Bing is “finally getting its moment.”
Sobbing Uncontrollably
Who could’ve thought that we’d be talking about Bing, Microsoft’s search engine that’s been playing second fiddle to Google since its conception, in the year 2023?
“Imagining a Bing exec somewhere deep in a Microsoft office just sobbing uncontrollably rn that Bing is *finally* getting its moment,” Engadget senior editor Karissa Bell wrote in a tongue-in-cheek tweet.
And, as it turns out, Bell’s comments weren’t actually much of a stretch.
“I mean, I wouldn’t describe it as ‘uncontrollably’…” replied Michael Schechter, Microsoft’s VP of Growth for the long-neglected search engine.
New Race
Microsoft made a big splash this week, announcing it would start integrating generated text powered by none other than OpenAI’s blockbuster ChatGPT in some of its search results.
Given that ChatGPT has been a lightning rod in the news lately, the AI chatbot has effectively torn Bing out of the shadows and dumped it into the limelight — for better or for worse.
Bing, which was launched in 2009, has lagged far behind Google in terms of search engine market share over the years. But given Microsoft’s $10 billion investment in OpenAI — CEO Satya Natya called it “the day of a new race” in a recent Bloomberg interview — that picture could change, at least to a small degree.
“The general sentiment is that ChatGPT and the Microsoft Bing announcement have created a narrative that Google’s search business model is under threat,” Mark Riedl, a professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology, told Bloomberg.
Wakeup Call
Equipped with its new supercharged, ChatGPT-powered toolset, the latest version of Bing is indeed likely to get more attention than its previous iterations.
But the fight has only begun, and Bing’s days in the limelight could soon be counted. Google isn’t sitting idly by, and is set to launch Bard, its competitor to ChatGPT, “in the coming weeks.”
At the end of the day, however, both companies will likely have to deal with some pretty substantial hurdles in the upcoming weeks and months.
Case in point: neither Bard nor ChatGPT appear to have much of a grasp on reality, something that could easily land either company in hot water.
In other words, it’s a real wake-up call for both Bard and Bing’s sobbing engineers.
More on AI chatbot wars: Head of ChatGPT Admits She Had Concerns About Releasing It Publicly