‘Dance to own music, micro-focus small in context,’ says Sundar Pichai as big tech's AI race heats up
Alphabet’s primary competitor in the fast-paced artificial intelligence (AI) technology landscape. With heavy investments in companies such as OpenAI, Inflection, and Mistral AI, Microsoft is edging close to Alphabet in the AI tech race, particularly its application in the search tool — a space heavily dominated by Google, as per a Bloomberg report. Notably, the Microsoft chief took jabs at and even voiced strong statements against Google at a US anti-trust trial in October last year.
He said Google holds exclusive, multibillion-dollar agreements with tech giants, such as Apple Inc., which allows it to be the default search engine on smartphones and browsers. But Pichai seems unfazed. "I'm trying to keep focused and not play to someone else’s dance music.
People tend to focus on this micro-moment, but it is so small in the context of what’s ahead. When I look at the opportunities ahead, across everything we do, I put a lot of chips, at least from my perspective, on Google," he told Bloomberg. Earlier, Nadella also argued that Google's exclusivity contracts had disadvantaged his company's Bing search engine, as Google's default status drives increased user activity on its search engine, and this, in turn, fuels better search results.
During the launch of the AI-boosted Bing search engine, Nadella said they "brought some more competition" to the space, adding that Google is "the 800-pound gorilla" in this race, as per a Hindustan Times report. “We competed today. Today was a day where we brought some more competition to search.
Believe me, I’ve been at it for 20 years, and I’ve been waiting for it. At the end of the day, they’re the 800-pound gorilla in this. That is what they are.
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