inquire about additional costs, add or change the schedule, and more. The chat mode can be toggled on or off by the user, and the chatbot embedded in the search engine can also be used to compose emails. It can summarize web pages the user is viewing or provide answers to questions.
Despite 93% Dominant Share, Google Feels Threatened... Responds with ‘Bard’
Google, which controls over 90% of the global search engine market, appears tense about MS’s challenge. The market landscape could change as MS preemptively integrates AI chatbot functionality into its search engine before the ChatGPT craze has fully subsided.
According to market research firm StatCounter, Bing’s global search engine market share was 3.03% as of last month, while Google’s overwhelming share was 92.9%. The term ‘Googling,’ meaning using Google as a search engine, was added to dictionaries in 2006, reflecting this dominant position. Since search engines play a core role in Google’s revenue structure, MS’s challenge is seen as significantly shaking Google.
Feeling a sense of crisis to the extent of issuing a ‘Code Red’ internally after the launch of ChatGPT, Google is moving busily. Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google’s parent company Alphabet, is personally attending AI strategy meetings and giving directions, and the founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who left the company three years ago, have been called back to devise countermeasures.
Amid this sense of crisis, Google has officially announced the launch of a new conversational AI service called Bard. The plan is to officially launch the service within weeks and enable its use in the search engine. Bard is based on Google’s existing language model ‘LaMDA’ and is distinguished from ChatGPT by its ability to simplify complex topics, such as explaining NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope discoveries to a 9-year-old child, Google emphasizes. CEO Pichai stated, "Bard will provide high-quality answers based on the web," adding, "It can be an outlet for creativity and a stepping stone for curiosity."
China’s Baidu and AI Startups Join the Fray
Following MS and Google, China’s largest search engine Baidu has declared it will unveil an AI chatbot called ‘Ernie Bot’ next month. According to Bloomberg and others, Ernie Bot is a large language model powered by AI developed in 2019, which has gradually improved its capabilities in language understanding and language/image generation tasks. Baidu is currently testing Ernie Bot internally and plans to launch it next month. Baidu, ranked fifth in search engine market share, is expected to integrate this AI chatbot into its search engine.
Since the release of ChatGPT, startups developing generative AI have been emerging one after another. Despite large-scale layoffs and cost-cutting in the IT industry since last year, there is a willingness to make massive investments in AI.
According to global market research firm CB Insights, generative AI startups received $2.654 billion in investments last year across 110 deals. This is more than a 70% increase compared to the previous record of $1.548 billion in 2021. Looking at generative AI startup investments over the past five years, there were significant increases in 2019 and 2021, likely influenced by OpenAI’s investment from MS. Last year, OpenAI’s corporate valuation was $20 billion, the highest among generative AI startups.
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