98 ms·

Samsung considers moving to Bing as default search engine

624 points by carlycue 3y ago

king_magic 3y ago
I mean it is kind of nuts. I didn't have "pretty much switch entirely to Bing" on my 2023 search Bingo card, but here we are.
- detourdog 3y ago
  My computer literate but non-technical wife just noticed yesterday that google searches are a waste of time compared to ChatGPT. Over the course of about six hours it went from this thing is amazing to this stupid thing knows I'm on a Mac but still refers to F11 keys. She even got ChatGPT to re-enforce she was on Mac and didn't have an F11 key but never got a substitute key to use for Mac users. (F11 is volume down on my Mac keyboard.)
  - ralfd 3y ago
    What does F11 do?
    - tough 3y ago
      I dunno but in a mac kb you just press fn (down left) while the special function keys, to have them act as regular -ol f1--12 keys
    - detourdog 3y ago
      Like I say it's volume down on the Mac keyboard. Why she was interrogating ChatGPT I don't know. I know she started using it to get multi-state reading correlations... then she was talking about get it to excel work. After that I imagine ChatGPT told her to use the F11 for something and she noticed she didn't have one. I believe at that point she started to try to get ChatGPT to tell her which key was the F11 on a Mac. She told it she was on Mac and didn't have an F11 key. ChatGPT agreed she was on a Mac and didn't have one. I believe that is far as the conversation went. It was interesting to me becuase it is commonly available information but the answer just couldn't happen.
- steve1977 3y ago
  Bingo… I see what you did there…
tapoxi 3y ago
What's Sundar's goal for Google? They seem to be aimless since he took the helm.
- Palpatineli 3y ago
  Especially compared to Nadella, who shows that someone not from the the founders’ circle, a corporate ladder climber, can lead an IT company with great vision too.
  - foobiekr 3y ago
    Microsoft dealt with with the too-rich-to-work problem and the founders-and-earlies-lost-interest problems in the 80s and 90s. "FYIFV" (despite being a bit of a tech urban legend) and "Quietly Vesting Disease" (QVD) and all that. They're an actual grown up company that knows how to build and vet leaders. Google is not a grown up company - it runs the way a 2nd generation dynastic family runs their businesses - haphazard and sloppy and entirely surviving because of a cash cow and nothing else. Plus, they have a fairly substantial crew with "rest and vest" as a mantra at least for the folks I knew there prior to 2008..
- m00dy 3y ago
  He will be fired very soon
  - throwntoday 3y ago
    Hopefully. I can't think of a single product that has grown because of him so much as in spite of him.
    - Zigurd 3y ago
      How is that different from everything after Google Search. Alphabet is even structured around the idea of not being able to pick winners. I can discern some long term strategy in Android Automotive and Waymo, but nothing is sacred when it comes to cutting off products that are not growing.
ocdtrekkie 3y ago
Samsung has done this before, and Google has multiple times made various offers and incentives intended to "encourage" Samsung not to. Because a huge portion of the Android monopoly will leave Google Search when this happens. Stuff like OEMs getting a cut of Play Store revenue are mechanics done to avoid this. There's a pretty good chance Samsung is just negotiating for better terms, kinda like carriage disputes for TV networks.
- tazjin 3y ago
  Yeah, for Google this is existential, for Microsoft it's not. Google will go a lot further than Microsoft will to keep Samsung on their side.
- rippercushions 3y ago
  For comparison, Google pays Apple an estimated $15 billion a year to be the default engine on Safari. https://9to5mac.com/2021/08/25/analysts-google-to-pay-apple-15-billion-to-remain-default-safari-search-engine-in-2021/ https://9to5mac.com/2021/08/25/analysts-google-to-pay-apple-...
  - ocdtrekkie 3y ago
    Indeed. Though for Android OEMs, "paying" for Google's app suite is considered part of the equation. It's less of an incentive for Samsung though since they have their own replacements for most Google apps ready to go.
roenxi 3y ago
1) "It will reportedly be known as Project ‘Magi’ and is said to provide a far more personalized experience than the company’s current service." That is super creepy. Google knows a lot about you, and now it is using that knowledge to really put you in a filter bubble. Imagine this plus engagement metrics. 2) So much for that monopoly a lot of people thought Google had. Turns out they're still as exposed to market pressure as they ever were.
- lightbendover 3y ago
  The last thing anyone should ever want from a search engine is different results from the next person over.
  - mattw2121 3y ago
    I strongly disagree. I would love for a search engine to, intelligently, cater the results based on my previous search history and patterns.
    - mgkimsal 3y ago
      I would love for that ability to be easily determined visually, and easily toggled on/off. A big "personalized" and "generic" toggle switch at the top would be useful.
    - starkd 3y ago
      I don't think the ability to serve up specialized content is the concern here. It is the fragmentation that results when we no longer have a shared reality or a consistent set of results in the population. Results specific to any one person is terrifying in some of its implications.
    - maleldil 3y ago
      That's how you create bubbles.
      - ceejayoz 3y ago
kramerger 3y ago
Wait, people actually use the android search box? It's usually the first thing I remove
- phpnode 3y ago
  Normal people just use the defaults, the idea of choosing a web browser or changing the default search engine is completely alien to most.
  - zirgs 3y ago
    You can't even change the browser on iOS. Apple forces all browsers to use the same rendering engine under the hood.
- ThrowawayTestr 3y ago
  How do you search on your phone? Open the web browser, navigate to google.com and enter your query?
  - surgical_fire 3y ago
    Not GP, but I open the browser (in my case Vivaldi) and type my query in the address box. My default search engine on Vivaldi is DDG, it issues a query to DDG. Do you actually use the default google shit widget to do web searches?
  - adithyassekhar 3y ago
    Opening the widget is useless because it shows the result in the Google app (a 350MB monster) and when you click to open a result it opens in app. You can't have your browser's features, You can't open multiple results in multiple tabs you need to go back each time. A better option is to add the browser's search widget on the home screen, it takes you straight to the address bar where you can enter your query. All modern browsers support searching from the address bar, no need to go to google.com
nailer 3y ago
Edit: looks like I'm wrong, see IceWreck's reply below. Original comment: my understanding is that this means Google will deny their customers access to Google Play, Photos and other first party Google apps. Samsung has replacements for some of these but not all of them.
- IceWreck 3y ago
  Nope, to access play services you have to add the powered by android logo and preinstall a minimum set of required apps (including the google search app), but afaik nothing saying google has to be the default search engine.
  - robertlagrant 3y ago
    Perhaps that will change in response to this.
    - darkwater 3y ago
      But that would be anti-competitive, right?
      - robertlagrant 3y ago
        I agree. Probably. Microsoft got hit for this, although of course changing browser is almost as easy as changing search engine. The question is: why isn't it anticompetitive to have Bing as the default?
    - ThrowawayR2 3y ago
      Seems unlikely. Samsung would justifiably paint that as anti-competitive / monopolistic and the last thing Google wants is more scrutiny from various government regulators right now.
- Zigurd 3y ago
  Android's early commercialization actively encouraged OEMs to "customize" Android for at least two reasons: Android product maturity was questionable, and what else are phone OEM product managers going to do? Now that "Google experience" is generally cleaner and better than OEMs' customizations, Google is struggling to put the toothpaste back in the tube. It is very damaging to Android as a product because OEMs are slow to issue updates and won't continue updates beyond three years, in most cases. I doubt Google will strong-arm Samsung over this. They need Samsung more than Samsung needs the Play Store and other "Google experience" apps.
pelagicAustral 3y ago
I've been using Bing for a few weeks now it is not all the way there yet but so far the experience is more gratifying than Google. The results seem to be better and there is less ads on top the search results. Their AI integration is also well accomplished. No complains there...
- sempron64 3y ago
  Anecdotally, their actual search results have sucked for me. For example, I searched for “narrowest cars with 6 or more seats”, and Bing’s results were terrible and irrelevant. The AI version gave me some acceptable results but very few. Google returned pages of relevant results from different years.
  - Sindisil 3y ago
    When I try that search string on DuckDuckGo, I see what looks to be pretty decent results, FWIW.
    - manquer 3y ago
      DDG is backed by the bing index
      - Sindisil 3y ago
        Only partially. Also, even if it were just a Dr front for Bing, it doesn't change that I got perfectly reasonable results for the search string said to return unusable results from Bing, so
        vitorgrs 3y ago
        Not partially, totally now. They used Yandex before, but they stopped using it after the war I believe.
  - vitorgrs 3y ago
    You probably tried on balanced mode, that is shitty. Tried now on Creative and seems... very good? https://imgur.com/a/xekxNAh https://imgur.com/a/xekxNAh
jimmar 3y ago
This sounds similar to Walmart saying they'll stop taking Visa. Samsung would be dumb not to at least threaten moving away from Google, even if they had no intention to change. It's a negotiating tactic, one that has more teeth in recent months because Google's competitors are finally showing a real challenge.
- muyuu 3y ago
  They'd only be moving away from Google search not GMS. In my recent experience, Google Search is mediocre at best and perhaps worse than Bing most of the time. So it's not a massive gamble.
simula67 3y ago
I always thought that Google made a big blunder by not encroaching upon Microsoft's turf more aggressively. They should have tried to make a better desktop OS (just buy Canonical or something) and then eat into Microsoft Office market share by releasing Google Office for Desktop. Wait for an opportunity to emerge and then pounce. This is precisely what Microsoft did to Google. They had Bing running in the background for years losing truckloads of money. Now that AI has upset the applecart, they can use Bing to choke off Google's airsupply. One of the reasons for Google getting so good early on was that they had oodles of usage data to test and improve their search functionality forming a positive feedback loop. Now, with deals such as this, Microsoft will have more data to tune their engine while Google is left on the sidelines. Let's just hope that the AI driven search revolution does not produce a monopoly.
