- Google search chief Prabhakar Raghavan warned staff of a changing landscape, CNBC reported.
- He said life will not always be “good to live” as rivals seek to challenge his research dominance.
- Microsoft has improved its search experience with AI-powered features as competition heats up.
It’s time to prepare for a new chapter, Google search chief Prabhakar Raghavan reportedly warned staff.
He told Googlers at an all-hands meeting last month that “things have changed” and are “not like they were 15 or 20 years ago,” CNBC reported, citing a recording of the meeting he got.
“It’s not like life is going to be good forever,” Raghavan also said, according to the outlet.
Search remains a crucial part of Alphabet’s business, with “search and other” accounting for $48 billion in revenue in the final three months of last year, more than $5 billion more than the same period in 2022.
Raghavan’s warning to employees comes as competitors such as startup Perplexity AI seek to take dominance from Google by developing their own search engines.
CEO Aravind Srinivas announced Tuesday that he has raised about $63 million in a new funding round that values the company at more than $1 billion. Perplexity’s backers include Jeff Bezos and Nvidia.
Raghavan also addressed the new contestants during the meeting, CNBC reported. “They may have a new gadget that people like to play with, but they still turn to Google to verify what they see there because it’s the trusted source and that becomes more critical in the age of Generative AI.”
Google Search has changed little in more than 20 years, but the AI boom has forced its hand. Google said last year that it was “supercharging” and “improving” users’ search experience with an AI-powered generative version called Search Generative Experience (SGE).
SGE is still in its early stages, but Google began testing “AI previews” about a month ago by providing some US and UK users with an AI-generated summary of search results.
Meanwhile, Microsoft has ramped up its search ambitions. It began rolling out new AI features to Bing last year, including allowing users to perform visual searches.
Microsoft said it was “reinventing” search when it introduced the new AI-infused Bing last February. CEO Satya Nadella said at the time: “AI will fundamentally change every category of software, starting with the biggest category of all: search. »
Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider, made outside of normal business hours.
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