Tag: Microsoft

The Year Tech Gets Even Bigger (Predictions 2026, #7)

If only Nano Banana could spell, AI would be a thing.

For the past many years one prediction has proven reliably accurate: There will be no significant Federal regulation of the technology industry. At times this stalwart prognostication has been tested by major anti-trust actions – but each has proven ultimately toothless. This year, for example, we’ll learn what the DOJ managed to accomplish in its second case against Google – and it’s still possible a judge will rule that the search and AI giant must divest itself of its adtech infrastructure. But I don’t think so. And even if that ruling does come to pass, Google knows it can simply appeal, dragging out any eventual impact until it wins a war of attrition with an increasingly feckless and uninterested DOJ.

Besides, arguing about the past is playing yesterday’s game, and in 2026, the game has reverted to an even older playbook. For the past five or so years, tech giants have had to play defense when it comes to M&A and sweetheart partnerships – Meta was being sued over its acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp, Google over its consolidation of adtech and its domination of search distribution through deals with Apple and Samsung, among others. But in 2026, the governors are coming off.

Read More
3 Comments on The Year Tech Gets Even Bigger (Predictions 2026, #7)

SIGN UP FOR THE NEWSLETTER

Stay up to date on the latest from BattelleMedia.com

Is OpenAI Today’s Netscape? Or Is It AOL?

As is his want, last week Fred Wilson wrote a provocative post I’ve been thinking about for the past few days. Titled “Netscape and Microsoft Redux?“, Fred notes the parallels between the browser wars of the late 1990s and the present-day battle for dominance in the consumer AI market. And he asks a prescient question: What new, world-defining product might we be missing by focusing on AI chatbots?

In the early days of the Web, everyone thought the most important new product to emerge from the Internet was the browser. Netscape, a startup with just a few months of operating history, defined the market for those browsers in 1994, then dominated it for several years thereafter. But by the late 1990s, the lumbering incumbent Microsoft had stolen Netscape’s lead by leveraging distribution and pricing advantages inherent to its massive Windows monopoly.

Read More
2 Comments on Is OpenAI Today’s Netscape? Or Is It AOL?

How Google Can Win the Future

[Second in a series, first post here]

This past week, Wall Street caught up with the rest of us and realized that Google has lost its monopoly grip on search. The trigger wasn’t Google losing an anti-trust case – that happened last summer. Nor was it the first ten days of Google’s ongoing search remedies trial. Instead, it was a statement just two days ago by an Apple executive, Eddie Cue, which led to an almost instantaneous panic amongst investors.

Cue told the court that consumers’ preference for using AI agents had led to a decline in search traffic inside Apple’s Safari browser (Google pays Apple more than $20 billion a year to secure that traffic – a major focal point of the government’s case).

Read More
2 Comments on How Google Can Win the Future

The Question Google Won’t Answer

Reading Ben Thompson’s coverage of Google’s earnings call this week,  one thing jumps out, and simply can’t be ignored: Google CEO Sundar Pichai was asked a simple question, and, as Thompson points out, Pichai dodged it completely. A Merril analyst asked this question:

“Just wondering if you see any changes in query volumes, positive or negative, since you’ve seen the year evolve and more Search innovative experiences.”

Read More
3 Comments on The Question Google Won’t Answer

Google Will Become the World’s Largest Subscription Service. Discuss.

A Google subscription box via Dall-E

Those of you who’ve been reading for a while may have noticed a break in my regular posts – it’s August, and that means vacation. I’ll be back at it after Labor Day, but an interesting story from The Information today is worth a brief note.

Titled How Google is Planning to Beat OpenAI, the piece details the progress of Google’s Gemini project, formed four months ago when the company merged its UK-based DeepMind unit with its Google Brain research group. Both groups were working on sophisticated AI projects, including LLMs, but with unique cultures, leadership, and code bases, they had little else in common. Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai combined their efforts in an effort to speed his company’s time to market in the face of stiff competition from OpenAI and Microsoft.

Read More
3 Comments on Google Will Become the World’s Largest Subscription Service. Discuss.

