Samsung doesn’t plan to replace Google’s default search engine with Microsoft’s Bing anytime soon: report
Samsung Electronics won’t be changing the default search engine on its smartphones from Google to Microsoft’s Bing anytime soon, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday, citing people familiar with the matter.
Shares of Alphabet, the parent company of Google, gained more than 1 percent in pre-market trading. Microsoft shares fell about 1 percent.
Samsung has halted an internal review that explored Google replacing Bing on its web browsing app, which comes pre-installed on the company’s smartphones, according to the report.
Google, Samsung and Microsoft did not immediately respond to Reuters’ requests for comment.
Much of the revenue the search engine companies generate comes from their long-term partnerships with phone manufacturers like Apple and Xiaomi.
Google earns an estimated $3 billion (about Rs. 24,625 crores) in annual revenue from the Samsung contract, according to an April 16 report from the New York Times.
Samsung was first reported considering a possible switch to Bing last month, and it weighed on Alphabet stock at the time.
The incorporation of OpenAI’s artificial intelligence technology into Microsoft-owned Bing drove people to the underused search engine and helped it better compete with market leader Google in page traffic growth, according to data from analytics firm Likeweb.
At the time, Google’s reaction to the threat was to “panic” as the company earns an estimated $3 billion (roughly Rs. 24,625 crores) in annual revenue from the Samsung contract, the report said last month.
The report also said that Google was racing to build an entirely new AI-powered search engine that would offer a more personalized experience than its existing service, which is also set to be upgraded with AI features.
© Thomson Reuters 2023