Google’s own employees think Bard, its ChatGPT competitor, is being ‘rushed’

Apparently, Google’s own employees aren’t happy about the announcement of Bard either.

Last week, Google tried to jump ahead of Microsoft by announcing Bard, the company’s upcoming competitor to Bing’s new AI-powered search. The day before Microsoft held their event to announce the new version of Bing and Edge, both of which are now powered by technology from OpenAI, Google announced Bard in a blog post.

The company then followed up Microsoft’s event with an event of its own the next day. While everyone expected to see a major competitor in Bard, Google only showed off a small bit of what users could expect and said that a preview would be rolling out in the coming weeks. The result? Google’s stock tanked while Microsoft’s shot up. Google also got flak as the first demo of Bard included a factual error about the James Webb Space Telescope.

The market wasn’t the only one unhappy with Google’s announcement. Apparently, there was an internal backlash as well. As reported by CNBC, a number of Google employees took to the company’s internal forum to complain about the “rushed” and “botched” announcement. One employee wrote that the company needs to “return to taking a long-term outlook.”

“Dear Sundar, the Bard launch and the layoffs were rushed, botched, and myopic,” read one meme that included a serious picture of Pichai. “Please return to taking a long-term outlook.” The post received many upvotes from employees.

Another employee called the announcement, and the general performance of the leadership team, “comically short-sighted.”

“Sundar, and leadership, deserve a Perf NI,” another highly rated meme read, referring to the lowest category in the company’s employee performance review system. “They are being comically short sighted and un-Googlely in their pursuit of ‘sharpening focus.’”

Another employee said that the company was “rushing” Bard to market.

“Rushing Bard to market in a panic validated the market’s fear about us,” one highly rated meme read. The attached photo was of a bird doing a facepalm.

While Google struggles to get Bard out of the door, Microsoft started to roll out access to the new version of Bing over the weekend.