The Search Engine Race is On!

The year 2023 marked a major turning point for the technology industry, as 微软 made a bold move by investing a whopping $10 billion in OpenAI to integrate their advanced language models, including ChatGPT, into their suite of services. This strategic partnership proved to be a game-changer, as Microsoft's search engine Bing implemented ChatGPT to provide personalized responses with chatbot functionality, putting immense pressure on 谷歌 to follow suit.

While both Google and Microsoft have been working on their respective language models for some time, the launch of Google's own chatbot, Bard, in February proved to be a major disappointment, causing their stock price to plummet by over $100 billion in market cap. In contrast, Bing reported an impressive 800,000 downloads in the first week since integrating ChatGPT, almost as many as in the entire year 2022, giving Microsoft the edge in the first round of the battle between the two search giants. According to Phil Ockenden, finance chief for the company’s Windows, devices and search divisions, for every percentage point that Microsoft gains in search advertising, it will pick up $2 billion in new revenue.

Despite Google's language model, LaMDA, which powers Bard, being on par with GPT3 which powers ChatGPT, Google failed to gather crucial user feedback and perform adequate testing prior to the launch of Bard, resulting in its failure. In contrast, OpenAI was able to stress-test their model for a long time and gather valuable data from over 100 million users, which enabled them to identify and address any issues prior to the launch of ChatGPT.

The lack of access to such valuable data is a significant disadvantage for Google, which heavily underestimated its value. Indeed, this may be attributed to the fact that Google has never before deployed an open-ended generative AI system to the general public, whereas OpenAI has done so several times with the predecessors of GPT3, namely GPT2 and GPT, as well as other generative AI models with other modalities.

Microsoft has spent the past month enhancing Bing search with a GPT-3 powered search bot, aiming to improve its functionality. Although it is not yet publicly available, users who signed up for the waitlist have access to it. Early user testing indicates that Microsoft has successfully added additional features and safeguards to make Bing Chat a reliable search engine. For instance, Bing Chat questions the accuracy of its responses offers sources and provides guidance on how users can obtain more informed answers to their queries. In contrast to ChatGPT, Bing Chat can explore new online content by utilizing natural language processing to comprehend the user's context and purpose before seeking relevant information from the web. Bing Chat represents the next step in leveraging large language models for practical purposes, marking a significant improvement in how people search the internet today.

Nonetheless, Google's advantage lies in its 90% market share of all search engines, which allows it to quickly collect significant data. However, Microsoft has the momentum to gain market share and attract users to the Bing environment with the added benefits and add-ons that come with ChatGPT. One thing is certain: this competition will benefit end-users, businesses, and people with better services. The integration of advanced language models in search engines is set to revolutionize the way people interact with technology, and this is only the beginning of what promises to be an exciting journey toward a more advanced and intelligent future.