A former Google executive said Microsoft had "thrown down the gauntlet" on a new era of artificially-intelligent web search with the launch of its upgraded version of Bing.
Sridhar Ramaswamy, who worked in Google's search ads business, told Insider it was too early to call the race between new AI-boosted versions of Bing and Google Search — but said Microsoft may have a headstart in seizing the narrative on AI.
"I think of it as a little bit of a Sputnik moment for search," said Ramaswamy, a former senior vice president of ads and commerce at Google, who is now CEO of Neeva, a search engine start-up he cofounded. "This is a big change to the ecosystem."
He added: "It's an open question whether and how Google will embrace this, and what it will do to ad monetization."
Microsoft launched its AI-boosted version of Bing on Tuesday, the day after Google announced plans to incorporate AI technology into its own search engine.
Ever since Microsoft-backed OpenAI launched the popular ChatGPT chat bot in November, Google and Microsoft have been engaged in an increasingly tense race to bring new AI products to market.
In an interview with The Verge published Wednesday, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said Google was "the 800-pound gorilla in search," adding: "I hope that, with our innovation, they will definitely want to come out and show that they can dance. And I want people to know that we made them dance."
Ramaswamy told Insider that both Google and Microsoft were "ahead of the pack with respect to foundational technology and investment in AI."
He said: "Sometimes it is the narrative that is ahead of the reality," and pointed to reports that OpenAI hired Google engineers to work on ChatGPT. He added: "All of this can take away from the narrative of Google being the premier search engine."
Representatives for Google didn't respond to a request for comment from Insider.
