In yet another attempt to combat the competition driven by AI-backed search engines such as Microsoft‘s Bing, Google is working on a brand new search engine, under the code name ‘Magi’, the NYT reported.

Google holds over 90% of the search market, while Microsoft aims to earn $2 billion with each 1% increase in market share. Microsoft’s Bing search has seen a 25% growth in monthly page visits, thanks to the integration of GPT-4, which enhances prompt requests per user, model efficiency, user experience, and search results. 

Alongside the development of the new search engine, Google is also enhancing its current search engine with AI. The aim of the new search engine is to provide users with a personalized experience that predicts their requirements. 

Google Struggles to Keep Up with Bing

Google’s decision to develop the new search engine comes right after Samsung’s contemplation of switching from Google to Bing as the default search engine on its devices, posing a risk of losing approximately $3 billion in yearly revenue for Google.

As per Google spokesperson Lara Levin, “Not every brainstorm deck or product idea leads to a launch, but as we’ve said before, we’re excited about bringing new AI-powered features to search, and will share more details soon.”

However, Google is struggling with generative AI and recently launched LLM chatbot Bard which received sufficient flak for being incompetent. Google chief Sundar Pichai admitted that they have launched smaller models using an efficient version of LaMDA after Bard’s costly initial launch. 

Pichai believes that Google needs to introduce accurate models, gather user feedback cycles, improve models, and establish trust and safety measures for successful AI implementation. Some of Google’s researchers are leaving for its rival OpenAI, while others ridicule Google for training Bard on ChatGPT data. Despite these challenges, Pichai is optimistic and plans to add more powerful models and conversational AI features to Google’s search engine and personalized Bard to Google Assistant. 

All eyes are now on Google’s much anticipated Google I/O conference scheduled for 10th May. The company has not officially released any plans for the event, but leaks suggest that there could be announcements related to natural language AI, Android updates, and hardware. Some fans are hopeful for innovations like an image generation studio, a video summarization tool, and a wallpaper creation tool for Google Pixel phones. However, there are concerns about how Google’s shift to conversational AI will impact its ad revenue.