Meta is reportedly working on a new AI-powered search engine

With search engines being a multibillion-dollar industry and Statista claiming Google Search alone generated up to $175 billion last year, it should be no surprise that Meta is reportedly looking to get a piece of those figures with it developing its own AI-powered search engine.

With this move, Meta could become a significant player in the search engine market and lessen global dependence on established giants like Google and Bing.

While the specifics of how Meta will make this work weren't clear, comparisons have been made with another widely used AI-powered search engine, Perplexity AI.

Perplexity collects information from various news sources and answers user queries by scanning the web and chatting, rather than just matching keywords like traditional search engines. This conversational approach lets users ask follow-up questions, creating an interactive experience when searching for information.

While Meta's search engine is expected to operate the same way, it will have a major advantage when it comes to users seeing as Meta's AI is already deeply integrated with Meta's social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.

In other words, many users will most likely be able to access the search engine easily directly from any of those social media platforms.

So far, Meta hasn’t officially confirmed this but reports from The Information claim to be based on insights from people in the know. Plus, there has been a separate event that hints this might be true.

In August, AI tracking firms like Originality AI and Dark Faces reported detecting AI crawlers labelled Meta-External Agent and Meta-ExternalFetcher back in July. These crawlers are thought to be crucial in training Meta's AI by compiling publicly available info and indexing web links for search queries.

In short, Meta has been collecting data to develop this much-anticipated AI-powered search engine. The company has since confirmed this, according to Extreme Tech, stating that it has used these crawlers to scrape publicly available user data from the web for years.

If this works out, it could really shake things up for major players like Google. Even with Google’s recent rollout of its AI search summary feature in several countries, Meta could still use its social media presence to become a major competitor.

And it’s not just Meta looking to break free from Google’s grasp. Bloomberg reports that Apple is also considering creating its own search engine to replace Google on the iPhone. Plus, OpenAI is working on its own AI-powered search engine, ramping up the competition for Google’s top spot.

As more companies explore ways to either move away from Google or create their own versions of its services, Google’s dominance could be challenged.

If Meta successfully launches its AI-powered search engine, we will have a front-row seat to see what happens in the market. In real-time, we’ll find out whether Google can maintain its impressive 90% market share, as reported by Statcounter, or if it will begin to lose ground to emerging competitors.