![Alternative facts? Google denies rushing out Bard at trial Alternative facts? Google denies rushing out Bard at trial](https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2023/03/google-bard-robot.jpg)
I was incredibly surprised to see the headline Google VP Says Bard Chatbot Wasn’t Rushed Out to Beat Microsoft on Bloomberg (warning: paywalled).
That Google VP is Elizabeth Reid, the vice president and GM of Search. She spoke yesterday at the ongoing U.S. vs. Google antitrust hearing.
Why we care. If Google fails to recognize what it looked like from everyone watching, they are essentially living in the land of alternative facts. Which, in case you forgot, are called lies. For a company that preaches about how “trustworthiness” is the most important part of E-E-A-T, they really ought to demonstrate some.
The AI Search race. February was one of the most memorable times in all of Search. I remember it well.
Perhaps the worst-kept secret then was that Microsoft Bing was about to announce a new AI-powered version of Bing, powered by OpenAI’s technology that was powering the hottest new thing in the world – ChatGPT. We first reported on this Jan. 4 in Microsoft to add ChatGPT features to Bing Search.
Search Engine Land’s Barry Schwartz was invited by Microsoft on Thursday, Feb. 2 to an exclusive briefing scheduled for Tuesday, Feb. 7 in Redmond, Wash. The invite even said there were no plans to livestream this event – though that quickly evolved into a special press event.
Why? Google, that’s why. Suddenly, Google has huge embargoed news to share. That news – the announcement of Google’s ChatGPT competitor, an experiment called Bard – went live on Monday, Feb. 6, less than 24 hours before Microsoft’s event.
Press coverage called Google’s news a rushed announcement because it clearly was. Google, at this point, had no product to share. Bard was vaporware, supposedly being released to “trusted testers.”