Bard’s rushed announcement cost Google 100 Billion Dollars in Market Value

Googlers are talking about the company’s announcement of its ChatGPT rival, Bard — and many aren’t happy with how things went. According to a report from CNBC, Google employees are calling the launch of the AI chatbot “rushed” and “botched” in posts across the company’s internal message boards, with many targeting CEO Sundar Pichai.

Google announced Bard earlier last week in a bid to get ahead of Microsoft, which took the wraps off its ChatGPT-powered Bing a day later. But when the company tweeted out a demo of Bard on Monday, several users pointed out that it contained a factual error. Meanwhile, a presenter at Google’s search event on Wednesday forgot the phone they were going to use to show off one of Bard’s features, and some employees reportedly weren’t even aware that it was taking place.

“The Bard launch and the layoffs were rushed, botched, and myopic,” one user wrote in a heavily upvoted post seen by CNBC, which referred to last month’s job cuts eliminating 12,000 workers. Other Googlers reportedly posted memes comparing the past year at Google to a dumpster fire, while another said, “pushing Bard to market in a panic validated the market’s fear about us.”

Google’s parent company, Alphabet, lost $100 billion in market value on Wednesday after its new artificial intelligence technology produced a factual error in its first demo. It’s a bruising reception for Bard, the conversational bot that Google launched as a competitor to Microsoft’s headline-making, ChatGPT.

Google’s ChatGPT competitor won’t see wider availability for weeks, but with Microsoft planning to upend web search with a bot that can provide annotated answers to various types of queries, it’s no wonder that Google — arguably the king of search — decided to show off Bard now, even if it was a tad earlier than expected.

What’s this all about?
Microsoft is integrating ChatGPT into it’s BING search engine to help improve search and make it more user friendly. Google intends to do the same thing with Bard once they get the bugs worked out.

What is a Bard?
In case you’re wondering, popular wisdom says that ‘Bards’ are those great story-tellers whose tales are embraced by the audience, not only once, but over and over again, for generations. The idea of a Bard conjures up names like Homer, Shakespeare, and perhaps few others.

Essentially the Search Engine wars are back in full swing, and it seems like the consumers might win this time. Only time will tell!!!