For a long time, Alphabet’s (NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOGL) Google operation was the king of search engines. However, that primacy was challenged as word emerged that OpenAI was planning to launch its own search product. Alphabet, meanwhile, slipped around 2.5% on the news in Thursday afternoon’s trading.
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Reports suggest that the potential OpenAI search product could be at least partially built around Microsoft’s (NASDAQ:MSFT) Bing search engine, which would likely give the under-used alternative a little extra life. Microsoft has already been adding OpenAI elements to several of its own products, including Bing, so it’s not much of a surprise that the OpenAI and Bing connection would expand further to an outright search engine. An OpenAI search engine would likely cut into Google’s 90% share of the search market as it stands today.
Don’t Count Google Out Yet
While this is certainly a blow, Google is hardly out of the fight. Its own work in AI has produced noteworthy fruit, starting with the Gemini 1.5 upgrade to its current roster of AI operations. In fact, Gemini 1.5 can analyze a huge quantity of content at once; just one prompt, reports note, can analyze an hour of video, 11 hours of audio, or up to 30,000 lines of code. While Google may no longer be the top dog by such a wide margin, it will certainly have skin in the game and produce results.
Is Alphabet Stock a Buy, Sell, or Hold?
Turning to Wall Street, analysts have a Strong Buy consensus rating on GOOGL stock based on 29 Buys and eight Holds assigned in the past three months, as indicated by the graphic below. After a 49.03% rally in its share price over the past year, the average GOOGL price target of $164.56 per share implies 15.66% upside potential.
