Attachment Issues

MICROSOFT HAS JUST come out with news that they have incorporated ChatGPT, the artificial intelligence bot that has an answer to everything you throw at it, into its search engine Bing. They gave demonstrations of it and the rollout is at present to a select few, but it will soon be accessible to everyone. And that is terrible news for Google, which revolutionised and has been ruling the search engine market for decades now. Google makes all its money from advertisements and search is the biggest driver of it, considered a monopoly impossible to break. But in the space of a few months after ChatGPT first became public, it faces an existential threat.
There is some irony built into these series of unexpected technology events that Microsoft should be the one doing the threatening. Because until a few years ago, before Satya Nadella became its chief executive officer, Microsoft had been in a similar predicament. It was thought to a be one-trick pony because of its monopoly over the Windows operating system and then mobile phones came along and upended them. The personal computer was history. But Nadella managed one of the most incredible pivots in the history of business, making Microsoft future-ready by diversifying successfully into other businesses. The speed at which they partnered with ChatGPT is only further evidence of Microsoft’s transformation from elephantine torpor to nimbleness.

And Google? Consider that it had a product just like ChatGPT that it showed no hurry in bringing out until now, after being forced, it announced Bard AI. There is something that connects both the attitude of Google now and Microsoft as it once was. It is the fear of tampering with something that is making them enormous amounts of easy money. With such a captive market, nothing is needed to maintain dominance and, hostage to the cash cow, they do nothing. Another famous example of this is Intel, whose monopoly on computer chips made it ignore mobile phones, leading to it losing the market to Qualcomm and its Snapdragon chips. Between computers and mobiles, most could see what was the future.

Startups come with the energy to conquer the world and are willing to experiment in many directions. Mature companies become like retired folk, except that they are interested in seeing their pensions increase at a rate that impresses the market. And then it takes something unexpected that threaten to break into the business to get them going again. Sometimes it works, like Microsoft, but the history of business is littered with the debris of complacent companies. Think of the swift demise of Blackberry because it couldn’t let go of the keypad in a touchscreen world until it was too late. Google will adapt and put up a fight but it now has to catch up with the momentum of the competitor in a fort that it assumed would never be breached. It now has to fight as an equal but has no experience doing it.

About The Author

Madhavankutty Pillai

Madhavankutty Pillai has no specialisations whatsoever. He is among the last of the generalists. And also Open chief of bureau, Mumbai  

•