With a flurry of projects, including improvements to its search engine and plans for an entirely new one, the internet behemoth is sprinting to defend its core business.
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| Image Source - Google | Image by <br><a href= The New York Time |
By Mehran Mazari
Employees at Google were taken aback in March when they learnt that Samsung, the South Korean consumer electronics giant, was considering replacing Google with Microsoft's Bing as the default search engine for their devices.
Bing had been an afterthought search engine for years. However, it recently integrated new artificial intelligence technologies, which piqued the interest of industry insiders.
Google's reaction to the Samsung threat was "panic," according to internal messages obtained by The New York Times. The Samsung contract was worth an estimated $3 billion in annual revenue. A further $20 billion is linked to a similar Apple deal that is set to expire this year.
Artificial intelligence competitors, such as the new Bing, are swiftly becoming the most serious threat to Google's search business in 25 years, and in response, Google is racing to construct an entirely new search engine based on the technology. According to internal documents acquired by The Times, it is also improving the existing one with AI elements.
Designers, programmers, and executives working in so-called sprint rooms to edit and test the latest versions are creating new features under the project name Magi. The new search engine would be significantly more personalized than the company's existing offering, seeking to anticipate consumers' requirements.
According to Lara Levin, a Google spokesperson, "Not every brainstorm deck or product idea leads to a launch, but as we've said before, we're excited about bringing new A.I.-powered features to search, and will share more details soon."
Every day, billions of people use Google's search engine for everything from locating restaurants and directions to deciphering a medical diagnosis, and that basic white page with the corporate logo and an empty bar in the middle is one of the world's most popular web pages. Changes to it would have a substantial influence on the lives of ordinary people, and it was difficult to envisage anyone threatening it until lately.
Since November, when OpenAI, a San Francisco start-up collaborating with Microsoft, demonstrated a chatbot dubbed ChatGPT, Google has been concerned about A.I.-powered competition. Google formed a task force in its search division about two weeks later to begin developing A.I. products, according to two people with knowledge of the efforts who were not authorized to discuss them publicly.
Google has made modernizing its search engine a priority, and the proposed modifications could put new A.I. technologies in phones and homes all around the world.
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| Image Source - Google | Image by <br><a href= The New York Time |
The Samsung threat was the first apparent chink in Google's seemingly indestructible search business, which was valued at $162 billion last year. Although it was unclear whether Microsoft's development with artificial intelligence was the primary reason Samsung was pondering a move after 12 years, that was the perception within Google. The contract is being negotiated, and Samsung may decide to continue with Google.
However, the idea that Samsung, which manufactures hundreds of millions of handsets using Google's Android software each year, would even consider switching search engines astounded Google staffers.
When notified that the organization was searching for volunteers this month to assist put together material for a pitch to Samsung, some employees responded with emojis and astonishment. "Wow, OK, that's wild," one individual said.
According to a Google spokeswoman, the firm is always upgrading its search engine to provide users and partners additional reasons to select Google and Android phone makers are allowed to include technologies from other companies to improve their users' experiences.
Microsoft and Samsung both declined to comment.
Google has been conducting artificial intelligence research for many years. Its DeepMind facility in London is regarded as one of the greatest A.I. research facilities in the world, and the business has been a pioneer in A.I. initiatives such as self-driving cars and big language models used in chatbot development. Google has used huge language models to improve the quality of its search results in recent years but has resisted completely adopting A.I. because it has been known to generate misleading and biased assertions.
The aim now is to seize control of the industry's next great thing. Google introduced its own chatbot, Bard, last month, but the technology drew mixed reviews.
Plans for the new search engine, which demonstrates Google's ambitions to redefine the search experience, are still in the early stages, with no firm timeline for when the new search technology would be released.
When users first use the system, it will learn what they want to know based on what they search for. It would also provide pre-selected options for goods to purchase, information to investigate, and other information. It would also be more conversational, similar to conversing with a helpful person.
However, according to internal documents, the Magi project will add functionality to the existing search engine before rebuilding it. According to a source familiar with the project, Google has more than 160 people working on it full-time.
Magi would retain adverts mixed together with the search results. Search inquiries that potentially end in a financial transaction, such as purchasing shoes or booking a flight, would still display adverts on their results pages.
This is significant for Google because search advertisements are the key source of revenue for the company. Its chatbot, Bard, does not include advertisements, and the tech sector has speculated that A.I. replies on search engines may make ads less relevant to users.
The anticipated search enhancements may also answer queries about software coding and writing code in response to a user's request. According to a paper, Google may display an ad beneath the machine code responses.
Google allowed several employees to test Magi's capabilities last week, and it urged them to ask follow-up questions to assess the search engine's capacity to hold a conversation. According to the strategy paper, Google plans to expose the tools to the public next month and add further functionality in the fall.
The company intends to first make the features available to a maximum of one million customers. By the end of the year, that figure should have risen to 30 million. The features will only be available in the United States.
A Google director noted in a paper that the company has also investigated efforts to allow individuals to use Google Earth's mapping technology with the assistance of A.I. and search for music through a conversation with a chatbot.
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| Image Source - Google | Image by <br><a href= The New York Time |
Other product ideas are being worked on at various stages. A technology dubbed GIFI would employ artificial intelligence to generate images in Google Image results. Tivoli Tutor, another program, would teach users a new language via open-ended A.I. text dialogues.
Another project, Searchalong, would allow users to interact with a chatbot while browsing the web using Google's Chrome browser. People could, for example, ask the chatbot for activities near an Airbnb rental, and the A.I. would search the website and the rest of the internet for a response.
Former Google vice president of sales and service Jim Lecinski said the business had been prodded into action and now needed to persuade people that it was as "powerful, competent, and contemporary" as its competitors.
"If we are the leading search engine and this is a new attribute, feature, or characteristic of search engines, we want to make sure that we're in this race as well," said Mr. Lecinski, a marketing professor at Northwestern University, in an interview.
