Google has tightened its belt to bring Bard to ChromeOS after it revealed the ‘Google bard’ service to enhance Google Search-chatbot and AI AI-powered chatbot that can offer answers to many queries in a more natural and conversational than ever before.
The graph of AI chatbot usage is rise recently between the launch of ChatGPT and the preview release of Microsoft’s new Bing. While Google is not yet ready to let the public test its “Bard” AI. A trusted source 9To5Google has reported that Google intends to integrate Bard into its products. In a new set of code changes, we find ChromeOS is preparing “Conversational Search” as an experimental feature. Judging from the name — ChromeOS has other ongoing “Launcher experiments.”
Launcher experiment: conversational search.
To evaluate the viability of a conversational search provider as part of launcher search.
#launcher-chat
It was also found that conversational search flag enabled, ChromeOS will ditch the built-in search features of the launcher (which searches files, apps, and the web) and replace it with a chat with Bard. Things are still very much in a work-in-progress state, so it’s possible this design could change before launch.
Bard on Chromebooks will appear as its own separate page of the ChromeOS bubble launcher. Like how Google Assistant appears today — with a scrollable conversation history and a search bar, presumably used to start a new conversation.
In the case of ChromeOS, Bard seems to be directly replacing the launcher’s Google Search integration, though there’s certainly a case to be made for Bard being integrated with Assistant. It will be interesting to see the places where Google chooses to integrate Bard or any other conversational experience into its existing products.
In either case, the ChromeOS launcher doesn’t seem like the most obvious position for Google to prioritize as a launching point for its ChatGPT/Bing AI competitor. It’s possible this may speak to Google’s intention to rapidly make Bard available across multiple platforms, but this is purely speculation for now.
As Google’s work toward bringing Bard to ChromeOS is only just getting underway, it likely won’t arrive for Chromebook owners to try for themselves until version 112 in April or 113 in May at the earliest. Yet the arrival is not clarified nor announced but the latter would likely see the same overlap with the company’s annual Google I/O conference.