What happened: On Sunday, the New York Times reported that Samsung was considering replacing Google’s Search with Microsoft’s Bing as its default search engine on its devices. According to sources, Google reacted to the information with panic. Google earns about $3B in annual revenue from its agreement with Samsung. Why it matters: Google Search has dominated the search engine business for decades and accounts for a significant chunk of the tech giant’s total revenue. In 2022, Google earned $279.8B in total revenue, of which its Search business accounted for $162.5B or nearly 60% of the total. Microsoft’s new Bing search engine, with its artificial intelligence features, is considered by some as a real threat to Google’s search dominance. Where to see the impact: Google has announced it plans to bring more AI-powered features to its search platform. Currently, Google handles about 90% of global search-engine queries. Following the New York Times report, shares of Google’s parent company, Alphabet, fell more than 3.5%. It closed at $105.97 on Monday, down ~2.7% for the day. Alphabet is up ~19% YTD. |
