Shares of Alphabet Inc. were ahead 2% in Monday morning trading and on track to close at a new 52-week high, in a continuation of their strong recent rally.
The Google parent company’s
GOOG,
GOOGL,
stock has surged more than 40% since closing at $89.13 on Feb. 24, when Wall Street was fretting about the rise of ChatGPT, whose parent company counts Microsoft Corp.
MSFT,
as an investor. Investors worried that Google could lose market share to Bing, Microsoft’s search engine.
Read: Microsoft gave some numbers on AI-powered search. Here’s what the company says.
Alphabet has reassured Wall Street about its own artificial-intelligence initiatives more recently, and one analyst highlighted Monday that the ChatGPT craze doesn’t appear to be having much impact on Google’s core search business.
See more: Google developers conference is all about AI
BofA Securities analyst Justin Post wrote in a note to clients Monday that third-party web-traffic data through May 17 show “stable” traffic for Google, “while Bing has slowed, and ChatGPT traffic seems to be moderating.”
Bing downloads are higher than they were before they saw a late-April surge, he noted, “though Google global downloads are stable, suggesting Bing activity is incremental.”
Notably, that traffic data is from before the launch of a ChatGPT iOS app May 18, though data through May 20 showed 710,000 downloads of the app in the first three days.
“We think traffic data for the ChatGPT app will be important for Google sentiment, and our read on initial data is that there is early interest in the app, but still no evidence of a traffic impact on Google,” BofA Securities analyst Justin Post wrote in a note to clients Monday. “ChatGPT is still unable to provide answers on current events or support external links like search, which we think are advantages for Google.”
Post was also encouraged by a report from last week indicating that Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd.
005930,
has ended an internal review of whether to replace Google with Bing as the default search engine on its native mobile internet app.
“We think performance, monetization and O/S ecosystem advantages for Google’s Android partners should help keep the app as default for search,” Post wrote. “We continue to view Google’s search distribution as one of the three pillars (in addition to superior data and AI capabilities) for our call that AI integration will be incrementally positive for Google’s market position.”