- chickenpotpie 3y ago
  ChromeOS and Google Docs?
- PlutoIsAPlanet 3y ago
  > just buy Canonical or something Canonical doesn't really make any things that are considered part of a desktop OS. Ubuntu is just a package (and some argue a bad one) of things made by other people. There's very little value in the Linux desktop and I don't see that changing anytime soon. You're probably best re-inventing the wheel if you want a Windows competitor, like Google did with ChromeOS.
  - pjmlp 3y ago
    They surely do, its reason to fame is being the best distribution supporting OEM devices without religion regarding open source drivers.
    - lillecarl 3y ago
      They're using a package manager that a lot of people are comfortable with, they give away their packages without subscriptions and they work with some OEMs. But in reality, the hardware support is in the kernel, so any distro with a more up2date kernel would fare at least as good. As for the software Canonical produces, I'm not great friends with anything. Snap is crap, Netplan is just a renderer to systemd-networkd or networkmanager, MAAS is a pile of garbage, Juju never caught on, upstart failed, Unity failed etc... We're running a lot of Canonical at work and I'm not particularly impressed.
jzombie 3y ago
I can't tell if this Magi project is supposed to be an iteration of Bard or something new.
eoooooooo 3y ago
Some interesting dynamics at play here if true. Google basically maintains Android to get people to use Google services on it, so Samsung switching to Bing would eliminate Google's incentive to develop Android. Samsung is also by FAR the largest Android OEM and holds almost as much power over the platform as Google just from the sheer amount of Android devices that they ship.
- amelius 3y ago
  > Samsung switching to Bing would eliminate Google's incentive to develop Android They still have quite some apps on Android that they can use to extract data from users and send ads, e.g. youtube, gmail, maps, etc.
- Hippocrates 3y ago
  Pretty interesting when put that way. Why DID google develop android??? Oh yeah.
eclipsetheworld 3y ago
This article seems a little hyperbolic since I assume the default search engine will simply be the highest bidder...
devnullbrain 3y ago
This is a very Samsung move: making their premium product feel cheap and cynical to users for easy money.
bfrog 3y ago
Too busy asking people to invert binary trees and not looking for people that know how to make products that make money.
- xiphias2 3y ago
  Actually if you have been really looking at Google's management, just the opposite has happened. Eric Schmidt, who is an exceptionally rare talent understanding engineering, business and politics at the same time was changed to a person who just want to show more ads (the product that makes money) with 0 engineering background.
  - phendrenad2 3y ago
    I think you're both right. Change comes from above and reflects from below. "We hire the best" has become "we hire the best at passing a generic set of tests" because they want hiring to be a thoughtless, automated process.
    - xiphias2 3y ago
      I have been there and seen the destruction (all meetings were about political correctness, we weren't able to discuss anything that was really important). The best are / were there before they quit to create companies, like OpenAI because it was easier than changing management. Also I bet Sam Altman would be able to reverse a binary tree (it's a trivial recursion) even if he was never at Google: it's just part of being a professional programmer.
      - phendrenad2 3y ago
        FAANG really only asks how to mirror a binary tree in interviews?
        bfrog 3y ago
        no, its a joke because the creator of homebrew couldn't do it and didn't get the job at google, despite making something immensely useful. There's also this gem of how google wanted one of the creators of C to take a C test https://www.theregister.com/2010/04/21/ken_thompson_take_our_test/ https://www.theregister.com/2010/04/21/ken_thompson_take_our...
shever73 3y ago
This is hardly surprising. I never normally use Google, but was asked to check some SEO using Google search the other day. The results were a dumpster fire of sponsored content, “other people also search for” and stuff that was largely irrelevant. I had to go onto the second and third pages to find anything even remotely close to what I wanted.
- zdragnar 3y ago
  It must depend heavily on what you are searching for. There are a lot of things I dislike about Google, but their search results are consistently better than Bing in my experience.
electrosphere 3y ago
Shame not DuckDuckGo.
- hardware2win 3y ago
  DDG uses Bing under the hood
  - Nicksil 3y ago
    >DDG uses Bing under the hood Bing is just one of many sources DuckDuckGo utilizes https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/sources/ https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/so...
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - ghastmaster 3y ago
      > When people search, we believe they’re really looking for answers, as opposed to just links I believe this as well for most people and most searches. I, however, am not most people. The vast majority of the time I want a link to sites that have what I am looking for. This is my biggest gripe with search engines and has been for a very long time. I used to be really good at finding pages I wanted by punching in the right words in the search. At some point in the mid 00's Google changed everything and I have failed to adapt fully.
ksec 3y ago
This is basically Samsung asking Google to pay up. Google needs to pay Apple / iOS for Default Search Engine, and paying Samsung for staying on Android with Google Search. Basically Google is being squeezed left and right. So the only way to increase revenue or profits to satisfy the money they spend on Apple and Samsung? More Ads on Youtube and Google Search. The more Ads they serve, the worse UX they have. All while completely fail to compete against AWS or Azure.
- seydor 3y ago
  google still owns android
  - pulse7 3y ago
    True, but Android is open-source and suppliers can replace default search engine - and other services - on it...
  - Zigurd 3y ago
    More precisely, Google makes AOSP, which is the basis for a licensed version of Android that includes a number of proprietary apps. Two things are not likely to happen: 1. Samsung will not give up on licensing Google proprietary package of apps. 2. Google will not yank Samsung's license. Google will absolutely tighten the screws on their future contracts to discourage these deals, as well as sweeping out crappy "customizations."
    - 0zemp1c 3y ago
      > as well as sweeping out crappy "customizations." huh? Samsung OneUI features have been making their way into mainstream AOSP...particularly the tablet-focused stuff there is no way Google will ever try to "strong arm" Samsung...Samsung is the Android market, the Pixel line is a rounding error and in no way a competitive threat
      - onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago
        Hmm... >40% of Samsung's net revenue is mobile devices. Only ~56% of Google's revenue is from Search ads - <50% of that comes from Android - and <35% of that comes from Samsung. <10% of Google's total revenue comes from Samsung devices >40% of Samsung's NET REVENUE comes from selling Android devices. It's almost as if Samsung is a lot more dependent on Google than the other way around. At the end of the day - the majority of people you default to Bing search are going to switch back to Google. Samsung will be lucky to get a meaningful amount of money. MSFT can't outbid Google because they can't make as much money from the searches as Google.
seydor 3y ago
Samsung has been trying to push that bixby thing on me but if it 's bing instead, i d gladly change
lasermike026 3y ago
Could this be because of GPT at OpenAI(MS).
hardware2win 3y ago
If Bing will manage to pull it off then the only conclusion to draw from this will be: never bet against Microsoft, lol.
dougmwne 3y ago
From my use of Bard, I think it’s main issue is poor alignment due to lack of RLHF dataset. Open AI has been curating its data set for years as it aggressively pushed to productization. Google never cared about getting its models into the hands of the public so is having to scramble. I think Google will catch up eventually, but not before doing major damage to its market share and partnerships.
overthrow 3y ago
I think the smarter move would be to integrate GPT-4 into Bixby. That's what finally got me to use Bing... it could probably get people to use Bixby too.
- b112 3y ago
  Bixby, the first key I disable, the first thing I adb uninstall on any samsung device. I cannot imagine every wanting to talk to any computing device.
  - cleanchit 3y ago
    all we need is a programmable voice assistant to which you can add custom voice commands that run your own programs.
Rels 3y ago
A lot of words without a lot of source or data. The only source linked in the article: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/16/technology/google-search-engine-ai.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/16/technology/google-search-... It's probably the only source at all, as every number in the sammobile article is also in the NYT, like the 160+ people working on Magi. As the sammobile article doesn't appear to do anything but regurgitate what is in the NYT article without any apparent validation on their side, the link should be changed to the NYT IMO, whose article seems at least based on actual internal messages from Google. I understand that the title isn't as attention grabbing though ("Google Devising Radical Search Changes to Beat Back A.I. Rivals").
throwaway4good 3y ago
Is Google paying Android phone manufacturers for having Google as default search engine similar how they are paying Apple?
dathinab 3y ago
