Even if unusable, they have the network effects and brand... just get something out there to play with that will make some sort of impression, however flawed, that can quickly be iterated on. It can be ancillary to the current experience.
Bing suffers from being so historically unpopular that from a branding perspective it's synonymous with failure. It's meme territory. It's not like MS is going to overcome that in a matter of weeks or even months.
Google has plenty of rope here.
Bing isn't unpopular, it's just a non-entity. They don't have any brand value to harm.
> that can quickly be iterated on. It's pretty dubious to assume problems with this tech can be fixed on a short time scale
It's not the same scale but it has many millions of DAUs and is definitely not a "non-entity"
If Microsoft paid apple $billions to change the default search to bing I’d probably not bother to switch back.
They need to do this because they will implode from innovators dilemma otherwise.
AI integration is exactly the type of feature that could upend that. Google is the lackadaisical incumbent, too afraid of short term ad revenue decline to innovate. They've mastered shoving more ads onto the SERP pages and playing aggravating skip button games on Youtube.
They are no less corporate and staid as MS at this point, so if they fall behind I'd have no qualms in dropping them.
If Google was able to launch anything Bard related that someone could use -even if flawed- I think most people would call it a win. It would mean that Google takes it seriously but also has the tech on a shelf in a usable form. Google was understandably not worried about search until ChatGPT. Once the first whiff of search-replacement discussions happened in November, Google should have started scheduling a February release and prepped a plan. Or a marketing campaign warning about lying AIs or something real.
FWIW, I think it’s probably good that they didn’t release anything. If an AI search goes poorly, bing gets all the bad press. If it goes well, they can swoop in and say “now let the search engine you actually want do it”.