Samsung May Switch to Bing as Default Search Engine as Google Lags Behind in AI

ChatGPT’s integration into Microsoft’s Bing gave the browser its much-needed boost over the Google Search Engine which has been the engine of choice for users and enterprises for a decade. Presently, Samsung is in negotiations with Microsoft to make Bing the default search engine for all Samsung devices, due to the search engine’s AI features which Google does not have yet.

According to the New York Times, Google stands to lose US$3 billion should Samsung refuse renewal of its contract and choose Microsoft instead. Google is racing to build its own AI search engine and has over 160 staff working on project ‘Magi’, its AI search engine that’s focused on creating a personalized search experience. Magi is rumored to be launching later in May with limited functionality and more features introduced through ongoing updates. The initial launch will be limited to 1 million users and will slowly expand to 30 million users by year-end.

Will Google's Magi be able to Compete with Bing and OpenAI

Considering Bard’s lackluster performance which was attributed to a rushed release, if Google follows a similar approach for Magi, we can realistically expect similar query results from the new AI search engine, meaning search results that you did not request.

Personally, I’m not optimistic about Google’s odds against Bing and OpenAI. Referred to in our previous piece on the history of ChatGPT and how it works, it took OpenAI years to build the ChatGPT today and despite making the GPT models available for commercial use through APIs, there are limits on the amount of data that can be processed and the number of API calls that can be made, not to mention the costs.

OpenAI has also not made all its tools and tech publicly available, stating that they’re still under development or only for internal research. Furthermore, the data and model training techniques are not available in their entirety as they are proprietary in nature. But if there was a company that could successfully complete an AI search engine in a month, it would be Google. However, until Magi’s launch, my opinion remains that Magi is likely to underperform Bing.