Chapter 233 The Power of Inertia
“Pichai, relax a bit, changing user habits is a very difficult thing, even Samad, who is omnipotent in the field of cryptocurrency, can’t do it.

If they think they can do it, they should think about New Bing." Google executives said lightly, not thinking that Hornbill could threaten Google's dominance in search engines.

An earlier artificial intelligence search engine than Hornbill is Microsoft's New Bing.

Microsoft integrated OpenAI's artificial intelligence capabilities into Bing and launched a product called New Bing.

Microsoft has high hopes for New Bing. According to Microsoft's own internal evaluation and analysis, it believes that more than 50% of online search business can be replaced by generative AI.

However, the result was disappointing to Microsoft. In the half month after the launch, the traffic and page views of New Bing increased by 15.8%, while that of Google decreased by 1%.

The growth of New bing does not satisfy Microsoft. An increase of less than 20% cannot be considered a success in any way. The decline of its old rival Google is even more insignificant. You can't even say that their decline is caused by New bing.

What happened in the future made Microsoft even more disappointed. Six months later, New Bing's market share in the American market not only did not increase, but even declined compared to 2022.

2023年7月，New bing在阿美利肯的市场份额从2022年7月的7.82%下降到了6.47%。

You should know that Microsoft has invested a lot of computing power in integrating GPT into Bing, and all this computing power is cost.

You increased costs, used the latest technology, but got zero returns. Such a result undoubtedly disappointed Microsoft.

There was even doubt within Microsoft, with some people thinking that Microsoft just didn't have the genes to build a search engine.

Of course, Microsoft has not given up on investing resources in New bing. After all, it still has a 6% market share. Maybe a miracle will happen one day.

The search engine is really a huge piece of cake, and the advertising fees are too lucrative.

Pichai is obviously not as optimistic as the executives: "No, Hornbill and New Bing cannot be compared together.

Even though they have so many similarities.

However, the underlying logic of New Bing is still question-answering artificial intelligence, and it still has the drawbacks that question-answering artificial intelligence cannot get rid of. Whether it is the response speed or the accuracy of the answer, it is actually seizing the market of ChatGPT, not Google's market.

Hornbill is different. Its underlying logic is similar to Google, providing users with the precise information they want to know. "

The executive responded: “Pichai, I’ve also experienced Hornbill, which is nothing more than a layer of content wrapped on the search engine, which is very similar to the introduction on Google’s homepage.

We don't need to worry too much.

With the capabilities it currently demonstrates, it does not have the power to change user habits.”

“What if it could continue to evolve?

This is just version 1.0 of Hornbill, just as Bing continues to enhance their user experience with visualizations.”

Bing’s AI optimization did not start after ChatGPT, it can be traced back to March 2021, when they updated a large number of functions.

"Once it demonstrates greater capabilities, once it demonstrates greater capabilities on search engines, then it will be too late for us to do anything about it."

After the U.S. stock market opened the next morning, Google's stock price opened sharply lower, with the maximum drop of more than 6 points. Then the decline narrowed by the close of the afternoon, and the final closing decline was less than 1%.

This shows that the capital market did not take Samad’s call on Twitter seriously. In fact, the sharp drop followed by the rise shows that some institutions took the opportunity to take back chips from weak-willed investors.

“Who does he think he is? There are so many companies that want to replace Google as a search engine, why does he think that his random artificial intelligence can do that?
That’s underestimating Google.”

“If Wright said this, I would barely believe it, but as a Malaysian, it is a bit too arrogant for him to say this.

Do you really think you are God?"

"Even if Wright comes, he can't do it. The White House will naturally take action to prevent American people from using the Internet service launched by Wright.

There is no doubt about that.”

“Well, I forgot that there is a White House, so even if Hornbill has the potential to subvert Google one day in the future, Washington will find ways to make it happen unexpectedly.

Just like Alpha Technologies’ quantum computers had to be packaged and sold to Goldman Sachs.”

