Giant search engine Google versus Bing is a rivalry to benefit us all

Sometimes they have been focused on individual personalities - think of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs - and other times the focus has been on the organisations (Intel vs AMD).

The greatest rivalries are typically delivered when there are two companies that are close in market share and there is a slightly different approach to the same problem.

Gates vs Jobs was about delivering on the PC promise but they both came at it from different angles.

Microsoft (Gates) was pitched as efficient but nerdy and slightly boring, whereas Apple (Jobs) was the hip and trendy option, even if it wasn't actually compatible with lots of the programs you might need.

Both companies started in the mid-'70s and their focus is now on slightly different markets.

Each one is still worth more than US$2 trillion, so success in a rivalry does not necessarily mean the downfall of a competitor.

Whether the rivalry has been Edison vs Tesla or Energizer vs Duracell, or even PlayStation vs Xbox, the ultimate winner is normally the consumer.

The intense rivalry drives innovation and competition is the greatest way to ensure that a company remains laser-focused on the best outcomes.

Rivalries don't tend to work so well when one company has such market dominance that they laugh at other companies in the same market space trying to drum up a rivalry.

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One tech product that sits in that space at the moment is the Google search engine.

For the last year, Google had 92.9 per cent of the worldwide search engine market share.

A distant speck on the horizon, Bing commanded 3.03 per cent of all searches.

I would understand if you stop reading now if I even thought of mentioning Google vs Bing as a tech rivalry of any substance.

But I am about to do just that.

When a product has such a strong market position as Google, what a would-be competitor needs to do is change the game.

And that is what Bing is about to do.

The world of AI and ChatGPT has been dominating headlines of late - and with good reason.

AI has the potential to fundamentally change the workplace environment for a huge percentage of our population.

At the moment, using ChatGPT involves a separate site (that you probably found using Google) and opening an account and... it is all a bit clumsy for the average user.

Microsoft, having invested a cool $US10 billion in ChatGPT, is now incorporating those responses in their search engine Bing.

Google knows this has the potential to impact their bottom line, so they have rolled out Google Bard as a direct competitor.

Make no mistake - Google was not ready to roll this out and has only done so as a direct result of Microsoft's move with Bing.

Competition - it pushes companies harder than they want to be pushed.

I can't tell you which tool is better or which tool will win this particular tech rivalry but I can tell you, in the testing I have done so far, I am incredibly impressed with what these tools are able to achieve.

I know some people are scared but, even if we close our eyes in the morning, the sun will come up and it is the same with AI. Ignore it at your peril.

You can choose to embrace or ignore but, regardless, it is going to be a part of our daily lives.

Even if only when we type in a search query.