Blog

• Google CEO hits back at Satya Nadella’s comments about making Google dance with “the new Bing.”
• Sundar Pichai said that one way to go wrong is to listen to someone else’s music.
• Pichai said competition is normal in tech, and he has a clear idea of ​​what Google needs to do.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella once said he hoped the “new Bing” would make Google “come out and show they can dance.”

“And I want people to know that we made them dance, and I think it’s going to be a great day,” Nadella said in February 2023 after launching the revamped Bing search engine she built with OpenAI.

But Google CEO Sundar Pichai likes to listen to his own music, he said in a new interview with Bloomberg published Wednesday.

“One of the ways you can do the wrong thing is by listening to noise outside and playing someone else’s dance music,” Pichai said in the interview in response to Nadella’s remarks.

Microsoft did not respond to a request for comment.

Microsoft announced its “New Bing” powered by OpenAI in February 2023. Nadella previously told The Verge that he had waited 20 years to compete with Google and “had to be the default winner” in the race for Big Tech AI.

Despite Google’s early investment in AI and all its resources and talent, Microsoft began to lead the AI ​​race when it partnered with OpenAI and the new Bing and 365 Copilot, an AI-based productivity tool for Microsoft apps.

Meanwhile, Google was caught red-handed.

When ChatGPT launches in 2022, Google reportedly issued a “code red” to employees about the potential threat to the search business. The company has also refocused its AI strategy in the wake of the new competition.

Soon after, Google launched its AI chatbot Bard, now called Gemini. Later, when it announced upgrades, Google faced almost immediate backlash for inaccurate depictions of historical figures created by the image generator.

But the tech giant is catching up by taking advantage of its massive user base to promote its AI products.

Google recently announced that it is building its own AI chips. It’s also ramping up its AI efforts with a series of cloud enhancements, the general availability of TPU v5p, the new Gemini 1.5 release, and various AI additions to Google Workspace.

It has also restructured its teams and cut staff over the past year to make room for its biggest priorities, namely advancing AI. In 2023, Google cut its workforce by about 6%, and thousands of layoffs have come in waves so far in 2024.

Pichai told Bloomberg that AI is in its infancy and competition is always part of working in the tech space.

“It’s happening at a faster pace, but you know technological change tends to get faster over time,” Pichai said in the interview. “So it’s not surprising to me at all.”

“I think we have a clear sense of what we need to do,” Pichai added.

Meanwhile, Google still dominates search compared to Bing, something Nadella acknowledged at the time after his remarks that he was making his rival dance.

“I think when you have a 3% share of global demand and you’re competing with someone who has 97%, even a small gain here and there is an exciting moment,” Nadella told Matthias Döpfner, CEO of the parent company, to Business Insider , Axel Springer, in an interview in October. “But Google is a very strong company and they will come out strong.”

“Google has a number of structural advantages right here: they already have share, they control Android, they control Chrome,” Nadella added. “I always say that Google makes more money with Windows than all of Microsoft. It keeps us grounded.”

Got a tip for Google? We want to hear from you. Email the reporter from a broken device at aaltchek@insider.com