Many investors on Wall Street are not optimistic about Alpha Technologies and believe that Samad's remarks about sweeping search engines into the dustbin of history are alarmist. They do not believe that Hornbill can shake Google's position.

On the contrary, various digital self-media on the Internet have given Hornbill extremely high praise:
“Everyone, the most explosive news in the field of artificial intelligence this weekend comes from Malaysia’s Alpha Technology, which was founded by Samad, a god-level figure in the cryptocurrency field.

At 10 o'clock on Friday night, they launched Hornbill, a question-and-answer artificial intelligence that claims to sweep search engines into the dustbin of history.

After seeing Samad's arrogant statement, like everyone in front of the screen, I don't think they have the ability to do it, because this is something that even Microsoft has not done.

Microsoft couldn’t do it, so how could a little-known AI company from Malaysia do it? Is it just because its founder is Samad?
However, after I experienced Hornbill for a long time and frequently over the weekend, I can clearly tell the audience in front of the screen that Hornbill can perfectly replace Google.

Its biggest advantage is the accuracy of information. It can accurately read what kind of information you are looking for, summarize this information and pass it to you, and submit the page of the source of the information to you at the same time.

For example, if I want to find NASA documents, the page Google gives me will contain not only a large number of corporate advertisements, but also a large number of popular science articles, and it will search based on keywords.

The content Hornbill gives you is closer to the answer you want. There may be four or five pieces of information I want to get. These four or five pieces of information are in the Google search engine. I need to change different search terms and then search in the first five columns of the page.

But when searching with Hornbill, at most two columns are used to cover all five contents.

Hornbill seemed to really understand what I meant.

Google is too dull compared to Hornbill, you see? The gap between Hornbill and Google is just as obvious as the gap between Yahoo and Google. Yahoo is not bad, but Google is too good in the field of search engines.

By the same token, in today's era of artificial intelligence, it is not that Google is bad, but that Hornbill is too good. He has achieved a significant lead in intelligence.

As a practitioner in artificial intelligence, I would like to know how Alpha Technology achieves both efficiency and accuracy while demonstrating such an outstanding level of intelligence.

Of course, if you ask me now whether Hornbill can replace Google's global position, I will still say I don't know, because inertia is too powerful. Hornbill has its own advantages, but I am not sure whether this advantage can change user habits.

One thing I know for sure is that Hornbill is better than Google.”

Many YouTubers have come to a similar conclusion: Hornbill is better than Google.

The number of Hornbill users is surging worldwide. In just one week, the number of daily active users has exceeded five million, with the largest source countries being America, China and Malaysia.

This number cannot be compared with Bing's daily active users exceeding 880 million and Google's monthly visits of billion, but it is already a remarkable breakthrough for Malaysia.

You often see in the news that products launched by Internet companies in Singapore are sweeping across Southeast Asia, but you hardly see news about technology products in Malaysia. Therefore, even if Hornbill only has 500 million daily active users, it is already a phenomenal Internet company in Malaysia.

“The most powerful search engine in history is coming soon”

“Will the AI ​​search engine from Malaysia cause a major reshuffle in the search engine industry?”

Even on the Chinese Internet, you can often see various news about Hornbill.

Although Hornbill is blocked by a wall, you can still use it as long as you have a ladder.

In just one week, more than 30% of Chinese users switched from Google to Hornbill because the experience of accessing Google with a ladder was not good, the problem of unstable network was not solved, and robot testing had to be done from time to time.

Not only does Hornbill not have these troubles, but its user experience is far superior to Google's.

China's domestic technology giants have also noticed this Malaysian company that has emerged in the search engine field. Companies such as Baidu, Tencent, and Ali all have ideas, and their strategic investment departments are trying to contact Alpha Technology to discuss acquisition matters.

In the past, China's technology giants have acquired many Internet companies in Southeast Asia.

Most of the targets of their acquisitions are overseas mirror versions of Chinese Internet companies, such as Grab, the Southeast Asian version of Uber, Garena, the Southeast Asian version of Tencent, and so on. You can see Chinese technology companies in the list of investors behind them.