Soon we have a Microsoft more power full then ever but less controlled and constrained by anti monopoly regulation then ever. - after google search degraded for a while bing is competive - MS has much influence and stack in (not really open) OpenAI - MS has with LinkedLn a relevant social network, sure it's work focused but increasingly used for non work usecases - MS controls 2 of the 6 relevant gaming platforms (XBox, PC -- the others are Switch, Playstation, iOS and Android), they happen to also be 2 of the 3 AAA gaming platforms (XBox, PC -- the other is Playstation) - MS owns a lot of game production - MS has the go to email solution for companies Outlook as part of Office365 - MS has what some call the best Calendar/schedule Meeting app, also part of Office365 - MS has the go to online meeting platform for companies (teams as part of Office365, through it succks) - MS has a competitive company chatting platform - MS competes with Google and Apple in the Cloud - MS has a not so competitive ad platform - MS has a semi competitive voice assistant which if integrated with ChatGPT tech could very well become very competitive very fast - MS doesn't have a phone OS, but a lot control over phone through MDM features integrated into teams/outlook etc. - MS has one of the main browsers (edge) with a lot of people happily explicitly opting for it or being coerced or tricked into using it (they lost that in the past but regained it). While it pains me its likely more relevant then Firefox by now. - MS sells PC/Laptop like hardware successfully, but not that competitive - one of the best standard consumer ergonomic keyboards is from MS - they still have one of the most widely used presentation and note taking applications - their database system is still around and sells, not sure why - they control both of the some of the most widely used IDEs (VS and VSCode) - they have some experience with AR/VR through I'm not sure about the competitiveness of current products from them - they made some of the main reasons why people tried out Linux go away by having WSL - .... I most likely forgot a lot I.e. all in all: MS is EVERYWHERE with constant faster growing power and control all through the tech space. If it keeps up that way MS will soon be both more powerful then Google and then it ever have been. If they had managed to properly land their phone OS things would be really scary now.
- Nephx 3y ago
  And they've invested billions into the development-scene, especially lately. Noteworthy; - Github with its new Copilot API to multiple IDE's (incl. third party) - Typescript and standards management - NPM, locking into the entire web2 ecosystem
abudabi123 3y ago
With the aim of making premium margins from hw/sw products better than Apple without Microsoft, the partnership of Google, Mercedes-Benz, Sony could go far with top cover and Nintendo's superpower patience and as a key point of difference promise to re-supply parts without short fast fashion half lives. I fail to understand how Microsoft gets away with huge market monopoly without correction from parliamentarians confining them to one third or two of industry dominance.
psuresh 3y ago
Microsoft Windows survived thanks to Apple on proprietary OS front by not licencing OS separately and Google on open source OS front by not pursuing desktop ChromeOS
traveler01 3y ago
Google constant failure astonish me. How a company with so much money, so many wonderful engineers can't produce a source of income other than the search engine? I kept reading news about Google's AI programs, how the hell was Microsoft with OpenAI that came up with the biggest hit in AI? Also, how does Google want people to use their new services if they keep closing them down after their "failure" (a.k.a Google completely forgeting about them and proceeding to close them down).
- beached_whale 3y ago
  It was a google paper that open ai is based on, no?
  - herval 3y ago
    that makes it even worse, doesn't it?
    - beached_whale 3y ago
      The knowledge being out there is better, how we will use it has a not so good history. As for google, maybe it was out of their control and the researchers had explicit rights to publish their work
- daydream 3y ago
  > How a company with so much money, so many wonderful engineers can't produce a source of income other than the search engine? It’s like the curse of oil. Google found a revenue stream early on that was so massive it covered up all their other sins. They dealt with their problems belatedly at best. Now that revenue stream is under attack and they are scrambling. To put it politely.
  - jack_riminton 3y ago
    Continuing with the oil analogy, I wonder if they'd have done better if they did something similar to what Norway did with their oil wealth (i.e. only spend a small percentage on the interest earned from oil). Perhaps they could've spent less on all of their moonshots and focussed solely on AI. Hindsight is 20/20 I guess.
dboreham 3y ago
How does this happen for me when I use Chrome on my Samsung phone?
Oras 3y ago
Looking at how Google managed to "launch" Bard, I do not see how they will convince Samsung from a tech perspective. Does anyone remember Bard? I hardly see anyone talking about it.
- tough 3y ago
  I think Samsung will mostly care about money here
AlexandrB 3y ago
Microsoft is a shark and they smell blood in the water right now. While I hate their products, I have to admire their decision making. For example, I think they see the threat that SteamDeck poses (Linux gaming becoming feasible) and are already working to head it off at the pass: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/04/handheld-mode-for-windows-could-make-it-work-better-on-steam-deck-style-pcs/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/04/handheld-mode-for-wi...
- hbn 3y ago
  I'm not sure that's a great example of quick-pivot defensive decision-making on Microsoft's part. It was just a leaked slide deck of a hackathon project done by a few employees. If the project actually gets greenlit and shipped, that's another thing.
  - jzb 3y ago
    Microsoft has often been good at the Vaporware / stall approach. If a competitor/underdog looks like they're getting traction, announce something similar even if it isn't available for a long time (or ever). If you can stall adoption for a few quarters you can catch up to or kill a competing product. Sigh.
    - postalrat 3y ago
      How is that going to help Microsoft here? You can build games that work with both windows and the steam deck. Why wait for Microsoft's handheld device?
- htag 3y ago
  Microsoft has always been a shark in the water. Maybe it was slightly less capable of killing blows during the Ballmer days.
mannyv 3y ago
With AI search, you won't have to go to the referenced page to read the content, which will kill the display ad business. How's google going to get around that?
- ChatGTP 3y ago
  Bing embeds ads, so no problem there.
post_break 3y ago
Apple should do the same thing now, twist the knife.
- DeathMetal3000 3y ago
  There’s 15 billion reasons they won’t.
freediver 3y ago
Now we have Kagi and Magi, lovely. Btw Magi was already a search engine - magi.com and it seems it is suspending services now, wonder if domain is being bought by Google?
hn8305823 3y ago
The inevitable result of years (decades?) of rest and vest
devmor 3y ago
Both major search engines are utterly useless when compared to the Google of years ago, but anecdotally I do find Bing more reliable lately for actually finding what I'm looking for.
arthurofbabylon 3y ago
As an advertiser, it occurs to me that google severely dropped the ball. I've been waiting to hand them money, but they refuse to be sufficiently organized to onboard new, non-megacorp advertisers. At first glance that makes sense: prioritize onboarding large businesses with large budgets. With a second thought, this approach seems foolish: their ad network is an ecosystem, and the X00,000 businesses like mine that are excluded would be an enormous boost to ad bids, ad targeting, and ad quality – 3 of the 4 things that Google breathes (the fourth being traffic). If google screwed this up, what else are they screwing up?
- collaborative 3y ago
  Don't hand them money. Ads only makes sense for companies with money to burn (mega corps)
chankstein38 3y ago
Maybe an unpopular opinion but it feels like Google is near useless anymore. Between results containing outdated or broken links to empty discussions, and ads being their main priority as well as "fuzzy search results" where you can search for one thing and get something completely unrelated because Google decided you also meant to search for something else that is possibly contextually adjacent, I can't really get good results from it anymore. I mean, I can still get answers for simple questions but when it comes to anything unique or complex I usually just get frustrated and go to duckduckgo or something else. ChatGPT now adays mostly. Sure ChatGPT can hallucinate but Google's results rely on some random person somewhere to have properly answered something. The reality of that is so many of the "answers" I find are discussions on forums between a bunch of random people who have no real credentials or factual answers but instead just opinions based on something else they read on Google. People google something, read the google blurb about it at the top of the results, then go answer other people's questions. I honestly think Google is losing favor at this point. I've even been considering moving away from Android because the OS just feels like the Walmart iOS now adays. It features the same problems but in a way that nothing is polished versus iOS. Google needs to stop just following everyone else. Everything now adays feels like the ol Google+ move. "Ah, successful product someone else made, let's remake it and name it google something!"
- kmlx 3y ago
  > Sure ChatGPT can hallucinate but Google's results rely on some random person somewhere to have properly answered something. i don't know about your experience with chatgpt, but to me it's been untrustworthy. so much so that every answer i get needs to be double checked against google and that "random person".
  - chankstein38 3y ago
    That's fair I can definitely agree that but my point was more that neither is a very trustworthy source anyway. It's the same way I'd double check one source versus another. It's just easier to start with GPT at this point because at least I know it'll just answer based on what it has been trained with versus special interests. One example I've used is the question "Is Fix A Flat ok to use in tires?" the results are from the company that makes fix a flat saying basically "Yes obviously" while you then see tire companies and repair shops giving you mixed responses. Then you have the third group being just people who have heard from one of the first 2 groups. People are worried about AI degrading the quality of information over time, learning from itself. We're basically there thanks to people caring more about being right than being correct and never doing their own leg work.
snowwrestler 3y ago
Apple used this tactic to put pressure on Google: 2013: Apple Makes Bing The “Default Search Engine” For Siri https://searchengineland.com/apple-makes-bing-the-default-search-engine-for-siri-162736 https://searchengineland.com/apple-makes-bing-the-default-se... 2017: Apple switches from Bing to Google for Siri web search results on iOS and Spotlight on Mac https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/25/apple-switches-from-bing-to-google-for-siri-web-search-results-on-ios-and-spotlight-on-mac/ https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/25/apple-switches-from-bing-t... Hard to know if the AI features of Bing are the key factor here for Samsung, or just a handy excuse for Samsung to renegotiate pricing with Google.
spicyramen_ 3y ago
[dead]
sdze 3y ago
