Microsoft vs Google: The Endgame

Feb 08, 2023

In 2019 Microsoft invested $1bn in OpenAI. At that point, it was mostly for making Azure the exclusive partner and evolving the Azure hardware and software to support large scale AI systems. Little did anyone know what was cooking inside (or even Microsoft didn’t expect?) OpenAI and building mind blowing ML algorithms.

Within two months after launch we have seen the rise of ChatGPT as the fastest growing consumer application. It reached 100 million unique visitors in that quick span of time. Suddenly everyone is using it, building on it and sharing their exploration on social media as if they have discovered a fun little gold mine.

Microsoft suddenly became cool again with their investment decision in OpenAI and now they are integrating a better version of it on their Bing search engine. For those who have not heard of Bing, yes it is a search engine similar to Google but not widely used (yet). With ChatGPT being integrated in Bing, can Bing compete with Google? This is a question everyone is trying to answer.

Google’s market share is still huge as compared to Bing and this is not an easy feat to achieve.Although people are tweeting that they have installed Bing app or opened Bing.com for the first time but can it last or would it die down over time like any other 99% of exciting thing which happens

around the world online.

Now if I am Google I would definitely be scared (Google’s majority revenue comes from Search and Ads). So what did Google do?They announced Bard their next gen AI which they will integrate in their consumer products. Although Google does have a history of not productizing their research well, could this go the right way? If it does, would people move to Bing?

One major factor for people not moving away from Google is Chrome browser. The experience and stickiness of Chrome browser and Google search are incomparable and to be honest search results are relevant enough. Look at the market share of browsers below by statcounter.

Chrome (~64%) vs Edge (~5%) is a vast difference and those are the entry points to the internet. Safari’s (~19%) default search engine is also Google. Frankly, Edge is still suffering the horrors of what Internet Explorer was.

So what I am saying is Microsoft will have to do a lot more work to switch the user behavior for converting users to use Bing over Google. But I guess Microsoft does have the vision to play the long term game and Satya Nadella is one of the greatest CEOs. I think we will have to wait a while for all the hype to cool down and then see what happens in the search wars (and browser wars). I will come back to this if eventually I move to Bing. Till then, I am still sticking to Google search and will definitely play around with Bing and ChatGPT.

Update: 02/08/2023

Seems like Satya Nadella has put a statement to Google in this video.