There is no doubt that the company most eager to acquire Hornbill is Baidu. Hornbill's business is in direct competition with Baidu. Once Hornbill enters the Chinese market, Baidu will face unprecedented challenges.

More importantly, with Hornbill, Baidu can enter the Southeast Asian and even global search engine market.

It was very hot in Yandu at this time, and the air conditioning in Li Yanhong's office in the Qiande Building was turned on very high.

Robin Li, wearing a thin shirt, and his chief technology officer, Haifeng Wang, were discussing the acquisition of Hornbill.

Li Yanhong pretended to be relaxed, with a reserved smile on his face: "Wang Haifeng, what do you think of Hornbill?"

"Very scary technique, can I say it's worthy of Samad?
Although search engines are a very old technology with a history of more than 30 years, they only need to crawl web pages, create indexes, and search and rank.

In fact, it can be said to be one of the most difficult technologies in the IT industry.

The daily growth of the Internet has reached an order of magnitude of approximately 10 to the 18th power, and its stock is unimaginably large.

If you want to make a search engine for a small database, it is indeed not difficult.

However, it is extremely difficult to create a search engine that can handle all Internet content for a large number of users.

Not to mention the combination with artificial intelligence, which can not only analyze user needs and summarize them after analysis, but also accurately find the relevant content in the ocean of the Internet and quickly sort it.

More importantly, Hornbill compressed the time to milliseconds. In a sense, their technology is even more powerful than OpenAI.

Even OpenAI cannot achieve this level. We have tried it, and the feedback time is at most seconds. To this day, I still can't figure out how Alpha's underlying algorithm is designed to have such a short delay.

This cannot be solved by stacking computing power, it must be related to the optimization of the underlying algorithm. "Wang Haifeng had to admit that his competitors were technically strong.

“From a technological perspective, if we acquire Alpha Technologies, we won’t have to worry about being replaced in the next ten years.

If we understand its underlying logic, we can even build an AI+ mobile operating system based on this algorithm.

For Baidu, this even concerns our development in the next few decades.

I think it's worth paying any price." Wang Haifeng concluded.

As the chief technology officer, he gave the other party his judgment from his own standpoint.

After listening to this, Li Yanhong sighed and said, "According to the information I received, they rejected Google's acquisition application of US$10 billion."

Wang Haifeng sneered, "Ten billion dollars for such technology? You must be kidding.

If Google were the only company in the market, this price would still be possible.

The problem is that Microsoft is watching nearby, so how can we possibly get it for ten dollars?

Even if it costs $10 billion, I think we will make a profit.”

Baidu should be considered to have the healthiest cash flow among these Internet giants, with more than 30 billion US dollars in cash flow on its books, which is entirely due to advertising revenue from search engines.

Ten billion US dollars is not an unaffordable price for Baidu.

“Is 10 billion really worth it?” This price still scared Li Yanhong: “Their user growth is not optimistic.”

Wang Haifeng nodded and said, "It's worth it. The reason why their user growth is not optimistic is that they have no marketing capabilities at all.

Relying entirely on the founder Samad's Twitter promotion, the marketing effect is very limited.

He can only rely on the user word-of-mouth effect to achieve a steady growth in the number of users.

The fact that Hornbill has millions of users in just one week fully demonstrates the strength of the product itself.

Baidu has no shortage of marketing capabilities and channels. Even on the external network, we have a large number of public relations resources to utilize.

I think the acquisition of Hornbill will be a win-win for Baidu.”

Baidu has not yet internally discussed the specific details of whether to acquire Hornbill and the acquisition price. Internet giants such as Tencent, Ali, and ByteDance are ready to make a move, and the fastest ones have already arrived in Johor Bahru.

Hornbill launched his first version of the content revision: "Global Membership.

$4.99/month

“I was right, Hornbill launched the first iteration of the product.”

"Paid services are a good thing. No user can accept that they have to pay for search engines."

"Yes, no user can accept that search engines have to pay. The problem is that they are question-answering AI. Didn't ChatGPT start paying recently?"

(End of this chapter)