Who cares? People will quickly setup their own default search engine. And I guess it will be Google. Google is a household name. Nobody in the "real" world cares about this AI crap.
qwertox 3y ago
Up until ChatGPT, Bing was meaningless to me; Google Search served all my needs. I never had a reason to look over to Bing. The only contact I had with it was when something embedded their maps. But now, with the AI integration, even when I tried it and left disappointed, Bing is starting to sound interesting. Then there's how they are starting to integrate AI into their other products and putting a lot of good effort in visual design. Their products look modern and polished, while Google is "still the same old" with their Material Design. I know they are the most capable engineers and that behind the scenes they are building the best quality soft- and hardware, but if they don't start to focus on the user again they will no longer be the titan they used to be.
- htag 3y ago
  > But now, with the AI integration, even when I tried it and left disappointed, Bing is starting to sound interesting. When I try a new feature, and am disappointed, I think marketing overhyped it and lose interest. Why do you think ChatGPT + Search is a good combo, even after you were disappointed when trying it?
  - qwertox 3y ago
    They are showing that they have a strong interest in including it. Sure, it still isn't where I'd like it to be, but what does Google have to offer? Bard is US-only, so not reachable for me, I don't even know how or if it is integrated into Google Search. They'd have a bigger potential in enriching their search with AI features, better search, probably a better AI. At least from what they have been publishing during these past two years, they seem to have gathered a lot of experience with AI. In regards to Bing, I felt like you.com had a slightly better AI integration. What ChatGPT lacks are links to related websites. For example, give me a links to the documentation of the `.into()` trait [0] instead of "only" explaining it to me. [0] https://doc.rust-lang.org/std/convert/trait.Into.html https://doc.rust-lang.org/std/convert/trait.Into.html
    - hbn 3y ago
      > What ChatGPT lacks are links to related websites. For example, give me a links to the documentation of the `.into()` trait [0] instead of "only" explaining it to me. In the recent announcement for plugins they showed off a web browsing plugin that allows ChatGPT to search the web, read content, and return results with sources cited. https://openai.com/blog/chatgpt-plugins#browsing https://openai.com/blog/chatgpt-plugins#browsing
ur-whale 3y ago
The problem with Google is very simple: they have become entirely incapable of creating new products (specifically: stuff that people actually want). Most of the tech. that underpins OpenAI's stuff has been invented at Google, and quite a long time ago. They've been sitting on it, not doing anything with it, and even when their most direct competitor comes to take a huge pound of flesh out using stuff they created, all they manage to do is put out a lame subpar competitor (bard). Things this situation evokes for me: - Google plus - Kodak - Xerox
- bagacrap 3y ago
  But Microsoft can create new products?
HacklesRaised 3y ago
Out of the frying pan, into the fire!
rvba 3y ago
> Google Magi’s initial launch will be only in the US, with a maximum of one million users. Later, by the year’s end, it will expand to 30 million users. It seems they never learned from the failed launches like Google Wave or Google Plus. Where you couldnt use them and by the time you and your friends got them the hype allready wore off.
m3kw9 3y ago
People want LLM leveraged search, and Google isn't delivering.
- qrck13 3y ago
  I think majority of "ordinary" users just what the search results when they need them, not really caring about the technology beingb used behind the scene. And here bing is still often interior to b Google, LLM add some fun factor but factual quality actually goes down as GPT is known for making up facts
jdlyga 3y ago
Google got too corporate and played things too safe for too long. Imagine if Google released Bard 1 year ago.
DueDilligence 3y ago
[dead]
rolph 3y ago
Google needs platforms. platforms only need to browse web. platforms wear the pants.
kernal 3y ago
Google should respond by charging Samsung a healthy licensing fee to use Google services and receive security and OS updates. They should also re-evaluate their Android licensing model and make it free for non commercial applications only.
newbie578 3y ago
Love to see a title like this. Would love to be a fly inside the Google execs offices right now. I do wonder if they are confused, why are their factory workers, i.e. leet code solvers not able to innovate? I find this hilarious and positively validating. Building a tech product is not about being able to memorise an algorithm or knowing how to sort an array in the fastest way possible. They are stuck in the past. You will not ask a today's Software Engineer how does a bootloader function, yet the big tech companies keep asking irrelevant questions blown by time and progress.
anonkogudhyfhhf 3y ago
Good. Samsung is removing that blogspam of a search
qrck13 3y ago
For me that would be a reason to avoid buying Samsung from now on. Can't stand bings UI overloaded with visuals that only distract you.
Tempest1981 3y ago
How are people pronouncing "Magi"? Same as GIF?
- theonemind 3y ago
  Do you mean are people going both ways? I don’t think gif is settled. I’m in the soft G camp on gif. I think magi is already an English word with soft G, so I don’t know if there’s any room for controversy on this one.
  - saulpw 3y ago
    The gif debate is over, it's pronounced like gin or git.
natch 3y ago
Employees being both arrogant and lazy is quite a corrosive dynamic for a company.
nstart 3y ago
A quick note to say that this article is mostly a rehash of the New York Times article it references as its source. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/16/technology/google-search-engine-ai.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/16/technology/google-search-...
29athrowaway 3y ago
They will become the next Nokia.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
thexumaker 3y ago
lol I'm officially moving off of samsung if this happens. No way in hell I'm using a shitty bing browser
AniseAbyss 3y ago
[dead]
mrkramer 3y ago
Time to shower Samsung with cash.
NayamAmarshe 3y ago
I don't know how Bing is any better. I tried Bing today and the results are awful! The search results page is very bloated and there's too much going on everywhere. Too much irrelevant information. What surprises me is that they managed to make content look like ads, irrelevant and noisy. Comparing the screens to Brave Search, I'm surprised how good Brave Search is. Not only are the results much better, but the UI is super-clean! There's only digestible information and no bloat.
- imperialdrive 3y ago
  Yah, it is really hard to imagine Bing cleaning itself up. No way users don't backlash on Samsung the moment they notice the gunky search results. And holy smokes, Teams, it's falling apart every new release. Once users have enough of that experience they're really going to wonder why they dove in head first.
  - sebzim4500 3y ago
    >Teams, it's falling apart every new release I've never used Teams, but it is weird to me that non-tech people seem to really like it while tech people hate it. Is it simply that the tech people are comparing it to slack but the non-tech people are comparing it to email/skype/etc.?
- nomel 3y ago
  In the crevices of search space, I get more duplicates with Bing than with Google. But, I do get duplicates, with both, which is insanely infuriating.
Animats 3y ago
This may be a Myspace moment for Google. The competition is now better. There's another huge issue. Google is an ad business. That meshes well with search, and not so well with question answering system on mobile. What's ChatGPT supposed to say? "But first, this word from our sponsor?". A big change in the ecosystem is coming. These next generation systems are being set up as walled gardens. Bing FAQ: "You’ll need to use the Microsoft Edge browser and sign in with your Microsoft account to access all the capabilities of the new Bing." Google is talking about limiting the number of users of their chat system, which implies they are tying usage to login. This is a huge change to the business model. It's going to be about owning the customer relationship, not serving ads.
- luckydata 3y ago
  Is it better? It's flashy and interesting, but I don't think ChatGPT brings any actual value to the search use case. Other stuff, sure.
  - Animats 3y ago
    It does on phones, where content has to be slimmed down.
ivanmontillam 3y ago
I think that Search Engine Optimization as we know it is also going to change forever as well. Don't be surprised if we start seeing ads like "If you don't appear in Bing/GPT, you don't exist;" we are now in the era of AI-based Search Engine Optimization, or whatever term you want to put it on. The end result is that the BigAI must know about you and talk about you. You must position yourself in the mind of ChatGPT or similar. EDIT: How about "Prompt Search Term Optimization" (PSTO)?
kazinator 3y ago
Could it be that Google is pissing off Samsung with their garbage Android releases whose most visible effect is that of actively ruining the user experience? I can imagine that creates work and headaches for Samsung, and other vendors.
cleandreams 3y ago
I have begun to find bing search invaluable. It's annoying to use google although I don't even like the bing user interface for AI search. Much too hard to get to. I don't want a single extra keystroke.
layer8 3y ago
Magi? What happened to Bard?
JohnFen 3y ago
It makes sense, though. Google search is terrible. Bing isn't great, either. But Bing probably charges less, and if there's no real quality difference between the two, why pay more?
- jsnell 3y ago
  You've got the flow of money inverted... Phone manufacturers don't pay for the right of getting to set a search engine as the default. They expect to be paid.
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    Ah, right. My brain farted.
tomcam 3y ago
A gentle reminder that there is no proof of the “Google in shock“ assertion. The fact that an anonymous source maybe claimed it to someone at the New York Times has essentially zero credibility. Until an attributed source at Google says something like “we were shocked“ or “we were gobsmacked, etc.“ that’s all just third-hand information reported fourth-hand.
naves 3y ago
I can imaging Apple mulling about the same for iOS. Microsoft is on a roll and they have the money to challenge Google’s default place in our pockets.
andrewinardeer 3y ago
It's going to be wild when Bing Maps is superior to Google Maps.
ekvintroj 3y ago
I wouldn't be surprised if they do that, Sammy already forces us to live with MS related bloatware on their phones and tablets.
mensetmanusman 3y ago
Bing still gives me poor results when I am in science search mode.

