Google Search, Bing & The Threat Of Disruption

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It seems like a beautiful model. Google Search has unthinkable data on what people want and what they’re thinking about and worried about. If you combine that with a truly data-driven culture that does 5,000 launches a year, it seems like there is an infinite canvas to evolve the products in the best way. What am I missing? Or is it that good?

Some would call it a monopoly, but it's a product that is consistently 90% of the market. No one can scratch it; it's a great model. But it also slows down decision-making. When you think about ChatGPT and all that stuff where it gets really interesting, and it's a hot topic, this is potentially where this culture of everything needing to be crossed and checked 25 times can slow things down a bit, and by the time you react, the market is prepared. We can talk about that specifically as a risk. I'm not saying this is a risk, but I'm saying the culture can backfire quickly, and the reality is that Google has been playing defensive on that in the Search business for years, and they are able to sustain their position. I don't think Google is thinking about it through an offensive lens. Google thinks we already control the market; we just need to continue incrementally being the best we can be.

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You can read about experiments that have been done where people make side-by-side blind comparisons, doing a search, and they’re unable to distinguish between Google and Bing. Then when you tally up what they preferred for each search, Bing wins sometimes. That's just an example. Another example is if you ask a bunch of people on the street if Google has been getting better or evolving its product, I think you would get a lot of lukewarm answers. How do you process that?

To your words about Google, a user can be lukewarm, but I don't think Bing has created anything innovative over the last few years. The reality is that Bing, at best or in most cases, can provide a similar, if not identical, experience to Google. Google is already so integrated into the system. A key point that we need to mention is the platforms that Google has to drive you to search. The friction for me, as a user, to take my iPhone and instead of tapping directly and going into Google Search – Google pays $20 billion to Apple for that, by the way – I go to Bing or download an app. All that stuff is too much friction for a very low marginal value.

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