• Google and Microsoft held back-to-back events to showcase their AI-powered search and map features.
• Google’s event was a mess, while Microsoft’s was well-rehearsed and well-coordinated.
• Microsoft’s event was a response to Google’s search dominance, which has more than 90% market share.
• Microsoft’s blog post from 2010 showed their intent to partner with Facebook to take down Google.
• Microsoft’s Corporate Vice President of Search, Yusuf Mehdi, said that roughly half of all searches don’t deliver the job that people want.
• Microsoft’s new OpenAI-powered chat interface is an attempt to address this issue.
• Google is the default search engine in most browsers and on most phones, making it difficult for Bing to displace it.
• Google has responded to threats before, and the messiness of this week suggests they are ready to do so again.
• Bill Gurley’s article “The Freight Train That Is Android” explains how Android is a “moat” to protect Google’s search engine.
• Microsoft’s approach to Bing is to see it as their Android relative to Google Search’s Windows.
• Chat interfaces are annoying to use, and voice is not always an option.
• Google faces real cost concerns as it incorporates AI into search, and conversation AI is very expensive.
Published February 9, 2023
Visit Stratechery to read Ben Thompson’s original post Google and Microsoft’s Events, Monetizable Panic, Paradigms and Hardware
