Google’s employees were shocked when they learned South Ko-rean electronics giant Samsung was considering replacing Google with Microsoft’s Bing as the default search engine on its devices. Bing became a lot more interesting to industry insiders when it recently added new AI technology.
Google’s reaction to the Samsung threat was “panic”. About $3 billion in annual revenue was at stake with the Samsung contract. An additional $20 billion is tied to a similar Apple contract that will be up for renewal this year.
In response, Google is racing to build an all-new search engine powered by the technology. It is also upgrading the existing one with AI features.
The new features, under the project name Magi, are being created by designers, engineers and executives working in so-called sprint rooms to tweak and test the latest versions. The new search engine would offer a far more personalised experience, attempting to anticipate users’ needs.
Billions of people use Google’s search engine every day for everything from finding restaurants and directions to understanding a medical diagnosis, and that simple white page with the company logo and an empty bar in the middle is one of the most widely used webpages in the world. Changes to it would have a significant impact on the lives of ordinary people.
Modernising its search engine has become an obsession at Google, and the planned changes could put new AI technology in phones and homes all over the world.
The Samsung threat represented the first potential crack in Google’s seemingly impregnable search business, worth $162 billion last year. Although it was not clear whether Microsoft’s work with AI was the main reason Samsung was considering a change after the past 12 years, that was the assumption inside Google. The contract is under negotiation, and Samsung could stick with Google.
But the idea that Samsung, which makes hundreds of millions of smartphones with Google’s Android software every year, would even consider switching search engines shocked Google’s employees.
Google has been doing AI research for years. Its DeepMind lab in London is considered one of the world’s best AI research centres, and the company has been a pioneer with AI projects, such as self-driving cars and large language models that are used in the development of chatbots. In recent years, Google has used large language models to improve the quality of its search results but held off on fully adopting AI because it has been prone to generating false and biased statements.
Recently, Google invited some employees to test Magi’s features, and it has encouraged them to ask the search engine follow-up questions to judge its ability to hold a conversation. Google is expected to release the tools next month and add more features in the fall.
The company plans to initially release the features to a maximum of 1 million people. That number should progressively increase to 30 million by the end of the year. The features will be available exclusively in the US.
Google has also explored efforts to let people 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 would use AI to generate images in Google Image results. Tivoli Tutor would teach users a new language through open-ended AI text conversations.
Yet another product, Search- along, would let users ask a chatbot questions while surfing the web through Google’s Chrome browser. People might ask the chatbot for activities near an Airbnb rental, for example, and the AI would scan the page and the rest of the Internet for a response.
Jim Lecinski, a former Google vice-president of sales and service, said the company had been goaded into action and now had to convince users that it was as “powerful, competent and contemporary” as its competitors.
“If we are the leading search engine and this is a new attribute... we want to make sure that we’re in this race as well,” said Lecinski.
NYTNS
