The Disappearance of Google's US$55 billion Daily Revenue: Causes and Threats to Search Engine Domination

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Alphabet, Google's parent company, saw a 4% drop in its shares at the beginning of the week due to the latest report from The New York Times indicating that Samsung plans to replace the Search engine with Microsoft Bing.

This has resulted in the disappearance of the search engine giant's massive revenue of US$55 billion, or around Rp 817 trillion. If Samsung's plans are realized, Google could potentially lose an annual revenue of US$3 billion or approximately Rp 44.5 trillion.

The threat is even greater as Google has dominated the search engine market with a 90% market share. The emergence of Microsoft Bing with its ChatGPT-like AI chatbot capability developed by OpenAI has posed a serious threat to Google's position.

Bing has managed to attract 100 million daily active users for the first time in recent months, and even the likes of HP have started to consider using the search engine.

If Apple follows this trend, Google stands to lose an annual revenue of US$20 billion or equivalent to Rp 297 trillion, according to MarketInsider. Apple's contract with Google will be renewed at the end of this year.

In response to this threat, Google has immediately assembled a team of 160 members consisting of designers, engineers, and executives to develop AI technology within Search. They are working to integrate AI chatbots such as ChatGPT into the search engine by creating Bard.

However, with the emergence of the threat from Microsoft Bing, Google must continue to innovate and improve its services to maintain its dominance in the search engine market.

Interestingly, ChatGPT itself is funded by Microsoft, which is also the developer of Bing. This shows that the competition between the two major search engines is getting fiercer.