624 points by carlycue 3y ago

I mean it is kind of nuts. I didn't have "pretty much switch entirely to Bing" on my 2023 search Bingo card, but here we are.

detourdog 3y ago
My computer literate but non-technical wife just noticed yesterday that google searches are a waste of time compared to ChatGPT. Over the course of about six hours it went from this thing is amazing to this stupid thing knows I'm on a Mac but still refers to F11 keys. She even got ChatGPT to re-enforce she was on Mac and didn't have an F11 key but never got a substitute key to use for Mac users. (F11 is volume down on my Mac keyboard.)
- ralfd 3y ago
  What does F11 do?
  - tough 3y ago
    I dunno but in a mac kb you just press fn (down left) while the special function keys, to have them act as regular -ol f1--12 keys
  - detourdog 3y ago
    Like I say it's volume down on the Mac keyboard. Why she was interrogating ChatGPT I don't know. I know she started using it to get multi-state reading correlations... then she was talking about get it to excel work. After that I imagine ChatGPT told her to use the F11 for something and she noticed she didn't have one. I believe at that point she started to try to get ChatGPT to tell her which key was the F11 on a Mac. She told it she was on Mac and didn't have an F11 key. ChatGPT agreed she was on a Mac and didn't have one. I believe that is far as the conversation went. It was interesting to me becuase it is commonly available information but the answer just couldn't happen.
steve1977 3y ago
Bingo… I see what you did there…

tapoxi 3y ago

What's Sundar's goal for Google? They seem to be aimless since he took the helm.

Palpatineli 3y ago
Especially compared to Nadella, who shows that someone not from the the founders’ circle, a corporate ladder climber, can lead an IT company with great vision too.
- foobiekr 3y ago
  Microsoft dealt with with the too-rich-to-work problem and the founders-and-earlies-lost-interest problems in the 80s and 90s. "FYIFV" (despite being a bit of a tech urban legend) and "Quietly Vesting Disease" (QVD) and all that. They're an actual grown up company that knows how to build and vet leaders. Google is not a grown up company - it runs the way a 2nd generation dynastic family runs their businesses - haphazard and sloppy and entirely surviving because of a cash cow and nothing else. Plus, they have a fairly substantial crew with "rest and vest" as a mantra at least for the folks I knew there prior to 2008..
m00dy 3y ago
He will be fired very soon
- throwntoday 3y ago
  Hopefully. I can't think of a single product that has grown because of him so much as in spite of him.
  - Zigurd 3y ago
    How is that different from everything after Google Search. Alphabet is even structured around the idea of not being able to pick winners. I can discern some long term strategy in Android Automotive and Waymo, but nothing is sacred when it comes to cutting off products that are not growing.

ocdtrekkie 3y ago

Samsung has done this before, and Google has multiple times made various offers and incentives intended to "encourage" Samsung not to. Because a huge portion of the Android monopoly will leave Google Search when this happens. Stuff like OEMs getting a cut of Play Store revenue are mechanics done to avoid this. There's a pretty good chance Samsung is just negotiating for better terms, kinda like carriage disputes for TV networks.

tazjin 3y ago
Yeah, for Google this is existential, for Microsoft it's not. Google will go a lot further than Microsoft will to keep Samsung on their side.
rippercushions 3y ago
For comparison, Google pays Apple an estimated $15 billion a year to be the default engine on Safari. https://9to5mac.com/2021/08/25/analysts-google-to-pay-apple-15-billion-to-remain-default-safari-search-engine-in-2021/ https://9to5mac.com/2021/08/25/analysts-google-to-pay-apple-...
- ocdtrekkie 3y ago
  Indeed. Though for Android OEMs, "paying" for Google's app suite is considered part of the equation. It's less of an incentive for Samsung though since they have their own replacements for most Google apps ready to go.

roenxi 3y ago

1) "It will reportedly be known as Project ‘Magi’ and is said to provide a far more personalized experience than the company’s current service." That is super creepy. Google knows a lot about you, and now it is using that knowledge to really put you in a filter bubble. Imagine this plus engagement metrics. 2) So much for that monopoly a lot of people thought Google had. Turns out they're still as exposed to market pressure as they ever were.

lightbendover 3y ago
The last thing anyone should ever want from a search engine is different results from the next person over.
- mattw2121 3y ago
  I strongly disagree. I would love for a search engine to, intelligently, cater the results based on my previous search history and patterns.
  - mgkimsal 3y ago
    I would love for that ability to be easily determined visually, and easily toggled on/off. A big "personalized" and "generic" toggle switch at the top would be useful.
  - starkd 3y ago
    I don't think the ability to serve up specialized content is the concern here. It is the fragmentation that results when we no longer have a shared reality or a consistent set of results in the population. Results specific to any one person is terrifying in some of its implications.
  - maleldil 3y ago
    That's how you create bubbles.
    - ceejayoz 3y ago

kramerger 3y ago

Wait, people actually use the android search box? It's usually the first thing I remove

phpnode 3y ago
Normal people just use the defaults, the idea of choosing a web browser or changing the default search engine is completely alien to most.
- zirgs 3y ago
  You can't even change the browser on iOS. Apple forces all browsers to use the same rendering engine under the hood.
ThrowawayTestr 3y ago
How do you search on your phone? Open the web browser, navigate to google.com and enter your query?
- surgical_fire 3y ago
  Not GP, but I open the browser (in my case Vivaldi) and type my query in the address box. My default search engine on Vivaldi is DDG, it issues a query to DDG. Do you actually use the default google shit widget to do web searches?
- adithyassekhar 3y ago
  Opening the widget is useless because it shows the result in the Google app (a 350MB monster) and when you click to open a result it opens in app. You can't have your browser's features, You can't open multiple results in multiple tabs you need to go back each time. A better option is to add the browser's search widget on the home screen, it takes you straight to the address bar where you can enter your query. All modern browsers support searching from the address bar, no need to go to google.com

nailer 3y ago

Edit: looks like I'm wrong, see IceWreck's reply below. Original comment: my understanding is that this means Google will deny their customers access to Google Play, Photos and other first party Google apps. Samsung has replacements for some of these but not all of them.

IceWreck 3y ago
Nope, to access play services you have to add the powered by android logo and preinstall a minimum set of required apps (including the google search app), but afaik nothing saying google has to be the default search engine.
- robertlagrant 3y ago
  Perhaps that will change in response to this.
  - darkwater 3y ago
    But that would be anti-competitive, right?
    - robertlagrant 3y ago
      I agree. Probably. Microsoft got hit for this, although of course changing browser is almost as easy as changing search engine. The question is: why isn't it anticompetitive to have Bing as the default?
  - ThrowawayR2 3y ago
    Seems unlikely. Samsung would justifiably paint that as anti-competitive / monopolistic and the last thing Google wants is more scrutiny from various government regulators right now.
Zigurd 3y ago
Android's early commercialization actively encouraged OEMs to "customize" Android for at least two reasons: Android product maturity was questionable, and what else are phone OEM product managers going to do? Now that "Google experience" is generally cleaner and better than OEMs' customizations, Google is struggling to put the toothpaste back in the tube. It is very damaging to Android as a product because OEMs are slow to issue updates and won't continue updates beyond three years, in most cases. I doubt Google will strong-arm Samsung over this. They need Samsung more than Samsung needs the Play Store and other "Google experience" apps.

pelagicAustral 3y ago

I've been using Bing for a few weeks now it is not all the way there yet but so far the experience is more gratifying than Google. The results seem to be better and there is less ads on top the search results. Their AI integration is also well accomplished. No complains there...

sempron64 3y ago
Anecdotally, their actual search results have sucked for me. For example, I searched for “narrowest cars with 6 or more seats”, and Bing’s results were terrible and irrelevant. The AI version gave me some acceptable results but very few. Google returned pages of relevant results from different years.
- Sindisil 3y ago
  When I try that search string on DuckDuckGo, I see what looks to be pretty decent results, FWIW.
  - manquer 3y ago
    DDG is backed by the bing index
    - Sindisil 3y ago
      Only partially. Also, even if it were just a Dr front for Bing, it doesn't change that I got perfectly reasonable results for the search string said to return unusable results from Bing, so
      - vitorgrs 3y ago
        Not partially, totally now. They used Yandex before, but they stopped using it after the war I believe.
- vitorgrs 3y ago
  You probably tried on balanced mode, that is shitty. Tried now on Creative and seems... very good? https://imgur.com/a/xekxNAh https://imgur.com/a/xekxNAh

jimmar 3y ago

This sounds similar to Walmart saying they'll stop taking Visa. Samsung would be dumb not to at least threaten moving away from Google, even if they had no intention to change. It's a negotiating tactic, one that has more teeth in recent months because Google's competitors are finally showing a real challenge.

muyuu 3y ago
They'd only be moving away from Google search not GMS. In my recent experience, Google Search is mediocre at best and perhaps worse than Bing most of the time. So it's not a massive gamble.

