Alphabet Stock Is Sliding Thursday: What's Going On?

Alphabet Inc GOOG GOOGL shares are trading lower Thursday following reports that OpenAI is planning to build a web search tool to compete with Google.

What To Know: According to a new report from The Information citing a person with knowledge of the company’s plans, OpenAI is developing a web search product to directly compete with Google.

OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, is backed by Microsoft Corp MSFT. The report indicates that the new search tool may be powered by Microsoft’s search engine product Bing. It’s not clear if the product will be a standalone offering separate from ChatGPT.

The news comes after Microsoft made a push to integrate ChatGPT technology into its Bing search engine after ChatGPT popularity soared last year. Alphabet announced its own AI-powered search engine just months later.

According to data from Statista, Bing had approximately 10.5% of the total desktop search market as of July 2023, while Google accounted for approximately 82% of the global market. Google’s search dominance is even greater on mobile devices.

Google reported fourth-quarter financial results at the end of January. The tech giant reported total fourth-quarter revenue of $86.31 billion. Search accounted for $48.02 billion of the company’s quarterly revenue, up from $42.6 billion on a year-over-year basis.

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GOOG Price Action: Alphabet shares were down 3.45% at $142.08 at the time of publication, according to Benzinga Pro.

Photo: Solen Feyissa from Unsplash.