Some Googlers reportedly aren’t happy about Bard’s ‘rushed’ announcement

Googlers are talking all about the company’s announcement of its ChatGPT rival, Bard — and many aren’t happy with how things went. According to a report from CNBC, Google employees are calling the launch of the AI chatbot “rushed” and “botched” in posts across the company’s internal message boards, with many targeting CEO Sundar Pichai.

“Dear Sundar, the Bard launch and the layoffs were rushed, botched, and myopic,” one user wrote in a heavily upvoted post seen by CNBC, which refers 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 “pushing Bard to market in a panic validated the market’s fear about us.” Google’s stock took a pretty big blow after news about Bard’s error started going around, losing nearly $100 billion of its market value in just one day.

Google’s ChatGPT competitor won’t see wider availability for weeks, but with Microsoft planning to upend web search with a bot that can provide annotated answers to various types of queries, it’s no wonder that Google — which is arguably the king of search — decided to show off Bard now, even if it was a tad earlier than expected.