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.
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.