Googlers are talking all about the company’s announcement of its ChatGPT rival, Bard — and many aren’t happy with how things are going. According to a CNBC report, Google employees called the launch of the AI chatbot “rushed” and “failed” in posts on the company’s internal message boards, many of them directed at CEO Sundar Pichai.
“Dear Sundar, Bard’s launch and layoffs were rushed, botched and short-sighted,” wrote one user in an upvoted post seen by CNBC, referring to last month’s job cuts that eliminated 12,000 workers. Other Googlers reportedly posted memes comparing the past year at Google to a dumpster fire, while another employee said “Bard’s push into a panicked market confirmed the market’s fear of us.” Google stock took quite a hit after news of Bard’s mistake began to spread, shedding nearly $100 billion in market value in just one day.
Google’s competitor ChatGPT won’t see wider availability for weeks, but with Microsoft planning to transform web search with a bot that can provide annotated responses to different types of queries, it’s no wonder that Google – which may is the king of search – decided to show Bard now, even if it was a little earlier than expected.