Microsoft Ups the Ante on Both Google and Its Partner OpenAI

Microsoft today announced a cluster of upgrades to its Bing-ChatGPT product, including:

  • Eliminating the Bing chat waitlist, which effectively throttled the product’s growth by adding steps to a consumer’s journey.
  • Integrating more visual search results, which will enliven the consumer experience and potentially engage visitors for longer.
  • Adding chat history and persistence, a major differentiation between Bing chat and OpenAI’s ChatGPT, and for me anyway, the main reason I didn’t use Bing.
  • Adding more long document summarization, which is another feature that ChatGPT excels at.
  • Adding a platform layer to Bing, so third party developers can integrate in much the same manner as they can with ChatGPT’s plugins, which I’ve both praised and trashed in past posts (praised because of their potential, trashed because the model reminds me of the app store, which is a walled garden nightmare).

Overall, this news strikes me as Microsoft upping the ante not only on Google, which now has even more catching up to do, but also on Microsoft’s own partner OpenAI, which until now had a superior product. I’m on the road and not able to write as much as I’d like on this, but it’s worth noting. I’m sure the product managers in Mountain View aren’t getting much sleep these days – the pressure is mounting for Google to respond. And in OpenAI headquarters, the frustration has to be building as well – they cut that deal with Microsoft, and now have to live with its terms.

1 Comment on Microsoft Ups the Ante on Both Google and Its Partner OpenAI

AI Sausage-Making and Unconsidered Consequences

Is that an AI in your sausage?

Once again, Google and Microsoft are battling for the AI spotlight – this time with news around their offerings for developers and the enterprise*. These are decidedly less sexy markets – you won’t find breathless reports about the death of Google search this time around –  but they’re far more consequential, given their potential reach across the entire technology ecosystem.

Highlighting that consequence is Casey Newton’s recent scoop detailing layoffs impacting Microsoft’s “entire ethics and society team within the artificial intelligence organization.” This team was responsible for thinking independently about how Microsoft’s use of AI might create unintended negative consequences in the world. While the company continues to tout its investment in responsible AI** (as does every firm looking to make a profit in the field), Casey’s reporting raises serious questions, particularly given the Valley’s history of ignoring inconvenient truths.

Read More
Leave a comment on AI Sausage-Making and Unconsidered Consequences

Ads in Chat-Based Search? Of Course – But What Kind?

Artwork Cheri Stamen for Signal360

I’ve written a long-ish post attempting to answer that question over at P&G’s Signal360 publication, please head there (and sign up for their newsletter!) if you’d like to read the whole thing. Below is a teaser for those of you who aren’t sure you want to click the link (so few of us do these days!). 

—

Read More
1 Comment on Ads in Chat-Based Search? Of Course – But What Kind?

Toothpaste, Tubes And Semantics: Is AI Chat Search? Who Cares?!

 

“Lots of toothpaste coming out of a toothpaste tube with the Google logo on it, digital art”

Last week, while working on a post about what the ads might look like inside chat-based search, I got a surprising note from the communications team at Google. I had emailed them asking for comment on ads inside Bard, which Google had announced earlier in the month. To be honest, I was expecting the polite “no comment” I ultimately did receive, but I also got this clarification:

[We] wouldn’t have anything additional to share from the Search POV, as Bard is a standalone AI interface and doesn’t sit within Search.

Read More
1 Comment on Toothpaste, Tubes And Semantics: Is AI Chat Search? Who Cares?!

What If Google Goes on Offense?

Last week I asked if Google was f*cked, and since then quite a few of you have reached out asking what I think the company could do to … un-f*ck itself. “Easy enough to declare the company is too big, too stuck in the mud, too cautious, too dependent on its cash cow,” you told me. “Much harder to advise them on what to do about it.” One of you just sighed to me on the phone, then said “it’s always been this way. No large company can escape the innovator’s dilemma.”

Well, maybe so, but wouldn’t it be fun to try? I’ve been in touch with various Googlers over the past few weeks, as I’m still working on a “What should the ads look like” piece around ChatGPT and AI-driven search (promise, it’ll be done soon). While folks at Google are polite and engaged, they’ve also given me the extended play version of “No comment” – stating it’s too early to declare the business model for conversational search. In short,  they’re waiting for the market to reveal itself a bit more before making any public statements or declaring themselves all in on tech’s next big trend.

Read More
1 Comment on What If Google Goes on Offense?