Google employees were shocked when they learned in March that South Korean consumer electronics giant Samsung was considering replacing Google with Microsoft’s Bing as the default search engine on its devices.
For years, Bing was also a search engine. But it became more interesting to industry insiders when it recently added new artificial intelligence technology.
Google’s reaction to the Samsung threat was “panic,” according to internal messages reviewed by The New York Times. An estimated $3 billion in annual revenue is at stake in the Samsung contract. An additional $20 billion is tied to a similar contract with Apple that is up for renewal this year.
AI competitors like the new Bing are quickly becoming the most serious threat to Google’s search business in 25 years, and in response, Google is racing to create a new search engine powered by the technology. . It also upgraded existing ones with AI features, according to internal documents reviewed by The Times.
The new features, under the project name Magi, are created by designers, engineers and executives who work in so-called sprint rooms to tweak and test the latest versions. The new search engine will offer users a more personalized experience than the company’s current service, which will try to anticipate users’ needs.
Lara Levin, a Google spokeswoman, said in a statement that “not every brainstorm deck or product idea leads to a launch, but as we’ve said before, we’re excited about bringing new AI-powered features to search, and share. More details coming soon.”
Billions of people use the Google search engine every day for everything from finding restaurants and directions to understanding a medical diagnosis, and that simple white page with a company logo and a The empty middle bar is one of the most widely used web pages in the world. . Its changes have a great impact on the lives of ordinary people, and so far it is difficult to imagine anything challenging it.
A New Generation of Chatbots
A brave new world. A new crop of artificial intelligence-powered chatbots is fueling a battle to see if the technology can upend the internet economy, turning today’s powerhouses into reality and creating the next industry giants. Here are the bots to know:
Google has been concerned about AI-powered competitors since OpenAI, a San Francisco startup working with Microsoft, unveiled a chatbot called ChatGPT in November. About two weeks ago, Google created a task force in its search division to begin building AI products, said two people with knowledge of the effort, who were not authorized to discuss it publicly. .
Modernizing its search engine has become Google’s obsession, and the planned changes could put new AI technology in phones and homes around the world.
Samsung’s threat represents the first potential crack at Google’s seemingly invincible search business, which was worth $162 billion last year. While it’s unclear whether Microsoft’s work with AI is the main reason Samsung is considering a change after the last 12 years, that’s the speculation within Google. The contract is under negotiation, and Samsung may stay with Google.
But the idea that Samsung, which produces hundreds of millions of smartphones with Google’s Android software every year, would even consider switching to search engines shocked Google employees.
After some workers were told the company was looking for volunteers this month to help compile material for a Samsung pitch, they responded with emojis and surprise. “Wow, OK, that’s wild,” one person replied.
A Google spokesperson said the company is continuously improving its search engine to give partners more reasons to choose Google, and that Android phone makers are free to accept technologies from different companies. to improve the experience of their users.
Samsung and Microsoft declined to comment.
Google has been doing AI research for years. Its DeepMind lab in London is considered one of the best AI research centers in the world, and the company has been a pioneer in AI projects, such as self-driving cars and so-called large-scale language models used in development of chatbots. In recent years, Google has used large-scale language models to improve the quality of its search results, but has held back on fully adopting AI because it can easily make false and biased statements.
Now the priority is to win control of the next big thing in the industry. Last month, Google released its own chatbot, Bard, but the technology received mixed reviews.
Plans for the new search engine, which reflects Google’s ambitions to reimagine the search experience, are still in the early stages, with no clear timetable for when it will release the new search technology.
The system will know what users want to know based on what they are looking for when they start using it. And it will offer lists of pre-selected options for items to buy, research information and other information. It can also be more conversational – like chatting with a helpful person.
But before rebuilding the search engine, the Magi project will add features to the existing search engine, according to internal documents. Google has more than 160 people working full time on it, a person with knowledge of the work said.
Magi will store ads in the search results mix. Search queries that might lead to a financial transaction, such as buying shoes or booking a flight, for example, will still show ads on their results pages.
That’s important for Google, because search ads are the main way it makes money. Its chatbot, Bard, does not feature ads, and there are expectations in the tech industry that the AI response to search engines will make ads less relevant to users.
The planned search additions can also answer questions about software coding and code writing based on a user’s request. Google can place an ad under the computer code answers, according to a document.
Last week, Google invited some employees to test Magi’s features, and encouraged them to ask follow-up questions to the search engine to judge its conversational ability. Google is expected to release the tools to the public next month and add more features in the fall, according to the planning document.
The company plans to initially release the shares to a maximum of one million people. That number should gradually increase to 30 million by the end of the year. Features are available only in the United States.
Google is also exploring efforts to allow people to use Google Earth’s mapping technology with help from AI and search for music through a conversation with a chatbot, a Google director wrote in a document.
Other product ideas are in various stages of development. A tool called GIFI uses AI to generate images in Google Image results. Another tool, Tivoli Tutor, teaches users a new language through open-ended AI text conversations.
Another product, Searchalong, allows users to ask the chatbot questions while surfing the web through the Google Chrome browser. People can ask the chatbot for activities near an Airbnb rental, for example, and the AI will scan the page and the rest of the internet for an answer.
Jim Lecinski, a former vice president of sales and services at Google, said that the company is motivated to act and now needs to convince users that it is “powerful, competent and contemporary” like its competitors.
“If we are the leading search engine and this is a new attribute, a new feature, a new behavior of search engines, we want to make sure that we are also in this race,” he mr. Lecinski, a professor of marketing at Northwestern University, said in an interview.
Daisuke Wakabayashi, Karen way and Tripp Mickle contributed to the report.