After the alarms were activated last month, in Mountain View they breathe again. It is that Samsung has ruled out the idea of abandoning Google as the default search engine on its mobiles to adopt Bing, and everything will continue as before. At least for the moment.
According to The Wall Street Journal, Samsung has suspended an internal analysis that proposed to implement Bing as the default search engine in its proprietary web browser. South Koreans they would have canceled their studies on the subject for fear of how the markets might react to the changeand so as not to damage its long-standing relationship with Californians.
Let’s not forget that, as soon as it came to light that Samsung was considering this possibility, there was talk of a “panic” reaction in Google. Something that might seem logical, considering that Asians shipped 260 million smartphones and tablets in 2022, although in reality it would have been disproportionate.
As we said at the beginning, Samsung’s intention would not have been to eliminate any trace of Google as the default search engine on their mobiles. The change that was analyzed would have impacted only the Internet appthe browser developed by the Korean firm and that is part of the pre-installed software as part of One UI, the customization layer that runs on Android.
The report indicates that Samsung would not have seen the possible adoption of Bing as a highly relevant change, since most users of its devices use Chrome —which also comes pre-installed— as their main web browser. And let’s not forget that the brand’s equipment also comes with the Google search bar on the main screen. Thus, the Microsoft browser implementation would have been thought of as an experiment in search of diversifying its software and services proposaland not as a method to challenge the power of Google.
Samsung rules out (for now) using Bing as default search engine
That Samsung has chosen to cancel the initiative to adopt Bing as the default search engine in its browser, does not imply that I close the door definitively to the possibility. According to The Wall Street Journalthe South Koreans could explore a similar option again in the future, although it is not specified how.
There is no doubt that incorporating Bing as the default search engine for the Samsung browser would have been a very interesting option for those from Redmond. In the course of this year, Microsoft has made a strong commitment to make its search engine more attractive. The incorporation of OpenAI technologies such as GPT-4 is a clear example of this.
It is true that the Koreans themselves acknowledge that the Internet app is not the preferred option for users. So even giving it Bing, it is unlikely that it could take too much market share from Google. However, we’ve talked about this in the past: Microsoft is no longer looking to keep up with Mountain View.
A few days ago we learned that Redmond would be seeking to win the contract for Bing to be the next default search engine for Mozilla Firefox. If you do, it could mean a major breakthrough for you in the lucrative world of online advertising. Let’s not forget that, according to Microsoft, each access point marketshare That your search engine earns can be equivalent to advertising revenue of about 2,000 million dollars.
Not for nothing, incorporating Bing into Samsung mobiles could be presented as a phenomenal business opportunity. Although now everything seems to have come to nothing. We’ll see how this story progresses; the only certain thing is that there is still Google for a while as a default option on Korean devices.
