Would Microsoft Kill Two "Birds" With One Stone?
Kar Quan Tan
Cyber Security, Ecommerce, Web3, Marketing & Data Advocate at Eprom Data Systems Pte Ltd
Unless you are one of those early birds who signed up for a free account to experience ChatGPT when it launched to the public in Nov 2022, you are likely to be on a long waiting list if you intend to sign up.
This is because ChatGPT has reached its maximum service capacity, going by the announcement in their official website.
According to a study by UBS reported in Reuters, and various third party analysts, there are around 100mil monthly active users as of Jan 2023.
Nevertheless, you would have probably come across numerous articles and debates about ChatGPT.
You may have even partake in conversations about how this app by OpenAI would change both the digital and physical world.
Indeed, the possibilities are endless.
But there are two areas (or birds as I called them) which I find intriguing in the ultra-competitive tech sector.
The first bird, Google's search engine. And the second, Amazon Web Services (AWS).
The entire internet was filled with talks on how ChatGPT, in which Microsoft is a major investor, could dethrone the current search engine hegemon.
The potential paradigm shift and existential threat to Google may have added fuel to fire from their recent fumbled development.
You may know that Google scrambled to announce their AI chatbot called Bard. Scrambled because I think Google didn't want to lose out to Microsoft in terms of optics.
But unfortunately, their first public demo of Bard was a failure.
In fact, it was a little awkward and somewhat comical.
I saw the footage, felt the tinge of uneasiness and embarrassment for the presenter when Murphy's law and technicalities rained on their parade. (If you are interested, you can watch the video at the end of this article.)
ChatGPT is expected to be integrated into BING, the search engine by Microsoft. And if this materialises in the near future, it is no wonder that Google is worried.
But having ChatGPT inside BING is part of the equation to challenge Google's search engine supremacy.
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Another crucial element of the equation I reckon is monetisation search.
At this point, ChatGPT spits out highly accurate and conversational information when users ask questions.
Microsoft still has some work to do in terms of search engine optimisation and marketing targeting the advertising pie.
Advertisers are keen to first, pull in traffic to their products and services, and second, conversion of those traffic to sell their solutions.
It may not be useful for advertisers that ChatGPT provides highly accurate answers to queries posed by users as this may not do much to draw in eyeballs and conversions for them.
It is still early days for ChatGPT and the BING search engine team to come up with solutions to bridge the gaps.
Would AWS become an "angry bird"?
ChatGPT is going into Microsoft Azure.
AWS is notably the beachhead in the IaaS segment in cloud computing, going neck-to-neck with Microsoft.
Many subscribers and developers I know sit on AWS for its computing power, economy and reliability.
With AI-centric applications accelerating, planting apps in Azure might give developers (especially those leaning closer to OpenAI) the needed advantage to ensure the developers in turn can serve their clients more efficiently.
In any case, all these are still up in the air. And Amazon is no sitting duck.
I am eager to see how AWS' moats would turn up in this IaaS contest.