This analysis was first published in SvD Näringsliv, in Swedish, on February 8th, 2023. This piece was translated from Swedish by Claude. Some phrasing may differ from a human translation.
Side by side in Seattle. OpenAI founder Sam Altman stood alongside Microsoft’s CEO and unveiled what is genuinely a real innovation. SvD’s tech analyst Björn Jeffery answers three questions about what it means for you.
At an event that brought Apple product launches to mind — think visionary CEO on stage in a long-sleeved garment that isn’t a suit — albeit in Microsoft’s version (think the Office suite) — the new Bing was unveiled.
The tech giant’s search engine received a substantial upgrade powered by new artificial intelligence from partner OpenAI. The launch was somewhat expected — several screenshots had already leaked, and the day before, Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, had posted a photo alongside Microsoft’s Satya Nadella.
Traditional search results will now appear side by side with more detailed and comprehensive answers generated by the AI.
Microsoft also launched a new version of its browser Edge, which competes with Google’s Chrome and Apple’s Safari.
The new Bing can already be tested with a limited set of questions, while the full version will be released in the coming weeks.
Competitor Google, which presented Bard — a similar product — on Monday, is still testing it internally.
After many years of stagnation in the search market, we are now starting to see some genuine innovation. We’re all used to “googling” things every day, but over time most of us have also learned how to do it well.
Finding factual information — what year something happened, or where the nearest Japanese restaurant is — is straightforward. But how do you find out which shoes are on trend for spring? Or how to write a truly great speech for an 18-year-old’s birthday?
This is where AI technology could make a real difference for ordinary users. The next generation of search engine lets you “ask a question” rather than “perform a search.”
The results are immediately different, and you can also ask follow-up questions — something that doesn’t work at all today. “I want the speech to rhyme” or “write it as a haiku” are examples of how you can refine the answers you get. It feels more like a dialogue than a traditional search.
Those who have tried ChatGPT are already familiar with the concept. What has been missing there are mainly two things: the ability for everyone to do unlimited searches, and more recently updated information.
With Microsoft’s search engine Bing, both of those things are solved. And even though Bing has a very small market share, it still has a substantial number of visitors — estimates put it at over one billion visits per month. That’s modest compared to Google, but a solid base for testing things at scale.
When talking about new challengers, it’s worth remembering that Google has a market share of around 93 percent — a position it has earned over many years by having the best product for searching the internet.
Google’s brand recognition is enormous, and few companies have had their name become synonymous with a verb that describes an entire category. That’s a major advantage that isn’t going anywhere soon.
Microsoft’s advantage is almost the opposite — they have nothing to lose. When the market leader is so much bigger, the strategy becomes almost obvious: try something different.
Investing the equivalent of 100 billion kronor in OpenAI to gain access to its technology looks, in that context, fairly logical — if bold. Microsoft needed to do something new to disrupt the status quo. And they have now done exactly that.
As a side effect, this has also woken Google up. After CEO Sundar Pichai declared six years ago that the world would be AI-first, those of us using his services haven’t seen much of it. Until now — when competition suddenly comes calling.
For ordinary users, the search market is about to become more interesting than it has been in a long time. And in a few years, we might even stop “googling.”
