Last month, The New York Times reported that South Korean tech giant Samsung is contemplating switching the default search engine for its Galaxy phones from Google to Microsoft’s Bing. More recently, a report by the Wall Street Journal says that despite having considered it, the company won’t be making the switch, at least not any time soon.
As explained in the report, Samsung “has suspended an internal review that had explored replacing Google with Bing on its mobile devices”. Worth noting that this would only have applied to the company’s pre-installed Internet web browser app. The report also notes that the company initially considered the switch because it realised that users who used its own Internet browser app were in the minority. With that in mind, the pre-installed browser switching search engines was thought to have no effect on the search engine status quo.
According to the report, part of why the switch was even considered in the first place was the perceived heavy reliance by Samsung on Google’s software. The switch of the default search engine was initially part of the company’s efforts to “diversify its smartphone software”.
But for now, Samsung has decided to stop discussing this possibility internally, at least temporarily. Citing sources familiar with the matter, this is because of the way “the switch could be perceived by the market as well as the impact on its wide-ranging business relations with Google”. With that being said, Bing remains an option beyond the immediate future.
Beyond the reason of diversifying software, it’s unclear why Microsoft’s Bing was the one considered as the default search engine. The previous report by The New York Times noted AI as a possibility, and now with Google also aggressively making Bard available to the masses, it could be an additional reason to keep the status quo.
(Source: WSJ)
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