From being the search engine underdog and mere meme material, Microsoft’s all-new Bing has stepped in to reshuffle the industry cards with its momentous OpenAI integration that lets you simulate conversations with an assumingly all-knowing sage. 

Yep, you read that right. We’re still adjusting over here too. It’s reminiscent of the goosebumps-ridden awe we felt when discovering Google after WebCrawler and Yahoo!’s AltaVista lost their mojo.

But the World Wide Web mogul couldn’t let this pass, as last week brought a lethal chink in Google’s armor. Somehow failing to steal the new Bing thunder, Google launched its own Bard; albeit committing a $100-billion-costing factual error in its very first demo.

The PR battles claim that Microsoft’s interface is connected to a ‘next-generation’ OpenAI model that’s more powerful than ChatGPT, whereas Google has opted for a ‘lightweight’ LaMDA. 

Another caveat here is that Microsoft has been far more transparent about how things will roll; Bing is already out in the wild with millions joining the waitlist. Whilst everyone is still wondering how Google plans to bake all of this into Chrome, with some much as a cloud of vagueness deliberately shrouds Bard’s touted skills.

Nonetheless, both interfaces do look somehow similar, the two engines either granting you a conversational answer to your questions (Google calls them NORA queries – No One Right Answer) or sending you to a bigger chat window for a decent dialogue.

So maybe it’s way too soon to make fool-proof judgments. We’re still at the fun stage – expect plenty of entitled arrogance, gaslighting, existential meltdowns. You name it 🙂