Google just gave millions of Microsoft users a reason to switch platforms, at least according to a surprising disclosure from a very surprising source.
Google’s disclosure sheds light on Apple and Bing
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This weekend brings a new twist to the ongoing “browser war” between Google and Microsoft. Earlier this month, I reported on complaints made to Microsoft that the company was “unfairly” promoting Edge over Chrome to Windows users.
The complaint was filed in an independent report sponsored by Mozilla, which also suggested that Microsoft sometimes overrides user settings and uses Bing instead of Google Search by default. It’s clear that Microsoft wants to create a search rival to Google. But with Apple’s involvement, that argument has changed dramatically. And it looks like bad news for the millions of users who have relied on Bing search in recent years.
Court documents prepared by Google for its antitrust lawsuit with the US Department of Justice have recently been made public. The claim is that Google’s exclusive search deals with iOS and Android, which cost more than $20 billion a year, fuel its monopoly in online search. Google said no, and asked Apple why.
Google said Microsoft tried to sell Bing to Apple in 2018, but instead tried to form a joint venture.According to reports CNBCGoogle said, “Microsoft pitched Apple to adopt Bing as the default for the Safari web browser in 2009, 2013, 2015, 2016, 2018, and 2020, but each time Apple I answered no because of the issue.”
Google’s currently unsealed (albeit redacted) court filing includes a quote attributed to Eddie Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of services, including: Microsoft’s search quality, their investment in search, everything just didn’t matter. And everything went down. So the search quality itself wasn’t that good. They couldn’t match the level that Google or Microsoft could invest in. And their advertising organization and monetization methods weren’t very good.”
That’s bad news for the millions of users who trusted Bing search during that period and ever since, at least if Apple’s assessment of its relative quality is to be believed. I reached out to Microsoft for comment on the contents of Google’s filing.
In a world where Google has over 90% of the global search engine market and Bing has less than 4%, the Edge vs. Chrome debate itself resonates strongly. Google is a search business, driving its revenue and entire ecosystem across the World Wide Web. This is its bread and butter.
It’s very easy so far. But timing is everything. And the news comes at one of the most interesting times for search in years. Not only are we witnessing the slow disappearance of the tracking cookies that have powered commercial search, but we are also witnessing the early signs of a tsunami of AI disruption that will reshape the search industry.
So, as Bing users make sense of this news and figure out whether they made the right choice, the better question is: What happens next? By the time traditional search is evaluated, we will have moved on to the next step. And the real lesson here is one of network effects and structural market dominance, whether achieved fairly through competitive innovation or unfairly through monopoly.
This is where the relationship between OpenAI’s ChatGPT (major shareholder Microsoft) and Google’s Gemini (née Bard) emerges. Currently, these two generative AI platforms are on the box seat for first-mover advantage in AI-based search. This extends beyond the browser and taskbar to messaging, mapping, email, and productivity apps.
The idea of being able to find your ideal holiday/gift/car/TV by chatting with a seemingly human assistant is extremely appealing, if for no other reason than its current novelty. And there have already been multiple warnings about the privacy implications of all this user data being sent to his AI models and their trainers.
None of these generative AI search models currently exist. At least not in a format that threatens more traditional search. And the advertising ecosystem that supports it continues to work to phase out tracking cookies. AI is several steps ahead.
So the big takeaway is about the millions of Microsoft users that make up 3.42% of the search market share, and whether or not Bing has closed that gap, at least as Apple perceives it, or whether it’s more about quality than anything else. Is Google superior for a reason?
Key point two is to consider what structure tomorrow’s search industry will likely and should adopt. They don’t necessarily have to be the same. How should we consider the lessons of the past 10-20 years? All of this becomes increasingly important as Gen-AI search likely won’t offer the same options we see today. The risk of users being steered in a particular commercial direction is huge.
“To help people unleash the joy of discovery, feel the wonder of creation, and better leverage the world’s knowledge,” Microsoft said in a blog post last year. days, search engines and browsers. ”
Microsoft believes that half of the 10 billion search queries per day are unanswered. That’s because “people use search to do things it wasn’t originally intended for.” Great for finding websites, but for more complex questions or tasks is often insufficient. ”
“AI will fundamentally change every software category, starting with the biggest category: full search,” Microsoft’s Satya Nadella said at the launch of “Bing and Edge with AI Co-Pilot.” I guess so.” perhaps. But search hasn’t changed much since then. He’s right, but it’s still not perfect. We are not ready and the technology is not ready.
I asked ChatGPT for a view from deep down the AI rabbit hole. “It’s difficult to predict exactly when AI will completely replace traditional search engines like Bing and Google,” I was told. “AI-driven search technology is continually evolving and improving. [but] Completely replacing traditional search engines requires not only technological advances but also widespread acceptance. ”
And here we are. The next 12 to 18 months will reveal how quickly search, the web’s core driver, can change without compromising its purpose. And we’ll take a look at how the Android vs. iOS battle over AI will impact how search is performed on different devices.
“In the future, AI-powered search systems may become the primary method of finding information. However, this transition may take years, or even decades.”
As they say, we live in interesting times.
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