What you need to know
- OpenAI is officially Microsoft's rival in AI and search.
- This further complicates their partnership, as both companies are heavily invested in similar fields.
- OpenAI's SearchGPT tool could give Microsoft's Bing a run for its money in search.
Last month, Microsoft concluded its fiscal year 2024. The company reported $64.7 billion in revenue, $245.1 billion for the full year, and an upward trajectory across all its divisions in its FY24 Q4 earnings report.
Following the report, investors raised concerns over Microsoft's exorbitant expenditure on AI projects, which don't necessarily reflect similar results in profit. Microsoft is also seemingly shifting its focus to cybersecurity after backlash for its cascade of security failures. The company CEO Satya Nadella recently indicated that security is its top priority as it underpins every layer of the tech stack.
In case you missed it, Microsoft also listed OpenAI as its competitor in search and advertising alongside other rivals, Including Amazon and Google. This makes Microsoft and OpenAI's partnership more complicated, especially with the former's multi-billion dollar investment in the ChatGPT maker and broad adoption of its AI-powered technology across its products and services.
SearchGPT could give Bing and Google a run for their money
It is evident that OpenAI and Microsoft are scrambling for a big share of the AI market share as the technology becomes widely available, and more companies hop onto the bandwagon and integrate the tech into their workflow.
For instance, OpenAI recently debuted its temporary prototype search tool — SearchGPT. While the search tool is still limited to a select group of users, it's already raising concerns among key players in search. SearchGPT could give Google a run for its money, especially after the antitrust ruling that deemed it a monopolist in search.
A former Google engineer says the company has bigger fish to fry with SearchGPT than the antitrust ruling and pending regulation. Google will likely appeal the court's ruling, pushing back the regulation process. The engineer says the emergence of OpenAI's SearchGPT is a more prevalent issue that Google needs to address immediately to maintain its dominance in the space.
Gmail Creator Paul Buchheit says Google missed its opportunity with AI to maintain its search dominance, despite its vast resources, including talent, funding, and more. Its recent failure with the Google AI Overviews feature recommending eating rocks and committing suicide doesn't help its case.
Microsoft's Bing is slowly gaining traction, reaching 140 million daily active users in April. The company attributed the immense success and growth of the platform to AI. However, users are seemingly more inclined to Google (the world's most popular search engine).
Even Apple admitted that there's no amount Microsoft could pay to get it to ditch Google, including offering Bing for free. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella previously indicated the company is willing to part with up to $15 billion to attract a similar deal, which he defined as a "game-changing opportunity." The iPhone maker cited Bing's search quality issues as the main deterrent.
While Apple doesn't have a wide array of search engine options, Google pays a jaw-dropping $26 billion to maintain its search engine as the default across Apple devices. It'll be interesting to see the impact SearchGPT will have on this in the future if it gets Google and Microsoft's missteps right.
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