simula67 3y ago

I always thought that Google made a big blunder by not encroaching upon Microsoft's turf more aggressively. They should have tried to make a better desktop OS (just buy Canonical or something) and then eat into Microsoft Office market share by releasing Google Office for Desktop. Wait for an opportunity to emerge and then pounce. This is precisely what Microsoft did to Google. They had Bing running in the background for years losing truckloads of money. Now that AI has upset the applecart, they can use Bing to choke off Google's airsupply. One of the reasons for Google getting so good early on was that they had oodles of usage data to test and improve their search functionality forming a positive feedback loop. Now, with deals such as this, Microsoft will have more data to tune their engine while Google is left on the sidelines. Let's just hope that the AI driven search revolution does not produce a monopoly.

chickenpotpie 3y ago
ChromeOS and Google Docs?
PlutoIsAPlanet 3y ago
> just buy Canonical or something Canonical doesn't really make any things that are considered part of a desktop OS. Ubuntu is just a package (and some argue a bad one) of things made by other people. There's very little value in the Linux desktop and I don't see that changing anytime soon. You're probably best re-inventing the wheel if you want a Windows competitor, like Google did with ChromeOS.
- pjmlp 3y ago
  They surely do, its reason to fame is being the best distribution supporting OEM devices without religion regarding open source drivers.
  - lillecarl 3y ago
    They're using a package manager that a lot of people are comfortable with, they give away their packages without subscriptions and they work with some OEMs. But in reality, the hardware support is in the kernel, so any distro with a more up2date kernel would fare at least as good. As for the software Canonical produces, I'm not great friends with anything. Snap is crap, Netplan is just a renderer to systemd-networkd or networkmanager, MAAS is a pile of garbage, Juju never caught on, upstart failed, Unity failed etc... We're running a lot of Canonical at work and I'm not particularly impressed.

jzombie 3y ago

I can't tell if this Magi project is supposed to be an iteration of Bard or something new.

eoooooooo 3y ago

Some interesting dynamics at play here if true. Google basically maintains Android to get people to use Google services on it, so Samsung switching to Bing would eliminate Google's incentive to develop Android. Samsung is also by FAR the largest Android OEM and holds almost as much power over the platform as Google just from the sheer amount of Android devices that they ship.

amelius 3y ago
> Samsung switching to Bing would eliminate Google's incentive to develop Android They still have quite some apps on Android that they can use to extract data from users and send ads, e.g. youtube, gmail, maps, etc.
Hippocrates 3y ago
Pretty interesting when put that way. Why DID google develop android??? Oh yeah.

eclipsetheworld 3y ago

This article seems a little hyperbolic since I assume the default search engine will simply be the highest bidder...

devnullbrain 3y ago

This is a very Samsung move: making their premium product feel cheap and cynical to users for easy money.

bfrog 3y ago

Too busy asking people to invert binary trees and not looking for people that know how to make products that make money.

xiphias2 3y ago
Actually if you have been really looking at Google's management, just the opposite has happened. Eric Schmidt, who is an exceptionally rare talent understanding engineering, business and politics at the same time was changed to a person who just want to show more ads (the product that makes money) with 0 engineering background.
- phendrenad2 3y ago
  I think you're both right. Change comes from above and reflects from below. "We hire the best" has become "we hire the best at passing a generic set of tests" because they want hiring to be a thoughtless, automated process.
  - xiphias2 3y ago
    I have been there and seen the destruction (all meetings were about political correctness, we weren't able to discuss anything that was really important). The best are / were there before they quit to create companies, like OpenAI because it was easier than changing management. Also I bet Sam Altman would be able to reverse a binary tree (it's a trivial recursion) even if he was never at Google: it's just part of being a professional programmer.
    - phendrenad2 3y ago
      FAANG really only asks how to mirror a binary tree in interviews?
      - bfrog 3y ago
        no, its a joke because the creator of homebrew couldn't do it and didn't get the job at google, despite making something immensely useful. There's also this gem of how google wanted one of the creators of C to take a C test https://www.theregister.com/2010/04/21/ken_thompson_take_our_test/ https://www.theregister.com/2010/04/21/ken_thompson_take_our...

shever73 3y ago

This is hardly surprising. I never normally use Google, but was asked to check some SEO using Google search the other day. The results were a dumpster fire of sponsored content, “other people also search for” and stuff that was largely irrelevant. I had to go onto the second and third pages to find anything even remotely close to what I wanted.

zdragnar 3y ago
It must depend heavily on what you are searching for. There are a lot of things I dislike about Google, but their search results are consistently better than Bing in my experience.

electrosphere 3y ago

Shame not DuckDuckGo.

hardware2win 3y ago
DDG uses Bing under the hood
- Nicksil 3y ago
  >DDG uses Bing under the hood Bing is just one of many sources DuckDuckGo utilizes https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/sources/ https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/so...
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - ghastmaster 3y ago
    > When people search, we believe they’re really looking for answers, as opposed to just links I believe this as well for most people and most searches. I, however, am not most people. The vast majority of the time I want a link to sites that have what I am looking for. This is my biggest gripe with search engines and has been for a very long time. I used to be really good at finding pages I wanted by punching in the right words in the search. At some point in the mid 00's Google changed everything and I have failed to adapt fully.

ksec 3y ago

This is basically Samsung asking Google to pay up. Google needs to pay Apple / iOS for Default Search Engine, and paying Samsung for staying on Android with Google Search. Basically Google is being squeezed left and right. So the only way to increase revenue or profits to satisfy the money they spend on Apple and Samsung? More Ads on Youtube and Google Search. The more Ads they serve, the worse UX they have. All while completely fail to compete against AWS or Azure.

seydor 3y ago
google still owns android
- pulse7 3y ago
  True, but Android is open-source and suppliers can replace default search engine - and other services - on it...
- Zigurd 3y ago
  More precisely, Google makes AOSP, which is the basis for a licensed version of Android that includes a number of proprietary apps. Two things are not likely to happen: 1. Samsung will not give up on licensing Google proprietary package of apps. 2. Google will not yank Samsung's license. Google will absolutely tighten the screws on their future contracts to discourage these deals, as well as sweeping out crappy "customizations."
  - 0zemp1c 3y ago
    > as well as sweeping out crappy "customizations." huh? Samsung OneUI features have been making their way into mainstream AOSP...particularly the tablet-focused stuff there is no way Google will ever try to "strong arm" Samsung...Samsung is the Android market, the Pixel line is a rounding error and in no way a competitive threat
    - onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago
      Hmm... >40% of Samsung's net revenue is mobile devices. Only ~56% of Google's revenue is from Search ads - <50% of that comes from Android - and <35% of that comes from Samsung. <10% of Google's total revenue comes from Samsung devices >40% of Samsung's NET REVENUE comes from selling Android devices. It's almost as if Samsung is a lot more dependent on Google than the other way around. At the end of the day - the majority of people you default to Bing search are going to switch back to Google. Samsung will be lucky to get a meaningful amount of money. MSFT can't outbid Google because they can't make as much money from the searches as Google.

seydor 3y ago

Samsung has been trying to push that bixby thing on me but if it 's bing instead, i d gladly change

lasermike026 3y ago

Could this be because of GPT at OpenAI(MS).

hardware2win 3y ago

If Bing will manage to pull it off then the only conclusion to draw from this will be: never bet against Microsoft, lol.

dougmwne 3y ago

From my use of Bard, I think it’s main issue is poor alignment due to lack of RLHF dataset. Open AI has been curating its data set for years as it aggressively pushed to productization. Google never cared about getting its models into the hands of the public so is having to scramble. I think Google will catch up eventually, but not before doing major damage to its market share and partnerships.

overthrow 3y ago

I think the smarter move would be to integrate GPT-4 into Bixby. That's what finally got me to use Bing... it could probably get people to use Bixby too.

b112 3y ago
Bixby, the first key I disable, the first thing I adb uninstall on any samsung device. I cannot imagine every wanting to talk to any computing device.
- cleanchit 3y ago
  all we need is a programmable voice assistant to which you can add custom voice commands that run your own programs.

