Meta’s search not immediate risk for Google, but highlights growing competition: BofA

Meta Platforms’ (NASDAQ:META) development of a search engine is not an immediate risk for competitors such as Google Search (NASDAQ:GOOG)(NASDAQ:GOOGL) and Microsoft Bing (NASDAQ:MSFT), but it does show emerging competition in the search arena that has been long dominated by Google, according to BofA.

“While Meta’s AI initiatives are not a surprise, the growing news flow on potential competition in Search remains a sentiment negative for Alphabet/Google search,” said BofA analysts Justin Post and Nitin Bansal, in an investor note.

The new search capability will operate through the Meta AI chatbot, scouring the web to produce answers for queries. The chatbot is integrated into multiple platforms under Meta, including Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger.

“Given the significant amount of time spent on Meta’s apps (~40mins/day per user on FB and ~60mins/day on IG), if users increasingly engage with Meta AI for information, there is a possibility that a portion of internet traffic could shift away from Google Search (currently leading the market with 90% Search share globally),” Post added.

What’s more, BofA finds Meta very capable of producing its own answer search queries due to its expanding AI assets, including infrastructure and the Llama large language model.

“Compared to new Gen-AI companies such as OpenAI and Anthropic, Meta potentially has a larger user and content base to train its own LLM, and more capital to sign licensing agreements,” BofA noted.