San Francisco, Dusseldorf The timing shouldn’t be a coincidence: Within 24 hours, Microsoft and Google announced far-reaching changes to their search engines. In the future, thanks to intelligent chatbots, they should be able to answer questions with summaries from several sources, translate texts or pre-formulate e-mails.
“Today is a new day of Internet search,” said Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. The technological innovation is as far-reaching as the introduction of the first Internet browser. It is a declaration of war against the competitor Google, which is by far the market leader in the search engine business. “Today the race begins,” Nadella posited.
In view of the competition, Google has reacted: In a meeting scheduled at short notice on Wednesday, the Alphabet Group company showed how the search engine could be expanded with a chatbot in the future. The Chinese Internet group Baidu and start-ups such as You.com and Neeva have also developed similar concepts.
A new dynamic is emerging in one of the most lucrative markets in the world. So far, Alphabet has dominated the Internet search business with Google. According to Statcounter, the company handles around 85 percent of all search queries worldwide on the desktop, and the figure is even 93 percent for all devices. Last year, the division brought in $ 42.6 billion, 56 percent of group sales.
With a market share of three percent, Microsoft is lagging behind with the search engine Bing. But that could change thanks to the new functions, speculated analyst Dan Ives from asset manager Wedbush: The software manufacturer is in a good position to take over part of the lucrative business. The partnership with the start-up OpenAI, whose language technology the group uses, is a “game changer”.
OpenAI caused the hype with the release of the chatbot ChatGPT in November – and thus secured the support of Microsoft. The group is the start-up’s most important investor. At the joint presentation, company boss Sam Altman formulated great ambitions: “We wanted to make our technologies available to as many people as possible.” That’s why the company works so closely with Microsoft.
ChatGPT: A Co-Pilot for the Internet
Microsoft is positioning the new technology as a “co-pilot” for the Internet. At a demonstration, the group presented how the search engine Bing, on command, suggests a five-day trip to Mexico with detailed recommendations for sights and places to eat – or creates a music quiz with any number of questions and four possible answers.
In order to make these possibilities easily usable, Microsoft also presented a new version of its Internet browser Edge, which integrates these functions. For example, the update should offer the possibility of creating summaries of long documents such as annual reports and asking questions about them. There is also a writing assistant who pre-formulates e-mails or social media posts from a few keywords.
Half a day later, Google presented plans that sounded similar, but were comparatively vague. The group also wants to expand its search engine so that it can combine findings from various sources in one answer for complex questions. The basis for this is an intelligent chatbot that Google has called Bard.
>> Read also: “Code Red”: How Google Responds to the ChatGPT Threat
“A lot of people use Google because they need quick, factual answers,” said Prabhakar Raghavan, who is responsible for the internet provider’s search engine and digital assistant. In many cases, however, there is no one right answer – it is a matter of exploring a topic.
Google showed some examples of the new technology on stage. In this way, users can use the search engine to weigh arguments for and against an electric car or to search for a route with viewpoints. However, the company did not give many details about the new functions.
Instead, the management presented various, mostly well-known projects that use other technologies with artificial intelligence, such as visual searches with smartphones or the creation of three-dimensional models based on photos.
It should be an indication that Microsoft’s initiative caught Google by surprise. According to media reports, CEO Sundar Pichai recently called out “Code Red” because of the threat to the business model.
Bing Search: Weakness in facts
In a first test, the new Bing search showed both its potential and its limitations. The system can summarize information well, even current ones. This is an important advancement: ChatGPT itself can only access information up to 2021, when the language model has been trained in the background.
However, Bing keeps making factual mistakes. This may have something to do with the associative functioning of the technology. The language model uses statistical methods to predict which word could follow next. Where no reliable information is available, the system adds freely. A Microsoft employee explained: “Sometimes the system hallucinates.”
This shows that companies still have a lot of work to do before the technology can be used on a broad scale. Microsoft wants to develop a security architecture. This is intended to prevent the new functions of Bing from being used to hack computer systems or to plan a killing spree.
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Google did not name any specific measures, but emphasized several times that it is important to develop trustworthy artificial intelligence. Raghavan explained that the aim was to achieve high standards for quality, safety and realism. Internally, one might also wonder how the new presentation of content affects the business model, which is currently based on ads around search results.
The group will first publish a version for “trusted testers”. According to a report by the TV broadcaster CNBC, CEO Pichai has also asked his own employees to test the technology intensively. The service should only be widely available “in the coming weeks”.
“Microsoft scored big”
The Internet search could thus once again change significantly. Over the past 20 years, numerous items have been added to the result lists, says Rowan Curran, an analyst at market research and consulting firm Forrester: from maps and calculators to translators and answer boxes.
More about artificial intelligence
Now a new leap in development is imminent. “Large language models are very good at generating answers from their internal knowledge base, summarizing and synthesizing information,” says Curran. It’s not a complete replacement for the traditional search: In some cases, a list of links is more practical. However, the technology offers new formats for handling information.
How search engines will look like in the future and what that means for the competition is hard to foresee. Patrick Moorhead, head of Moor Insights & Strategy, emphasized on Twitter: “Microsoft scored big today, regardless of the long-term outcome.” The search engine Bing is being discussed with market leader Google, and the new technologies can also be tested directly.
Even if Bing gains only a small amount of market share, it could be worth it for Microsoft. The company calculates that every percentage point of market share means two billion dollars in additional sales.
That means: market leader Google has to hurry up.
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