Rels 3y ago

A lot of words without a lot of source or data. The only source linked in the article: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/16/technology/google-search-engine-ai.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/16/technology/google-search-... It's probably the only source at all, as every number in the sammobile article is also in the NYT, like the 160+ people working on Magi. As the sammobile article doesn't appear to do anything but regurgitate what is in the NYT article without any apparent validation on their side, the link should be changed to the NYT IMO, whose article seems at least based on actual internal messages from Google. I understand that the title isn't as attention grabbing though ("Google Devising Radical Search Changes to Beat Back A.I. Rivals").

throwaway4good 3y ago

Is Google paying Android phone manufacturers for having Google as default search engine similar how they are paying Apple?

dathinab 3y ago

Soon we have a Microsoft more power full then ever but less controlled and constrained by anti monopoly regulation then ever. - after google search degraded for a while bing is competive - MS has much influence and stack in (not really open) OpenAI - MS has with LinkedLn a relevant social network, sure it's work focused but increasingly used for non work usecases - MS controls 2 of the 6 relevant gaming platforms (XBox, PC -- the others are Switch, Playstation, iOS and Android), they happen to also be 2 of the 3 AAA gaming platforms (XBox, PC -- the other is Playstation) - MS owns a lot of game production - MS has the go to email solution for companies Outlook as part of Office365 - MS has what some call the best Calendar/schedule Meeting app, also part of Office365 - MS has the go to online meeting platform for companies (teams as part of Office365, through it succks) - MS has a competitive company chatting platform - MS competes with Google and Apple in the Cloud - MS has a not so competitive ad platform - MS has a semi competitive voice assistant which if integrated with ChatGPT tech could very well become very competitive very fast - MS doesn't have a phone OS, but a lot control over phone through MDM features integrated into teams/outlook etc. - MS has one of the main browsers (edge) with a lot of people happily explicitly opting for it or being coerced or tricked into using it (they lost that in the past but regained it). While it pains me its likely more relevant then Firefox by now. - MS sells PC/Laptop like hardware successfully, but not that competitive - one of the best standard consumer ergonomic keyboards is from MS - they still have one of the most widely used presentation and note taking applications - their database system is still around and sells, not sure why - they control both of the some of the most widely used IDEs (VS and VSCode) - they have some experience with AR/VR through I'm not sure about the competitiveness of current products from them - they made some of the main reasons why people tried out Linux go away by having WSL - .... I most likely forgot a lot I.e. all in all: MS is EVERYWHERE with constant faster growing power and control all through the tech space. If it keeps up that way MS will soon be both more powerful then Google and then it ever have been. If they had managed to properly land their phone OS things would be really scary now.

Nephx 3y ago
And they've invested billions into the development-scene, especially lately. Noteworthy; - Github with its new Copilot API to multiple IDE's (incl. third party) - Typescript and standards management - NPM, locking into the entire web2 ecosystem

abudabi123 3y ago

With the aim of making premium margins from hw/sw products better than Apple without Microsoft, the partnership of Google, Mercedes-Benz, Sony could go far with top cover and Nintendo's superpower patience and as a key point of difference promise to re-supply parts without short fast fashion half lives. I fail to understand how Microsoft gets away with huge market monopoly without correction from parliamentarians confining them to one third or two of industry dominance.

psuresh 3y ago

Microsoft Windows survived thanks to Apple on proprietary OS front by not licencing OS separately and Google on open source OS front by not pursuing desktop ChromeOS

traveler01 3y ago

Google constant failure astonish me. How a company with so much money, so many wonderful engineers can't produce a source of income other than the search engine? I kept reading news about Google's AI programs, how the hell was Microsoft with OpenAI that came up with the biggest hit in AI? Also, how does Google want people to use their new services if they keep closing them down after their "failure" (a.k.a Google completely forgeting about them and proceeding to close them down).

beached_whale 3y ago
It was a google paper that open ai is based on, no?
- herval 3y ago
  that makes it even worse, doesn't it?
  - beached_whale 3y ago
    The knowledge being out there is better, how we will use it has a not so good history. As for google, maybe it was out of their control and the researchers had explicit rights to publish their work
daydream 3y ago
> How a company with so much money, so many wonderful engineers can't produce a source of income other than the search engine? It’s like the curse of oil. Google found a revenue stream early on that was so massive it covered up all their other sins. They dealt with their problems belatedly at best. Now that revenue stream is under attack and they are scrambling. To put it politely.
- jack_riminton 3y ago
  Continuing with the oil analogy, I wonder if they'd have done better if they did something similar to what Norway did with their oil wealth (i.e. only spend a small percentage on the interest earned from oil). Perhaps they could've spent less on all of their moonshots and focussed solely on AI. Hindsight is 20/20 I guess.

dboreham 3y ago

How does this happen for me when I use Chrome on my Samsung phone?

Oras 3y ago

Looking at how Google managed to "launch" Bard, I do not see how they will convince Samsung from a tech perspective. Does anyone remember Bard? I hardly see anyone talking about it.

tough 3y ago
I think Samsung will mostly care about money here

AlexandrB 3y ago

Microsoft is a shark and they smell blood in the water right now. While I hate their products, I have to admire their decision making. For example, I think they see the threat that SteamDeck poses (Linux gaming becoming feasible) and are already working to head it off at the pass: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/04/handheld-mode-for-windows-could-make-it-work-better-on-steam-deck-style-pcs/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/04/handheld-mode-for-wi...

hbn 3y ago
I'm not sure that's a great example of quick-pivot defensive decision-making on Microsoft's part. It was just a leaked slide deck of a hackathon project done by a few employees. If the project actually gets greenlit and shipped, that's another thing.
- jzb 3y ago
  Microsoft has often been good at the Vaporware / stall approach. If a competitor/underdog looks like they're getting traction, announce something similar even if it isn't available for a long time (or ever). If you can stall adoption for a few quarters you can catch up to or kill a competing product. Sigh.
  - postalrat 3y ago
    How is that going to help Microsoft here? You can build games that work with both windows and the steam deck. Why wait for Microsoft's handheld device?
htag 3y ago
Microsoft has always been a shark in the water. Maybe it was slightly less capable of killing blows during the Ballmer days.

mannyv 3y ago

With AI search, you won't have to go to the referenced page to read the content, which will kill the display ad business. How's google going to get around that?

ChatGTP 3y ago
Bing embeds ads, so no problem there.

post_break 3y ago

Apple should do the same thing now, twist the knife.

DeathMetal3000 3y ago
There’s 15 billion reasons they won’t.

freediver 3y ago

Now we have Kagi and Magi, lovely. Btw Magi was already a search engine - magi.com and it seems it is suspending services now, wonder if domain is being bought by Google?

hn8305823 3y ago

The inevitable result of years (decades?) of rest and vest

devmor 3y ago

Both major search engines are utterly useless when compared to the Google of years ago, but anecdotally I do find Bing more reliable lately for actually finding what I'm looking for.

arthurofbabylon 3y ago

As an advertiser, it occurs to me that google severely dropped the ball. I've been waiting to hand them money, but they refuse to be sufficiently organized to onboard new, non-megacorp advertisers. At first glance that makes sense: prioritize onboarding large businesses with large budgets. With a second thought, this approach seems foolish: their ad network is an ecosystem, and the X00,000 businesses like mine that are excluded would be an enormous boost to ad bids, ad targeting, and ad quality – 3 of the 4 things that Google breathes (the fourth being traffic). If google screwed this up, what else are they screwing up?

collaborative 3y ago
Don't hand them money. Ads only makes sense for companies with money to burn (mega corps)

chankstein38 3y ago

Maybe an unpopular opinion but it feels like Google is near useless anymore. Between results containing outdated or broken links to empty discussions, and ads being their main priority as well as "fuzzy search results" where you can search for one thing and get something completely unrelated because Google decided you also meant to search for something else that is possibly contextually adjacent, I can't really get good results from it anymore. I mean, I can still get answers for simple questions but when it comes to anything unique or complex I usually just get frustrated and go to duckduckgo or something else. ChatGPT now adays mostly. Sure ChatGPT can hallucinate but Google's results rely on some random person somewhere to have properly answered something. The reality of that is so many of the "answers" I find are discussions on forums between a bunch of random people who have no real credentials or factual answers but instead just opinions based on something else they read on Google. People google something, read the google blurb about it at the top of the results, then go answer other people's questions. I honestly think Google is losing favor at this point. I've even been considering moving away from Android because the OS just feels like the Walmart iOS now adays. It features the same problems but in a way that nothing is polished versus iOS. Google needs to stop just following everyone else. Everything now adays feels like the ol Google+ move. "Ah, successful product someone else made, let's remake it and name it google something!"

kmlx 3y ago
> Sure ChatGPT can hallucinate but Google's results rely on some random person somewhere to have properly answered something. i don't know about your experience with chatgpt, but to me it's been untrustworthy. so much so that every answer i get needs to be double checked against google and that "random person".
- chankstein38 3y ago
  That's fair I can definitely agree that but my point was more that neither is a very trustworthy source anyway. It's the same way I'd double check one source versus another. It's just easier to start with GPT at this point because at least I know it'll just answer based on what it has been trained with versus special interests. One example I've used is the question "Is Fix A Flat ok to use in tires?" the results are from the company that makes fix a flat saying basically "Yes obviously" while you then see tire companies and repair shops giving you mixed responses. Then you have the third group being just people who have heard from one of the first 2 groups. People are worried about AI degrading the quality of information over time, learning from itself. We're basically there thanks to people caring more about being right than being correct and never doing their own leg work.

snowwrestler 3y ago

Apple used this tactic to put pressure on Google: 2013: Apple Makes Bing The “Default Search Engine” For Siri https://searchengineland.com/apple-makes-bing-the-default-search-engine-for-siri-162736 https://searchengineland.com/apple-makes-bing-the-default-se... 2017: Apple switches from Bing to Google for Siri web search results on iOS and Spotlight on Mac https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/25/apple-switches-from-bing-to-google-for-siri-web-search-results-on-ios-and-spotlight-on-mac/ https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/25/apple-switches-from-bing-t... Hard to know if the AI features of Bing are the key factor here for Samsung, or just a handy excuse for Samsung to renegotiate pricing with Google.

spicyramen_ 3y ago

[dead]

sdze 3y ago

Who cares? People will quickly setup their own default search engine. And I guess it will be Google. Google is a household name. Nobody in the "real" world cares about this AI crap.

