Searching the Web is, according to Microsoft’s chief executive Satya Nadella, “the most profitable category on planet Earth”. For decades, one company has reaped the benefits: Google.
The head-spinning explosion in recent months of new artificial intelligence (AI) tools such as ChatGPT, however, has blown open the market. And Nadella reckons he can finally give the Google leviathan a run for its money. Last week, he unveiled a new version of Microsoft’s long-mocked Bing search engine paired with ChatGPT, the conversational chatbot that can answer questions directly rather than producing a list of links. “It’s a new day in search. It’s a new paradigm,” he announced. “A race starts today.”
