Google, the world’s largest search engine company, is in a “panic state.” This is because Samsung Electronics is considering changing its search engine installed in Galaxy smartphones from Google to Microsoft (MS) “Bing” for the first time in 12 years. Analysts say that the 12-year relationship between Samsung and Google is on the verge of breaking down as Microsoft is one step ahead of the competition to develop generative artificial intelligence (AI) technology with “Chat GPT.”
According to the New York Times (NYT) on the 16th (local time), the two companies are negotiating over Samsung Electronics’ plan to replace the basic search engine application (app) of smartphones with Microsoft’s Bing at the end of last month. According to Statista, a global market research company, Google made more than 162.5 billion dollars (about 213.28 trillion won) in sales last year alone. It accounts for 57.5% of total sales ($282.8 billion).
Samsung Electronics is going to install the Google app as a basic app on its smartphone. If this is replaced by Microsoft’s Bing, it will not only change its market share in mobile search engines, but also shake its status as an absolute powerhouse as the formula “search basic app = Google” is broken.
According to stat counter, a global market research company, Google, the “King of Search,” currently accounts for 93.2% of the global search engine market share, and Microsoft’s Bing accounts for only 2.9%. However, if Samsung Electronics’ smartphone, which has 27.1% of the global smartphone market share, changes its basic search engine to Bing, Microsoft’s smartphone search service share will jump to 20%.
On top of that, it will have a certain impact on Google’s sales. The $3 billion usage fee that Samsung Electronics pays every year as it installs the Google app as a basic app on its smartphone is about 1% of Google’s total sales of $282.8 billion last year. For this reason, the NYT evaluated, “It is the first potential crack in Google’s search business that seemed to be ‘impregnable'” and “the most serious threat to Google’s 25-year search business.”
Google, which became urgent, released a generative AI chatbot “Bard” on its search engine, but it was evaluated that its performance did not meet expectations. As a result, Google is making all-out efforts to develop a project called “Magi” that applies AI functions to search by investing 160 employees.