qwertox 3y ago

Up until ChatGPT, Bing was meaningless to me; Google Search served all my needs. I never had a reason to look over to Bing. The only contact I had with it was when something embedded their maps. But now, with the AI integration, even when I tried it and left disappointed, Bing is starting to sound interesting. Then there's how they are starting to integrate AI into their other products and putting a lot of good effort in visual design. Their products look modern and polished, while Google is "still the same old" with their Material Design. I know they are the most capable engineers and that behind the scenes they are building the best quality soft- and hardware, but if they don't start to focus on the user again they will no longer be the titan they used to be.

htag 3y ago
> But now, with the AI integration, even when I tried it and left disappointed, Bing is starting to sound interesting. When I try a new feature, and am disappointed, I think marketing overhyped it and lose interest. Why do you think ChatGPT + Search is a good combo, even after you were disappointed when trying it?
- qwertox 3y ago
  They are showing that they have a strong interest in including it. Sure, it still isn't where I'd like it to be, but what does Google have to offer? Bard is US-only, so not reachable for me, I don't even know how or if it is integrated into Google Search. They'd have a bigger potential in enriching their search with AI features, better search, probably a better AI. At least from what they have been publishing during these past two years, they seem to have gathered a lot of experience with AI. In regards to Bing, I felt like you.com had a slightly better AI integration. What ChatGPT lacks are links to related websites. For example, give me a links to the documentation of the `.into()` trait [0] instead of "only" explaining it to me. [0] https://doc.rust-lang.org/std/convert/trait.Into.html https://doc.rust-lang.org/std/convert/trait.Into.html
  - hbn 3y ago
    > What ChatGPT lacks are links to related websites. For example, give me a links to the documentation of the `.into()` trait [0] instead of "only" explaining it to me. In the recent announcement for plugins they showed off a web browsing plugin that allows ChatGPT to search the web, read content, and return results with sources cited. https://openai.com/blog/chatgpt-plugins#browsing https://openai.com/blog/chatgpt-plugins#browsing

ur-whale 3y ago

The problem with Google is very simple: they have become entirely incapable of creating new products (specifically: stuff that people actually want). Most of the tech. that underpins OpenAI's stuff has been invented at Google, and quite a long time ago. They've been sitting on it, not doing anything with it, and even when their most direct competitor comes to take a huge pound of flesh out using stuff they created, all they manage to do is put out a lame subpar competitor (bard). Things this situation evokes for me: - Google plus - Kodak - Xerox

bagacrap 3y ago
But Microsoft can create new products?

HacklesRaised 3y ago

Out of the frying pan, into the fire!

rvba 3y ago

> Google Magi’s initial launch will be only in the US, with a maximum of one million users. Later, by the year’s end, it will expand to 30 million users. It seems they never learned from the failed launches like Google Wave or Google Plus. Where you couldnt use them and by the time you and your friends got them the hype allready wore off.

m3kw9 3y ago

People want LLM leveraged search, and Google isn't delivering.

qrck13 3y ago
I think majority of "ordinary" users just what the search results when they need them, not really caring about the technology beingb used behind the scene. And here bing is still often interior to b Google, LLM add some fun factor but factual quality actually goes down as GPT is known for making up facts

jdlyga 3y ago

Google got too corporate and played things too safe for too long. Imagine if Google released Bard 1 year ago.

DueDilligence 3y ago

[dead]

rolph 3y ago

Google needs platforms. platforms only need to browse web. platforms wear the pants.

kernal 3y ago

Google should respond by charging Samsung a healthy licensing fee to use Google services and receive security and OS updates. They should also re-evaluate their Android licensing model and make it free for non commercial applications only.

newbie578 3y ago

Love to see a title like this. Would love to be a fly inside the Google execs offices right now. I do wonder if they are confused, why are their factory workers, i.e. leet code solvers not able to innovate? I find this hilarious and positively validating. Building a tech product is not about being able to memorise an algorithm or knowing how to sort an array in the fastest way possible. They are stuck in the past. You will not ask a today's Software Engineer how does a bootloader function, yet the big tech companies keep asking irrelevant questions blown by time and progress.

anonkogudhyfhhf 3y ago

Good. Samsung is removing that blogspam of a search

qrck13 3y ago

For me that would be a reason to avoid buying Samsung from now on. Can't stand bings UI overloaded with visuals that only distract you.

Tempest1981 3y ago

How are people pronouncing "Magi"? Same as GIF?

theonemind 3y ago
Do you mean are people going both ways? I don’t think gif is settled. I’m in the soft G camp on gif. I think magi is already an English word with soft G, so I don’t know if there’s any room for controversy on this one.
- saulpw 3y ago
  The gif debate is over, it's pronounced like gin or git.

natch 3y ago

Employees being both arrogant and lazy is quite a corrosive dynamic for a company.

nstart 3y ago

A quick note to say that this article is mostly a rehash of the New York Times article it references as its source. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/16/technology/google-search-engine-ai.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/16/technology/google-search-...

29athrowaway 3y ago

They will become the next Nokia.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

thexumaker 3y ago

lol I'm officially moving off of samsung if this happens. No way in hell I'm using a shitty bing browser

AniseAbyss 3y ago

[dead]

mrkramer 3y ago

Time to shower Samsung with cash.

NayamAmarshe 3y ago

I don't know how Bing is any better. I tried Bing today and the results are awful! The search results page is very bloated and there's too much going on everywhere. Too much irrelevant information. What surprises me is that they managed to make content look like ads, irrelevant and noisy. Comparing the screens to Brave Search, I'm surprised how good Brave Search is. Not only are the results much better, but the UI is super-clean! There's only digestible information and no bloat.

imperialdrive 3y ago
Yah, it is really hard to imagine Bing cleaning itself up. No way users don't backlash on Samsung the moment they notice the gunky search results. And holy smokes, Teams, it's falling apart every new release. Once users have enough of that experience they're really going to wonder why they dove in head first.
- sebzim4500 3y ago
  >Teams, it's falling apart every new release I've never used Teams, but it is weird to me that non-tech people seem to really like it while tech people hate it. Is it simply that the tech people are comparing it to slack but the non-tech people are comparing it to email/skype/etc.?
nomel 3y ago
In the crevices of search space, I get more duplicates with Bing than with Google. But, I do get duplicates, with both, which is insanely infuriating.

Animats 3y ago

This may be a Myspace moment for Google. The competition is now better. There's another huge issue. Google is an ad business. That meshes well with search, and not so well with question answering system on mobile. What's ChatGPT supposed to say? "But first, this word from our sponsor?". A big change in the ecosystem is coming. These next generation systems are being set up as walled gardens. Bing FAQ: "You’ll need to use the Microsoft Edge browser and sign in with your Microsoft account to access all the capabilities of the new Bing." Google is talking about limiting the number of users of their chat system, which implies they are tying usage to login. This is a huge change to the business model. It's going to be about owning the customer relationship, not serving ads.

luckydata 3y ago
Is it better? It's flashy and interesting, but I don't think ChatGPT brings any actual value to the search use case. Other stuff, sure.
- Animats 3y ago
  It does on phones, where content has to be slimmed down.

ivanmontillam 3y ago

I think that Search Engine Optimization as we know it is also going to change forever as well. Don't be surprised if we start seeing ads like "If you don't appear in Bing/GPT, you don't exist;" we are now in the era of AI-based Search Engine Optimization, or whatever term you want to put it on. The end result is that the BigAI must know about you and talk about you. You must position yourself in the mind of ChatGPT or similar. EDIT: How about "Prompt Search Term Optimization" (PSTO)?

kazinator 3y ago

Could it be that Google is pissing off Samsung with their garbage Android releases whose most visible effect is that of actively ruining the user experience? I can imagine that creates work and headaches for Samsung, and other vendors.

cleandreams 3y ago

I have begun to find bing search invaluable. It's annoying to use google although I don't even like the bing user interface for AI search. Much too hard to get to. I don't want a single extra keystroke.

layer8 3y ago

Magi? What happened to Bard?

JohnFen 3y ago

It makes sense, though. Google search is terrible. Bing isn't great, either. But Bing probably charges less, and if there's no real quality difference between the two, why pay more?

jsnell 3y ago
You've got the flow of money inverted... Phone manufacturers don't pay for the right of getting to set a search engine as the default. They expect to be paid.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  Ah, right. My brain farted.

tomcam 3y ago

A gentle reminder that there is no proof of the “Google in shock“ assertion. The fact that an anonymous source maybe claimed it to someone at the New York Times has essentially zero credibility. Until an attributed source at Google says something like “we were shocked“ or “we were gobsmacked, etc.“ that’s all just third-hand information reported fourth-hand.

naves 3y ago

I can imaging Apple mulling about the same for iOS. Microsoft is on a roll and they have the money to challenge Google’s default place in our pockets.

andrewinardeer 3y ago

It's going to be wild when Bing Maps is superior to Google Maps.

ekvintroj 3y ago

I wouldn't be surprised if they do that, Sammy already forces us to live with MS related bloatware on their phones and tablets.

mensetmanusman 3y ago

Bing still gives me poor results when I am in science search mode.